[Index]
The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 383, October 12, 2024
===================================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
Special Guests today:
---------------------
Hopefully someone from the Dragon Meetup (or at least photos from said event)
I also have an unboxing (just the main shipping box to show what it is)
for what will be one of two door prizes I will be contributing to 2025's
CocoFest (the other is the Tandy issue of Pixel Addict magazine). Thanks
to Jay Mundy for arranging this!
Interview schedule:
--------------------
A follow-up to WORC (World of Retro Computing) with showrunning Justus,
Trina of Trina's Technobabble and Stacey (who actually had a Coco exhibit,
but couldn't make our preview show) are going to come on to tell us how
the show went, and Stacey will finally get to talk about her booth and
the Coco's she was showing. This should be happening on October 26.
Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
------------------------------------------------------------
The Dragon Meetup one week from now: October 12-13, 2024 at the Museum of
Technology in Cambridge, England:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3776261519300156/
Bob Emery let me know that there is a Dallas Fort Worth Retro Computing
Meetup in Dallas on October 19, from noon until 4 pm, at Bingo Bingo,
1806 S Carrier Parkway, Grand Prairie, Texas:
https://www.meetup.com/DFW-Retrocomputing/events/303767722?utm_medium=email&utm_source=braze_canvas&utm_campaign=mmrk_alleng_event_announcement_prod_v7_en&utm_term=promo&utm_content=lp_meetup
Retro Computer Festival 2024: November 9-10, 2024
Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England
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.
** NOTE: AS OF OCTOBER 9, THE SATURDAY SHOW IS COMPLETELY BOOKED AND SOLD
OUT. THERE IS STILL SOME SPACE ON SUNDAY. **
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 now has a partial list of exhibitors:
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-SoCal - Feb 15-16 (Hotel Fera in Orange, California.
https://www.vcfsocal.com/
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.
https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-east/
VCF-SW in Texas has been booked with dates: June 20-22, 2025 at the Davidson
Gundy Alumni Center, University of Texas, Dallas, Texas.
Tables & Tickets will go on sale January 2025. $20/adult ($25 if bought
at the door), $10/student ($15 at the door). 17 and under are free (with
accompanying adult). Tables are $50.
https://www.vcfsw.org/
Tim Lindner let me know that next year's Portland Retro Gaming Expo runs
from October 17-19 in 2025 (they just had this years Sept 27-29).
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
1) CocoTown is back to his Moon Patrol game, titled Crashing the car,
crashing my Coco (Part 1). Sounds exciting!
https://youtu.be/DSswbvCwjoM?si=s5XcJwUQX_l8K6vo
2) George Janssen released part 2 of lesson 14 for programming assembly
language for the Coco 3 - using 512K. He also released the source code
samples on the Coco Discord:
https://youtu.be/W2A9-EtTAoQ?si=86llCdQOCVXcMp4m
3) More updates for ugBASIC:
Main branch dating back to Oct. 6 had multiple updates, including some
6809 code generation optimizations:
https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/main
Beta branch seems to be other machines or some updates for all machines:
https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/beta
4) The Retrocomputing Roundtable podcast has a recent tradition of going
through each year to name which computers and technologies came out each
year, based on the episode number. For the latest episode 280 they are
covering 1980 - which included the Coco & Pocket Computer from Tandy:
https://www.youtube.com/live/7__iJycFGYo?si=IZtnzedEZufos15X&t=326
5) The Clueless Engineer released a part 1 video about a late model NTSC
US model Coco 2 that he is using in Australia. Here he goes through the
board, and getting the video to work:
https://youtu.be/cv5t9UkH9HU?si=0E6DxIS1fGlEutOv
6) Retro Recycling on YouTube did several long videos on programming a
Coco. I think these are actually being done by a younger person, which is
great to see:
An hour long video called "How to program your Coco with Extended BASIC",
with a simple type in game at the end:
https://youtu.be/MW4xFEIMz7o?si=RflJCz0QTcbCe9SR
Simple games showcase (note his voice is low on this one compared to
games sounds):
https://youtu.be/-k78utPjgRg?si=0naH6c4sjBSx2Cv_
Donkey - ported from the Microsoft Retro game:
https://youtu.be/SLDcppcDeSQ?si=cJs5YuaOxF1Ku1_v
A betting game:
https://youtu.be/jQ0cmHCBPNo?si=QydvIUJrcOM3Gd3e
These are all very simple text based games... I wonder if he knows about
SET/RESET graphics, Extended BASIC higher res graphics and Coco 3 graphics
yet?
7) Sheldon MacDonald released a short video on his YouTube channel showing
what his secret project that he teased us about on Facebook is - a SID
chip hooked up and programmed by the Coco:
https://youtu.be/XqgNsJJO86Y?si=ENMk6u5T6EcmPYrO
8) Glen Hewlett has added fast GET/PUT buffers to his BASIC compiler
in progress:
"Versions 2.12 is out which now adds the graphics commands GET & PUT
They work the same as normal Extended BASIC with an extra option for the
PUT command which is XOR which XORs the bits on screen with the bits of
the GET buffer as:
100 PUT(C,Y)-(C+4,Y+9),Sprite1,XOR
From the updated manual (which still needs lots of work)
GET dimension size calculation:
To calculate the size of the array space for your GET/PUT buffer use the
following formula:
First dimension in the array is calculated with this formula:
If you saw the calculation here earlier please Ignore them and see next
post for proper calculations.
