[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 376, August 24, 2024

Sun Aug 25 08:18:46 EDT 2024

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 376, August 24, 2024
===================================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

Special Guests today:
---------------------
  Some sad news: Nancy Hawks, wife of Chris Hawks of Hawksoft and a regular
  attendee of Rainbowfest's & CocoFest's in Chicago since the 1980's,
  passed away this past week. There are two services planned:
  Memorial Service on Sunday, August 25 at 2 pm
  Trinity Presbyterian Church
  145 Hannings Lane
  Martin, TN

Much later will be a second service:
  First Presbyterian Church
  240 Standish Street
  Elgin, IL

  Chris is a software and hardware developer for the Coco since it's early
  years, as well as a past vice-president of the Glenside Color Computer
  Club. He did The Wizards's Tomb game for Skyline Software way back
  in 1982/1983, and then other Coco software and hardware including the
  Coco 3 game Domination, customizable dos MYDOS, Icon BASIC09, Keyboard
  extenders for Coco 2 and 3, Dual hi-res joystick adaptor (both Tandy
  Hi-res and Coco Max III compatible), and more.

 None

Interview schedule:
--------------------
 None

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
------------------------------------------------------------
VCF-Midwest has moved (slightly) again to the 50,000 square foot "Convention
North" space (they sold out of table space with the original "Exploration
Hall" area which was 33,000 square feet at the Renaissance Schaumburg
Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL. Sept 7-8, 2024 (Sept 6 evening (Friday)
is reserved for vendors, etc to set up). They have added multiple hotels
which people can book into, as the original sold out quickly.
  https://vcfmw.org/

The same weekend as VCF-Midwest is VCF Europa. This is the VCF for Europe,
held at the Multi-purpose hall of ESV Munich East in Munich, Germany
(and one should know that the talks will be in German) September 7-8,
2024. There are 1 and 2 passes for both individuals and families.
  http://vcfe.org/E/

The World of Retro Computing 2024 is September 14-15 in Kitchener, Ontario,
Canada (west of Toronto). This year it is located in the old Goudies
Department Store, 8 Queen Street North. Free admission, and this covers all
kinds of retro computers. Some people in the Coco community are planning on
going, and Stacy Vetzal from the Coco Facebook group is planning on having
a booth. We are hoping to have 4 guests on next week to talk about the show:
  https://worldofretrocomputing.com/2024-worc-expo

Tandy Assembly for 2024 has been announced for Sep 27-29, 2024. An update
from Pete on August 9 - they have now sold out of tables for the show! And
another announcement - Steve Leininger, the designer of the TRS-80, is
the keynote speaker!
  http://www.tandyassembly.com/speakers.html
Courtyard by Marriott Springfield
Springfield, Ohio
  http://www.tandyassembly.com/

Also that weekend is the Amigos next live ICC (International Computer
Club), which will be at 4 PM EST on September 28. This is for all retro
computers & gaming consoles. It streams live on their Twitch channel and
YouTube channels)

The Dragon Meetup is 100% official now: October 12-13, 2024 at the Museum
of Technology in Cambridge, England:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3776261519300156/

Retro Computer Festival 2024: November 9-10, 2024
Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England
In the early stages of planning for this year, this is (I believe) 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.
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:

https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72253/Retro-Computer-Festival-2024-Saturday-9th-November/

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.

Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
1) VCC 2.1.9.0 has now been released. One big change as of this version
is that it has switched to being hosted in Visual Studio 2022 rather than
an older version; this means the main branch version will no longer run
under Windows XP (although currently EJ is maintaining a legacy branch as
well). Other updates affect the debugger, the user guide, the configuration
menu is now dropdown menu items (vs the old tabbed dialog), and adding a swap
joysticks configuration item (a great feature that XRoar has had for awhile):
  https://github.com/VCCE/VCC/releases/tag/vcc-2.1.9.0-release

2) CocoTown has released episode 19 of his Moon Patrol clone development
series on YouTube - now he is adding rocks to the lunar landscape. This
episode even contains a Twisted Sister song cover:
  https://youtu.be/ryHjvfcppJ8?si=LH_GlKLZugWaK4gQ

3) Wayne Campbell has been recording live coding sessions for his BASIC09
Sokoban1, where he is working on adding all of the other variant levels:
  https://youtu.be/VuLWMYmEHy4?si=qMnVMTSkBNSSvWRh
  https://youtu.be/kcTTn_DaabM?si=k3tBkAr5ZHuC_56z
And he reports a bug when launching a really big RUNB program from
Shellplus - it doesn't seem to work without typing RUNB first (Which I
will be looking into when I get time):
  https://youtu.be/V0hDAIUINT4?si=Anry55f-v0PLOK2B

4) Tandy Assembly did a little spotlight on Neil Blanchard on their Facebook
page, highlighting his Gamester joysticks and his Atari joystick adaptor:

https://www.facebook.com/tandyassembly/posts/pfbid0EuAb56DgpjbFWbnb5wiQVjvTcaRWcSAGvfdKmqfo7su1DHKbnaNaE2wk4DSy6D5Fl

5) Glen Hewlett posted an update on his BASIC compiler - he is fixing
some bugs with multi-dimensional arrays, and he is also going to have 2
versions of RND - his original 8 bit version, and a newly added 16 bit
version (as we have mentioned before, most everything will be BYTE or
INTEGER to greatly speed up BASIC, when floating point is not needed.

