The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 390, November 30, 2024 =================================================================== Collected by L. Curtis Boyle Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people: ------------------------------------------------------------ Virtual Coco/Tandy Fest is January 25, 2025, and now has it's own website site up: Mark Overholser is the driving force for it, and can give updates on speakers, etc. https://tandyretroshow.com/ VCF-SoCal - Feb 15-16 (Hotel Fera in Orange, California. https://www.vcfsocal.com/ VCF East is April 4-6, 2025 - same facility as this year. Info Age Science Museum, Wall, NJ. https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-east/ CocoFest is May 2-3, 2025 (with takedown on the morning of May 4/Sunday) at the Holiday Inn & Suites in Carol Stream (Wheaton), Illinois. Hotel rooms at the special Fest rate are available now ($122/night for two queens or 1 king bed), and apply for May 2-5. You will need to use the Group Rate code of G30 to get this rate, and getting the special rate ends April 7. Bookings for tables will be going up in January. https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/ Tables go on sale January 1 at noon, Central standard time. 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). https://www.retrogamingexpo.com/ Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform) ------------------------------- 1) Ron Klein posted a blog update for the Coco Pi Project, including the latest on how it is being built and different ways you can install it: https://coco-pi.com/coco-pi-project-update-2024-11-27/ 2) Wi-Fi Sheep on YouTube put up a more full length video of the Cambridge Retro Computer Festival 2024 (he showed us some Coco / Dragon stuff specifically after the show). One area of interest is the special 6847 display, showing a variety of computers that used the same VDG as the Coco 1/2, MC-10/Alice, and Dragon 32/64 used: https://youtu.be/9y8GMrjAPyo?si=4ifWr5MxIwIwz8S0&t=599 3) Ciaran Anscomb has announced that XRoar 1.7.3 has been released. This fixed some bugs that crept into 1.7.2: http://www.6809.org.uk/xroar/ 4) Daniel Wilson of the Think Tank Podcast, interviewed Wes Kussmaul, the creator of the online system Delphi. Like the older Compuserve, Delphi was filled with forums, downloads, etc. and they had an agreement with Rainbow magazine to run Coco forums, which Rainbow had a monthly column mentioning which new downloads, etc. were newly added. It goes through how Delphi started as an online encyclopedia to what he is doing now. It also covers Daniel's history with the Coco 2: https://aithinktankpodcast.com/articles/f/the-early-days-of-the-internet---show-9 YouTube video version of the interview: https://youtu.be/J5EREYob3N4?si=fb40RTann_RZZBmC 5) David Collins posted a video on Facebook in the Motorola 6809/6309/6800 Assembly Language programming group showing his HB63C089M single board 6309 based computer, and showing a text based Mandelbrot set being generated using a 6309 assembly program. It completes it in about .3 seconds... an that's writing it to a virtual terminal. https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3528218010804889/ MC-10 ----- 1) Jim Gerrie released an MC-10 port of "A Spacecraft Simulator" originally written by Gary Sivak for BYTE magazine, November 1979.: https://youtu.be/kPrI6feDyKA?si=7nvafJSi9EEpjY3U Dragon 32/64 ------------ 1) robcfg on the World of Dragon Forums has announced a new utility, DragonCas2 (sequel to DragonCas_GUI). He has also released a test version for Windows: https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=11212 Direct link: https://bitbucket.org/robcfg/dragoncas2/src/master/ 2) Julian Brown posted an update for his RAM replacement board for his Dragon 32 repro board. This is a simpler design that he hopes fixes a bug. From some testing yesterday, it is working better than his earlier version, but still isn't fully working... yet: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3878989832360657/ 3) Richard Harding has posted some high resolution original artwork for Dragon software titles, this time in poster format (23" x 15.5") at 300 DPI: http://dragondata.co.uk/Publications/posters-8/POSTERS-8.html 4) YouTube channel Retro4u received a fair number of UK computers that he goes through, including a Dragon 32: https://youtu.be/nw_U6KVrcUQ?si=B-OWOL4ZQXdqj8PZ&t=279 5) German YouTube channel MIGs Yesterchips (ran by the Yesterchips Museum) received a Dragon 32 as a hardware donation, and need a little