Unfortunately the DIM command can only take numbers as values (can’t use
formulas) as the numbers are used directly to calculate how much space should
be reserved and this is done with the compilers preprocessing/tokenizing
stage.
The reason so much space is needed for sprites is because the
GET command preprocesses the sprite data and saves bit shifted versions in
the array space that are ready to be PUT on the screen as fast as possible.
This means the sprites will be just as fast on a byte boundary as it is
on any other pixel."
MC-10
-----
1) Ron Delvaux uploaded a video showing Simon's latest version of his 4
voice music player for the MC-10, using it's internal 1-bit sound (warning:
Facebook is not letting me change the volume):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/8313488882111194/
2) Jim Gerrie reports that he has started working on porting Nick Marentes
1982 TRS-80 Model I game Stellar Odyssey to the MC-10:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/8307922082667874/
Dragon 32/64
------------
1)
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Jim Gerrie ported the game "Murder One!" (originally Dean Mackie,
Peter J. Lear & Graham Richards from the 1985 book "TRS-80 Colour Computer
Programmer's Handbook/What Else Can You Do with Your TRS-80" from Hayes
Publishing:
https://youtu.be/hG8jP-GNdI8?si=qHt0E4MlIdtv1BAa
2) RichN (the person in the Coco Discord working on a Coco 1/2 Spy Hunter
game posted a video of his current progress, which has come a long way. What
makes it even more interesting is that it sounds like he is working on a
serial port (bit banger) port program so that a second Coco can be hooked
up to the main Spy Hunter playing one, and essentially the use the second
one as a "sound card", where it would play music independently, but be
controlled (as to which song, etc.) based on data being sent over the port:
(show local file "spy_hunter_update (Rich N).mov")
3) non_maskable_interrupt on YouTube released several YouTube Short Coco
video games, running on real hardware and a CM-8 (with a door!):
Predator:
https://youtube.com/shorts/oeeTAiZxmmI?si=ZrecXz3NAWm1tOpF
Silpheed:
https://youtube.com/shorts/K-Co1uI2gMU?si=vNqSlaCAl75_6qAF
MegaBug:
https://youtube.com/shorts/da0tSmA4ijY?si=fN7CWrv11Ge9BWHW
4) Nostalgiavault on YouTube also released multiple Coco game videos this
past week:
Inufuto's Ascend (he tried the Coco 3 and MC-10 versions, which I won't
show here), Mega-Bug (which I won't show)
Paul Fiscarelli's Run Dino Run:
https://youtu.be/dSZcDFg5xC4?si=dFkZdbooYdoUzerS
George Janssen's 2048:
https://youtu.be/fLQyLl2s6EU?si=TptAlsxC7M5cbAYQ
CCW's Color It (educational):
https://youtu.be/BxhQWbdcIQw?si=kqzaX15EoDm3NPky
Christmas scene (not really a game, and artifact colors reversed):
https://youtu.be/I1BvQ_JUlsg?si=zkgzOhWbkfIx1_5u
Christmas song book (using BASIC):
https://youtu.be/GobkZJxKw-U?si=tFR0pYjP8x0jIRnr
Number Race (I think this was a magazine type in educational game?):
https://youtu.be/hXJGG2DhEwI?si=nFEr9K_yWEavmOhe
5) Jostive fivezer on YouTube did a couple of retro Coco gameplay videos
as well (using Ciaran's excellent XRoar Online emulator):
Apples:
https://youtu.be/hQJFL0fqp4o?si=tx_lZ7lAEduCLgee
Vultures (originally from the Dragon)
https://youtu.be/yzM2mHRuXes?si=52gvl0S3MZHHWKeC
PacMan Tribute (he is playing the original 1 screen demo release in this
video) by Nick Marentes:
https://youtu.be/xPT_TAHLftE?si=we-USjrDQ67LqQaF
6) Chronologically Gaming did a special episode this past week - he
had a live guest on, and they linked Dragon emulators together over the
internet to play head to head Wizard War from Salamander Software, that
was released in October of 1982. This is a game I have seen before, but
have never delved into:
https://youtu.be/8FXgzl2oMrs?si=pj8AJSGl_Rz6Q0ci
He also reviewed Williamsburg Adventure #3 also from October 1982 (which
I believe was originally on the Coco, but the Coco version is lost?):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-momJXTAZO4&t=41s
I will mention that has just started November 1982, and introduced the
Japanese Fujistu FM-7 - another 6809 based system that included better
graphics, and a sound chip, compared to the Coco.
7) Rick Adams has released a Super Extended BASIC Coco 3 game called
Fox Hunt:
Announcement:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161703228147641/
Download, instructions, source:
https://github.com/yggdrasilradio/foxhunt/tree/master
8) Carlos Camacho posted the generated source listing using AI to convert
from an Apple II graphics program to a Coco 1/2 graphics program:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161702542742641/
9) David Bean showed on the Dragon Facebook group that he "finally managed
to finish a Dragon game". The game is Zorakk the Conqueror:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3830219303904377/
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