[Coco] Hi! I'm new here!

[Richard E. Crislip]

On Sun, 01 Mar 2015 19:42:29 -0500
Hugo Dufort <hugo at seshat.ca> wrote:

> Hi! I am new in this group, so let me introduce myself, and explain
> how I got interested in the Coco community and what I expect to find
> here.
> 
> My name is Hugo and I'm 41 years old. I live in the southeastern
> corner of Quebec, Canada.
> 
> My parents gave me my first computer, a Coco2 with 64kb memory and a 
> tape recorder, when I was in 4th grade (10 years old). I started
> playing games and learning Basic programming quite fast. I would say
> I was motivated and perhaps talented. I learned to read binary and
> hex numbers, and I also learned how to peek/poke in memory. However
> the possibilities were limited (I had no printer and an old black &
> white TV) and I've lost many Basic programs due to IO Errors and
> cassette mismanagement. I spent afternoons playing Wilcatting, Sea
> Dragon or Zaxxon. Still, I had discovered how to bring up the
> semigraphic modes, and programmed a few nice games in these modes. I
> also discovered a pixels pattern that made the pain() function
> overflow, so I wrote my own better paint() function for pmode4.
> 
> Things changed when the Coco3 was launched. I kept bugging my parents 
> till they bought me one. Then I pushed until they bought a dual
> diskette unit, a DMP-105 printer, and the better (white) Joystick. I
> also received many nice programs such as CocoMax 3 and a banner
> printing application. I started learning how to better program with
> the Coco3. I wrote a few useful applications:
> - A program for reading bitmaps from disk, writing them on screen, 
> dithering and adjusting colors, and printing.
> - A basic word processor, which I used to write many homeworks and 
> personal files. It worked just fine, had adjustable margins, and even 
> printed accented characters properly.
> - An utility that physically read disk sectors and tried various
> cypher values to decode adventure game texts.
> - A few nice games, which I exchanged for commercial game diskettes
> at the local computer club (!)
> 
> I remember I was able to poke my way around the hi-res graphics
> modes, using a reference page I had photocopied. I also remember
> mastering the paging functions in the MMU. Go figure.
> 
> Sadly, when I decided to move to the PC world in 1993, my parents
> asked me to sell the Coco3 and all the accessories.
> 
> Later, when I was at the university in 1996, I visited a friend at my 
> old college and learned that they were selling old computer stuff. I
> was shocked/delighted to find that they were selling a fully equipped
> Coco3 with 512k, IO prototype boards, joysticks, quad diskette drive,
> EDTASM+ cartridge with all docs, OS9 Level 2 disks, etc. for 60$. I
> wasn't rich at the time but managed to find enough money to buy the
> whole cardboard box. Since I was studying in Computer Science, I
> started messing around in EDTASM+ and for the first time in my life,
> programming some actual assembler. OS9 really baffled me -- I never
> imagined the Coco3 could use such a sophisticated system. At the time
> I was doing lots of programming at the university on Unix text
> terminals, and it was nowhere as easy to use as OS9.
> 
> I didn't have enough space in my university room for both my PC and
> my Coco3 so I left the latter at my parents' house. At some point,
> since I was almost never home, my mother decided to redecorate my old
> room, took many cardboard boxes full of "wires, old books, parts and
> junk", and simply dumped them on the roadside for someone to take it.
> So this is how I've lost my second Coco3.
> 
> I like a good challenge but I don't have much experience in low-level 
> coding. For instance, back in the 1990s, I've programmed a 3D 
> labyrinth/adventure game in Turbo Pascal on my 386dx computer. It
> used paged memory to access a full 2 mb, dynamic loading of textures, 
> precompiled textures with transparency for faster display, my own 
> 320x200x256 fast library, and a simple scripting language.
> 
> I havent programmed in assembler or on "challenging" processors since 
> 2001 (I programmed a simple Flash memory management driver for an 
> embedded 8088 system at work), and I have "officially" stopped 
> programming in 2007, but I am still interested in computers. Since I 
> have installed VCC and lots of DSK images, I have rediscovered many 
> games on the Coco3, and I've even configured my OS9 Level 2 shell. It 
> works just fine, though it seems that some of the Coco3 games using
> some graphical functions are running slow in the emulator.
> 
> Obviously I don't have access to any Coco-related hardware, but I use 
> emulators. I would like to program a demo and a game using either 
> assembler, or a combination of Basic and my own assembler
> subroutines. However I am totally lost right now. Reading the
> documentation, I can't even figure out how to initialize the high-res
> graphics. I would like to first test the functionalities in Basic
> (init graphics using pokes/peeks, vertical/horizontal scrolling,
> memory copy, etc.)
> 
> Right now I'm trying to figure out the high-res graphics using memory 
> addresses FF90 to FF9F. I also want to understand how to set & move
> the graphic port adress in memory (MMU banks?) I'd go with 256x200x16
> and try the scrolling pokes. By the way, is anyone using the 320x225
> or 256x225 modes? Are they useful? Thanks.
> 
> Hugo
> 
> 
> 
> ---
> L'absence de virus dans ce courrier électronique a été vérifiée par
> le logiciel antivirus Avast. http://www.avast.com
> 

Welcome to the club! 8-). Join us at the 24th Last CoCoFEST near
Chicago this coming April if you can. This event is put on by the
Glenside Color Computer Club, look us up on Google.