repair to get the color working. Rather than doing a video showing he complete testing, etc. he goes into figuring out was wrong with some photos, making a shorter video: https://youtu.be/O46BTTJSN_I?si=GxhPeVTia1uuGeif 6) Henry Gernhardt III put up part 2 of his video series on creating both the hardware and software for a USB keyboard interface for the Coco (and Dragon): https://youtu.be/MjQjr-vsv1U?si=x_uDEwFEVlWPaIB3 7) A follow up to last week's episode where a person in the live chat revealed that he was the author of Hidden BASIC that was sold by Spectrum Projects in 1983, and he was trying to find a copy. Well, Paul Fiscarelli found a copy, and it is now on the archive! https://colorcomputerarchive.com/ 8) RetroTechTime put up a YouTube short with some photos of an "extensive Coco collection" that he saved from getting thrown out (I think there are other Tandy, non-Coco items included as well): https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6bVAYD8Xtjo He did a same style video showing a few photos of Tandy/TRS80 collection: https://youtube.com/shorts/nxxXPBciDQ8?si=b5ttuG6UtfWjGhgs Game On news (all Coco related platforms): ========================================== 1) Lee Perkins put up a video update for his port of the Cloud Kingdoms game to the Coco 3 - showing level selection and game play of a few different levels, completing them. Note: At this stage, you can't get damaged, so it's a bit easier to play than the final version will be (it's also better for testing): https://youtu.be/WxmSOFYJwSA?si=Vin-AHgGGQ2UgyTu 2) Pere Serrat has released the 6th & 7th Supersprite FM+ upgraded games packs, with the new colour palette. The 6th pack includes: Flype 2.0 Foggy's Quest Funky Fungus Level 1 Funky Fungus Level 2 Funky Fungus Level 3 Funky Fungus Level 4 https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11211 And the 7th has: Forward to the Past Bubble Frenzy 1.1 Gherbert Groundhog In Save the Date The Goblin Mr. Hair and the Kitty Katakombs Janky Joe https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11213 3) Emerson Costa posted in the Motorola 6847 group on Facebook about a Mine Sweeper port (called Campo Minado) written in BASIC for the CCE MC-1000 computer... a Z80 based machine that used the same video chip as the Coco 1/2, Dragon 32/64 and MC-10/Alice. It is done in 256x192x2 PMODE 4: https://www.facebook.com/groups/173737063356725/posts/1659108941486189/ Github link (note that the info.txt is in Portuguese, since this was written by Emerson in Brazil): https://github.com/ensjo/mc1000-software/blob/master/emerson/Campo%20minado/info.txt 4) The NMI channel on YouTube release a YouTube short showing Clowns and Balloons running on his Coco 3 with a CM-8 (Which unfortunately just shows black and white graphics with no artifacting https://youtube.com/shorts/Rm3Q7MIlKc8?si=3yUJJxA1jZq5vgLT 5) Jostive Fiverzer did a longplay game video of Dave Edson's Catch 'Em from Aardvark Software: https://youtu.be/WsE5m5o3UYA?si=R_lgkQhcWlYybJiC He also did one of Computerware's Shark Treasure by Greg Anderson: https://youtu.be/38CUyQu6el4?si=W6oOPTYTpqo2QHbR 6) Tim and AJ do their first Coco game in awhile that *isn't* Dungeons of Daggorath - Paul Shoemaker's new release, Lava Hero. AJ loves the game: https://youtu.be/62kx9ZsdyBo?si=bWcj4xHktY1tWEbA 7) Guillaume Major announced that he has made a Coco port of Kings Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow (which was backported to the AGI engine to run on older PC's by Brandon Kouri... and that's the same engine that the Coco 3 versions of Sierra games use) available on the Color Computer Archive. He posted some screenshots on the Coco Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162095029932641/ The webpage for the original PC backport: https://kq6agi.com/ 8) The Amigos did their annual Thanks-For-Giving Marathon (8 hours of game playing on a variety of platforms), and a "Super Cut" version (thanks Aaron!) sans game loading times and general banter (although the latter *is* one of the reasons to watch and listen to the Amigos!) cut down to just over 5 hours is now up on their YouTube channel. The Coco is represented early on with One on One, Dino Wars and Demon Attack (although their Dino Wars seems corrupt - there is no way normally to kill your opponent with just one bite): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoY7cU3LCCE&t=2320s (If you want to see the full 8 hour version with banter and loading/switching systems - check out their Twitch page) 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/