The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 376, August 24, 2024 =================================================================== Collected by L. Curtis Boyle Special Guests today: --------------------- Some sad news: Nancy Hawks, wife of Chris Hawks of Hawksoft and a regular attendee of Rainbowfest's & CocoFest's in Chicago since the 1980's, passed away this past week. There are two services planned: Memorial Service on Sunday, August 25 at 2 pm Trinity Presbyterian Church 145 Hannings Lane Martin, TN Much later will be a second service: First Presbyterian Church 240 Standish Street Elgin, IL Chris is a software and hardware developer for the Coco since it's early years, as well as a past vice-president of the Glenside Color Computer Club. He did The Wizards's Tomb game for Skyline Software way back in 1982/1983, and then other Coco software and hardware including the Coco 3 game Domination, customizable dos MYDOS, Icon BASIC09, Keyboard extenders for Coco 2 and 3, Dual hi-res joystick adaptor (both Tandy Hi-res and Coco Max III compatible), and more. None Interview schedule: -------------------- None Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people: ------------------------------------------------------------ VCF-Midwest has moved (slightly) again to the 50,000 square foot "Convention North" space (they sold out of table space with the original "Exploration Hall" area which was 33,000 square feet at the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL. Sept 7-8, 2024 (Sept 6 evening (Friday) is reserved for vendors, etc to set up). They have added multiple hotels which people can book into, as the original sold out quickly. https://vcfmw.org/ The same weekend as VCF-Midwest is VCF Europa. This is the VCF for Europe, held at the Multi-purpose hall of ESV Munich East in Munich, Germany (and one should know that the talks will be in German) September 7-8, 2024. There are 1 and 2 passes for both individuals and families. http://vcfe.org/E/ The World of Retro Computing 2024 is September 14-15 in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada (west of Toronto). This year it is located in the old Goudies Department Store, 8 Queen Street North. Free admission, and this covers all kinds of retro computers. Some people in the Coco community are planning on going, and Stacy Vetzal from the Coco Facebook group is planning on having a booth. We are hoping to have 4 guests on next week to talk about the show: https://worldofretrocomputing.com/2024-worc-expo Tandy Assembly for 2024 has been announced for Sep 27-29, 2024. An update from Pete on August 9 - they have now sold out of tables for the show! And another announcement - Steve Leininger, the designer of the TRS-80, is the keynote speaker! http://www.tandyassembly.com/speakers.html Courtyard by Marriott Springfield Springfield, Ohio http://www.tandyassembly.com/ Also that weekend is the Amigos next live ICC (International Computer Club), which will be at 4 PM EST on September 28. This is for all retro computers & gaming consoles. It streams live on their Twitch channel and YouTube channels) The Dragon Meetup is 100% official now: October 12-13, 2024 at the Museum of Technology in Cambridge, England: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3776261519300156/ Retro Computer Festival 2024: November 9-10, 2024 Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England In the early stages of planning for this year, this is (I believe) the largest general retro computing show in the UK (it's their VCF style show), covering all retro machines. Tickets can be ordered online for individual days or both days. All of their events (including separate entries for both days) at the bottom of this page: https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/pages/30677/What-s-On/ The Saturday event specifically: https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72253/Retro-Computer-Festival-2024-Saturday-9th-November/ VCF East has had a date change for next years show due to a scheduling conflict. It is now April 4-6, 2025 - same facility as this year. Info Age Science Museum, Wall, NJ. Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform) ------------------------------- 1) VCC 2.1.9.0 has now been released. One big change as of this version is that it has switched to being hosted in Visual Studio 2022 rather than an older version; this means the main branch version will no longer run under Windows XP (although currently EJ is maintaining a legacy branch as well). Other updates affect the debugger, the user guide, the configuration menu is now dropdown menu items (vs the old tabbed dialog), and adding a swap joysticks configuration item (a great feature that XRoar has had for awhile): https://github.com/VCCE/VCC/releases/tag/vcc-2.1.9.0-release 2) CocoTown has released episode 19 of his Moon Patrol clone development series on YouTube - now he is adding rocks to the lunar landscape. This episode even contains a Twisted Sister song cover: https://youtu.be/ryHjvfcppJ8?si=LH_GlKLZugWaK4gQ 3) Wayne Campbell has been recording live coding sessions for his BASIC09 Sokoban1, where he is working on adding all of the other variant levels: https://youtu.be/VuLWMYmEHy4?si=qMnVMTSkBNSSvWRh https://youtu.be/kcTTn_DaabM?si=k3tBkAr5ZHuC_56z And he reports a bug when launching a really big RUNB program from Shellplus - it doesn't seem to work without typing RUNB first (Which I will be looking into when I get time): https://youtu.be/V0hDAIUINT4?si=Anry55f-v0PLOK2B 4) Tandy Assembly did a little spotlight on Neil Blanchard on their Facebook page, highlighting his Gamester joysticks and his Atari joystick adaptor: https://www.facebook.com/tandyassembly/posts/pfbid0EuAb56DgpjbFWbnb5wiQVjvTcaRWcSAGvfdKmqfo7su1DHKbnaNaE2wk4DSy6D5Fl 5) Glen Hewlett posted an update on his BASIC compiler - he is fixing some bugs with multi-dimensional arrays, and he is also going to have 2 versions of RND - his original 8 bit version, and a newly added 16 bit version (as we have mentioned before, most everything will be BYTE or INTEGER to greatly speed up BASIC, when floating point is not needed. 