6) Henry of The Break Key fame (and famous panelist on our show) released
his next Forth on ROM project, now working on string handling:
  https://youtu.be/kd_EnxNetqg?si=ixAuO3F4RpThDeTl

7) David Collins posted an update to the Facebook 68xx/63xx Assembly
language group on Facebook to his 6309 single board computer. He is slowly
eliminating bugs on it:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3445568779069813/
And a general update from earlier in the week:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3443140882645936/

8) Glenside is now accepting nominations for the next election for Secretary,
Treasurer, Vice-President and President. Details on Glenside's site:
  https://www.glensideccc.com/glenside-leadership-nominations/

MC-10
-----
1)

Dragon 32/64
------------
1) Richard Harding has made scans of the Dragon 64 Supplement manual
(and the Finnish Dragon 64 Supplement manual) available. These manuals
show what is different on the Dragon 64 BASIC vs. the Dragon 32:
  http://dragondata.co.uk/Publications/BASIC-MAN/DD_D64_Supplement.pdf
Finnish:

http://dragondata.co.uk/Publications/BASIC-MAN/FINLUX_D64_LIITE_Supplement.pdf

2) Julian Brown has some new boards in to work on - a "simple block adapter
that to use 4164's in a mark 2 Dragon 32 without butchering the main board
or the chips themselves":
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3785183471741294/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Jim Gerrie release an MC-10 version of "Chase" that originally appeared in
the Creative Computing book "More BASIC Computer Games" by David Ahl. Side
note: this was on of two games that inspired the programmers of the arcade
game Robotron:2084 (the other being Berzerk):
  https://youtu.be/-PaGqCWvoVI?si=6LvLbIpm5Q-k0tQL
He also converted over "Orbit" from Creative Computing's book BASIC Computer
Games, originally by Jeff Lederer in 1978:
  https://youtu.be/LiLrQEtVGuA?si=_CM0ejd1vascKZ6O
He also back ported the C64 version of the 1982 Aardvark text adventure
Derelict to the MC-10 and the Coco. There was an official Coco version
released way back in August 1982, but none of us have been able to find the
original, so this is the next best thing (spoiler alert: it is a *Complete*
walkthrough):
  https://youtu.be/vBK8DK2IN-s?si=_EGicUjRLqVJFP1R

2) TRS-80 Retro Programing released a video update for his Ghost Saga
Extended BASIC game. He is working on getting it to work from disk in the
TRS80GP emulator... which only supports DMK format at this point, so we
will need to make a DSK version as well so that it works on all emulators
and on a CocoSDC. But he has been learning how the Coco disk system works
(never having had one back in the day):
  https://youtu.be/ptN7W9_BPi8?si=uP_8hWz8P0RUwHqX

3) Randy Poffo on YouTube did a one minute video of Donkey King gameplay:
  https://youtu.be/Fa-l2_sN8cs?si=r95xzfhd4K3g1dnM

4) Inufuto has released their newest game, Osotos, for the MC-10 (on August
18) and the Coco 1/2 & 3 versions (August 23). It's kind of a Pengo meets
Space Panic style game:
  http://inufuto.web.fc2.com/8bit/osotos/
MC-10 gameplay video:
  https://youtu.be/64zmqIcM06M?si=9WQwm1qzMZyVmV56
Coco 1/2 gameplay video:
  https://youtu.be/W037xmpLXwM?si=LOdyIcYa-ajNeJpT
Coco 3 gameplay video:
  https://youtu.be/RCNAOcj0pog?si=4yIlPWR3qZ--Tvhz
Brief general instructions:
  You clear the level when you collect all the stars.
  Defeat monsters by hitting them with blocks.
  Stack blocks to get through areas that were previously impossible to cross.
  Disappeared blocks will reappear in their original place.

5) Speaking of Inufuto games, Nostalgivault on YouTube playing some on
the Coco this past week as well:
AntiAir Coco 1/2:
  https://youtu.be/lhTBmdu-DyE?si=4QHFk3QjcWOw4_bj
AntiAir Coco 3:
  https://youtu.be/eDKWoIbhrFE?si=hRvJljy7tFJMQfhZ

6) David Mitchell showed a video of the 1 or 2 player adventure style
game "Lachlan!" by Magic Midnight on the Dragon 32. It has an interesting
(possibly unique?) fight mechanic - actually different ones depending on
your foe. He says that he saw an ad for this game in Dragon User magazine,
so he decided to try it:
  https://youtu.be/F54IK7ofqLI?si=aUkYv0qOTyOdIePI
He also put a video up for the previously unreleased game Rebellion,
originally written by Roy Coates & Chris Larkin back in the early 1980's
(Roy is the guy who ported Manic Miner and Jetset Willy to the Dragon
back in the day, amongst other program he wrote). The download for it is
in the Dragon Facebook group. They originally submitted it to Microdeal,
but it was rejected.
  https://youtu.be/NqtA-a0R1XM?si=WzUzri4F0eFU8N8S
.CAS file download for Dragon 32:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/3773004619625846/

7) Chronologically Gaming on YouTube showed he Berserk cartridge from
Dragon Data (Dragon conversion of the Mark Data Products one for the Coco
from a year earlier:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXvJys58vDk&t=687s&ab_channel=ChronologicallyGaming
He also covered T&D's Coco-Terrestrial & Intracolor's Colorpede for the
Coco on yesterdays show:
Coco-Terrestrial:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzdTmpEmshA&t=1153s
Colorpede:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzdTmpEmshA&t=1658s

==============================================================================

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