[Coco] Hi! I'm new here!

[Joe Grubbs]

Hi Hugo,

Your background sounds similar to mine. I'm 38 and got my first CoCo2 as a birthday present back in Dec 1984. I still have it and it works great--16K with ECB. The only non-original thing I've done to it is upgrade the memory to 64K. I intend to leave it alone otherwise, just for nostalgia sake. I have other CoCos that are/will get modded otherwise :)

This little computer taught me how to program in BASIC and assembly. I did all kinds of things with it, including (like you) writing a word processor that I actually used for school assignments and such. 

Today I am a software developer and even teach a class a few nights a week, and owe it all to my humble CoCo beginnings. 

Welcome to the group. I'm sure you'll love it here. I look forward to hearing about your projects!

-Joe



> Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2015 19:42:29 -0500
> From: hugo at seshat.ca
> To: Coco at maltedmedia.com
> Subject: [Coco] Hi! I'm new here!
> 
> 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
> 
> 
> 
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