The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 378, September 7, 2024 =================================================================== Collected by L. Curtis Boyle Special Guests today: --------------------- Interview schedule: -------------------- None Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people: ------------------------------------------------------------ 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). Previous club videos can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaD3XRYu1lQTWrMYYPmaOa4AIj4xArroD 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/ Retro SC, the retro show in Brazil, is having their 2024 event on November 16. This always has a strong Coco/CP-400/etc. contingent, including multiple people who have been guests on our show.It is happening at 1670 Haroldo Soares Glavan road, Cacupé, Florianópolis, Santa Catarina. https://retrosc.org/ 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) Jamie Lee Cho has announced a new utility written in Python that helps translate the Coco's Microsoft BASIC's to OS-9's BASIC09, including most graphics statements. This should make converting them a lot easier. It's not perfect (and Jamie lists some limitations in the readme) but should save a lot of time translating. This is part of his ever expanding coco-tools suite: https://github.com/jamieleecho/coco-tools Readme: https://github.com/jamieleecho/coco-tools/blob/main/README.decb-to-b09.md 2) EJ Jacquay (maintainer and programmer for the current VCC emulator) mentioned in the #general-emulators channel that he has made a boot.rom for both VCC and MAME, that allows the boot track for NitrOS9 to be in a virtual ROM, which allows booting straight to the hard drive image with no floppy image attached. I am not sure if this has been released to the public yet (as of this past Monday) 3) CocoTown, as part of his SepTandy contributions, put up a video showing how to automate the MAME Coco debugger and how to use the LUA scripting capabilities that MAME itself can use: https://youtu.be/ySY8EN0sE6I?si=cJXF41LIDDoS1hlF 4) TRS-80 Retro Programing posted a quick 10 minute video of his experience in getting ChatGPI to generate Coco Extended BASIC code: https://youtu.be/kot0aiTGUmk?si=9Glchca8UstmXuZv 5) Ciaran has announced that XRoar version 1.6 has been released. This contains some bug fixes for 6309 emulation, Coco 3 emulation, more dialog boxes under Windows, more keyboard/joystick profiles, physical joysticks end up in menus, and support for both the Dragon Professional and the Tandy Deluxe Color Computer (both of which feature preliminary AY-3-891x sound chip support): Announcement: https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11191 Download: https://www.6809.org.uk/xroar/ 6) More updates to ugBASIC (micro game BASIC), including some Coco or 6809 specific ones: Main branch: https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/main Beta branch: https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/beta 7) Erico Monteiro uploaded a DSK image to the Facebook Coco group that has a test pattern for the extra artifact colors, and some test images that he converted to the Coco (after running the loader, hit spacebar to see the other pictures): https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161597760297641/ 8) Gregory Roscow showed a Coco 2 he found on ebay that was rebranded as a "Game & Education Machine" from Automated Functions Inc. Besides the rebranding, it also has an internal speaker with an added volume knob on the back: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161594900322641/ 9) The Tandy Assembly Facebook page featured another Coco related spotlight for the upcoming show - Elizabeth Hayes showing her artistic skills on her repainted Coco 2. This is the focus of her exhibit this year titled "Pretty In Pink": https://www.facebook.com/tandyassembly/posts/pfbid0YcBioDG6KjW9jvLDiMDr12udLoHhigTdrpbSGGLV4yr8eZ9TF2B6w61HtKUJ348Tl 10) As promised, David Mitchell has the first version of his SepTandy project available on his GitHub (a PLAY statement editor for making sound effects in Extended BASIC), and includes some screenshots: https://davysretrocorner.blogspot.com/2024/09/septtandy-2024-introducing-echo-co.html MC-10 ----- 1) Bruce Maret posted photos of the upgrades he did to his MC-10 this past week - composite video output and the PiKey-10 keyboard/joystick adaptor: https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/8011354878991264/ Dragon 32/64 ------------ 1) Julian Brown just received his next Dragon reinvented motherboard - aside from the CPU, almost everything on it is using more modern chips and surface mounted, and it is an ATX style board. It includes up to 4 MB of RAM, a hardware serial port, 512K ROM, dual 3 channel sound generators, and the possibility of running a slightly overclocked 63C09E CPU at 3.56 MHz: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3798197950439846/ He also showed his Multipak clone that he is working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3798025403790434/ 2) John Whitworth (of DragonPlus Electronics) showed a small MSX 2 Sound Mixer board - from the sound mixing circuitry on the SuperSprite FM+ board - squashed onto a 27x28 mm PCB: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3794902197436088/ Game On news (all Coco related platforms): ========================================== 1) Jim Gerrie updates for the week: - Mad Monkeys is a new game that Jim himself is writing for the MC-10 (ie not a port). This is the 3rd installment, where the player can now continue on after clearing a screen: https://youtu.be/FucJ9qSqTfg?si=m_142o6orw80SEgp - Bakudan Otoko originally by Shinichi Nakamoto & Shigeki Fujiwara in 1980. This is the predecessor to Bomber Man, and was made by Hudson Soft as a tech demo for their BASIC compiler, and Jim attempted to recreate that original demo: https://youtu.be/3kaE8CE5-QQ?si=oS0gR6iO3VH7ezvs 2) Chronologically Gaming continues to cover game releases from October 1982. The Coco / Dragon ones that they covered this past week are: Lemans (Spectral Associates): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JohQ9Zosu-k&t=38s Madness and the Minotaur on the Dragon 32 (with completely different artwork than the original Coco version): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqJ90LyxpXI&t=33s Mansion Adventure 1 for the Dragon 32: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqJ90LyxpXI&t=754s 3) Tim and AJ return with another 2&1/2 hours of playing Dungeons of Daggorath - one of the marque Coco games of all time - good enough that it spawned a PC port. How far does AJ get by the end of this episode? https://youtu.be/-M-k8ocCjs4?si=EDzF5AorP0-n8cnv 4) As part of SepTandy, YaggieBoat on YouTube put up a just about 2 minute video of computer vs computer gameplay of Tandy's Castle Guard on a Coco 2: https://youtu.be/Awy7TwHPZWE?si=maApPd7H42cdB4Cn 5) TJ Ferreira put up a video showing the unboxing of a brand new MC-10 game - with full color packaging and everything, and a Atari joystick adaptor that plugs into the serial I/O port (it only allows one axis - X or Y - at once along with a joystick button). It is called T.H.E.M. (from Spriteworx), and requires the MCX-32SD (the game comes on an SD Card) & the serial joystick interface. TJ will be doing a gameplay video later. I don't think this is on sale yet; I didn't see it on the itch.io page. https://youtu.be/aztiCjKobO8?si=eEZy_WtfDh1Wg-Wk 6) The Collector's Quest podcast latest episode #179 "So You Want to Collect Halloween Games #4" and covers all kinds of games (not just computer) has a rather familiar one from the Coco and Dragon that they talk about: https://youtu.be/If1mVAiKQ7U?si=m6U1OKbZN_IKr3k-&t=2715 7) Retronaut on YouTube goes through the first issue of UK magazine Computer & Video Games from November 1981. Included in the news section in this issue is an article on Dino Wars for the TRS-80 Color Computer Computer: https://youtu.be/_ajqE1bYA-I?si=KoCUkliIZnHL80y6&t=1580 Speak your mind! 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