6) Henry of The Break Key fame (and famous panelist on our show) released his next Forth on ROM project, now working on string handling: https://youtu.be/kd_EnxNetqg?si=ixAuO3F4RpThDeTl 7) David Collins posted an update to the Facebook 68xx/63xx Assembly language group on Facebook to his 6309 single board computer. He is slowly eliminating bugs on it: https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3445568779069813/ And a general update from earlier in the week: https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3443140882645936/ 8) Glenside is now accepting nominations for the next election for Secretary, Treasurer, Vice-President and President. Details on Glenside's site: https://www.glensideccc.com/glenside-leadership-nominations/ MC-10 ----- 1) Dragon 32/64 ------------ 1) Richard Harding has made scans of the Dragon 64 Supplement manual (and the Finnish Dragon 64 Supplement manual) available. These manuals show what is different on the Dragon 64 BASIC vs. the Dragon 32: http://dragondata.co.uk/Publications/BASIC-MAN/DD_D64_Supplement.pdf Finnish: http://dragondata.co.uk/Publications/BASIC-MAN/FINLUX_D64_LIITE_Supplement.pdf 2) Julian Brown has some new boards in to work on - a "simple block adapter that to use 4164's in a mark 2 Dragon 32 without butchering the main board or the chips themselves": https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3785183471741294/ Game On news (all Coco related platforms): ========================================== 1) Jim Gerrie release an MC-10 version of "Chase" that originally appeared in the Creative Computing book "More BASIC Computer Games" by David Ahl. Side note: this was on of two games that inspired the programmers of the arcade game Robotron:2084 (the other being Berzerk): https://youtu.be/-PaGqCWvoVI?si=6LvLbIpm5Q-k0tQL He also converted over "Orbit" from Creative Computing's book BASIC Computer Games, originally by Jeff Lederer in 1978: https://youtu.be/LiLrQEtVGuA?si=_CM0ejd1vascKZ6O He also back ported the C64 version of the 1982 Aardvark text adventure Derelict to the MC-10 and the Coco. There was an official Coco version released way back in August 1982, but none of us have been able to find the original, so this is the next best thing (spoiler alert: it is a *Complete* walkthrough): https://youtu.be/vBK8DK2IN-s?si=_EGicUjRLqVJFP1R 2) TRS-80 Retro Programing released a video update for his Ghost Saga Extended BASIC game. He is working on getting it to work from disk in the TRS80GP emulator... which only supports DMK format at this point, so we will need to make a DSK version as well so that it works on all emulators and on a CocoSDC. But he has been learning how the Coco disk system works (never having had one back in the day): https://youtu.be/ptN7W9_BPi8?si=uP_8hWz8P0RUwHqX 3) Randy Poffo on YouTube did a one minute video of Donkey King gameplay: https://youtu.be/Fa-l2_sN8cs?si=r95xzfhd4K3g1dnM 4) Inufuto has released their newest game, Osotos, for the MC-10 (on August 18) and the Coco 1/2 & 3 versions (August 23). It's kind of a Pengo meets Space Panic style game: http://inufuto.web.fc2.com/8bit/osotos/ MC-10 gameplay video: https://youtu.be/64zmqIcM06M?si=9WQwm1qzMZyVmV56 Coco 1/2 gameplay video: https://youtu.be/W037xmpLXwM?si=LOdyIcYa-ajNeJpT Coco 3 gameplay video: https://youtu.be/RCNAOcj0pog?si=4yIlPWR3qZ--Tvhz Brief general instructions: You clear the level when you collect all the stars. Defeat monsters by hitting them with blocks. Stack blocks to get through areas that were previously impossible to cross. Disappeared blocks will reappear in their original place. 5) Speaking of Inufuto games, Nostalgivault on YouTube playing some on the Coco this past week as well: AntiAir Coco 1/2: https://youtu.be/lhTBmdu-DyE?si=4QHFk3QjcWOw4_bj AntiAir Coco 3: https://youtu.be/eDKWoIbhrFE?si=hRvJljy7tFJMQfhZ 6) David Mitchell showed a video of the 1 or 2 player adventure style game "Lachlan!" by Magic Midnight on the Dragon 32. It has an interesting (possibly unique?) fight mechanic - actually different ones depending on your foe. He says that he saw an ad for this game in Dragon User magazine, so he decided to try it: https://youtu.be/F54IK7ofqLI?si=aUkYv0qOTyOdIePI He also put a video up for the previously unreleased game Rebellion, originally written by Roy Coates & Chris Larkin back in the early 1980's (Roy is the guy who ported Manic Miner and Jetset Willy to the Dragon back in the day, amongst other program he wrote). The download for it is in the Dragon Facebook group. They originally submitted it to Microdeal, but it was rejected. https://youtu.be/NqtA-a0R1XM?si=WzUzri4F0eFU8N8S .CAS file download for Dragon 32: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/3773004619625846/ 7) Chronologically Gaming on YouTube showed he Berserk cartridge from Dragon Data (Dragon conversion of the Mark Data Products one for the Coco from a year earlier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXvJys58vDk&t=687s&ab_channel=ChronologicallyGaming He also covered T&D's Coco-Terrestrial & Intracolor's Colorpede for the Coco on yesterdays show: Coco-Terrestrial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzdTmpEmshA&t=1153s Colorpede: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzdTmpEmshA&t=1658s Speak your mind! 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