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/ Speak your mind! Let us know what you think at: ============================================================================== feedback at TheCoCoNation.com Get connected with more of the CoCo, Dragon and MC-10 community here: ============================================================================== https://thecoconation.com/community/