[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 396, January 18, 2025
R. Allen Murphey
exile at weylan-yutani.com
Sun Jan 19 09:44:07 EST 2025
The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 396, January 18, 2025
==============================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
Special Guests today:
---------------------
Bob Emery live from the retro meetup in Texas
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/
The next Manitoba Retro Computer & Gaming club meetup is at the Fort Rouge
Leisure Center in Winnipeg, Manitoba on April 12. This is the same one I
attended last weekend, along with D. Bruce Moore and David Kroeker. This
next one is more themed around the Commodore 128, but I expect a wide
variety of machines like they had this past one, which was TRS-80 themed
https://www.facebook.com/groups/mbretro/posts/1830196931063991/
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/
BoatFest will be July 11-13 in Hurricane, WV.
Tandy Assembly for 2025 dates have been announced - it will be Sept 26 to Sep
28 at the Courtyard by Marriott Springfield Downtown in Springfield, Ohio:
https://www.tandyassembly.com/
There were some issues with people getting the room discount for Tandy
Assembly, so a direct link to the Tandy Assembly discount page is available:
https://www.marriott.com/event-reservations/reservation-link.mi?guestreslink2=true&id=1736272541233&key=GRP&fbclid=IwY2xjawHuW9JleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHRD9cHXLrz9m2RLsPGX_Xm-h-vUdAv8vvjVcv-4h8YBQOtvU5qwd2eqQ2g_aem_FQ2XTnEEbx8JK0elPC48xg
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) George Janssen returns with to his assembly language programming for
the Coco 3 series with Lesson 14, part 3, "Using 248K of 512K". In it he
loads 4 different 2 color pictures, and then draws stripes of them onto
the viewable high res screen with different colors, and drawing them in
different "sweeps" (note that these have time delays so you can see the
sweep; it can run much faster):
https://youtu.be/gqOh8bnJPn8?si=alKM2Q25jxMBfukL
He also added a short part 3A addendum (he referenced something in part
3 that he didn't get to before the end of the video):
https://youtu.be/0GRipyLIy98?si=efl992ifwLqMWmRF
To start at the graphics demo itself:
https://youtu.be/gqOh8bnJPn8?si=hWOqp5CptHakh939&t=506
He also uploaded the source onto the Coco Discord to save one typing
(see Programming & Development -> assembly-with-georgej)
2) Bob Emery released a video showing his updates to Nick Marentes' BASIC
Coco 3 sprite editor:
https://youtu.be/BmRkDY0vDdU?si=SJtqRBF4ORuGL35X
3) D. Bruce Moore put up a quick blog post on his thoughts on the legacy of
Steve Bjork in the Coco community, providing his own answer to a question
brought up on the Coco Crew podcast 2024 episode:
https://coco.gracenote.ca/steve-bjorks-influence-still-advancing-the-coco-community/
4) ugBASIC has had numerous updates over the past few weeks, and the latest
changes to the main branch include some 6809 specific ones including
fixing the DRAW program, string to number conversion, and "discruptive
optimization rule". It also fixes the WAIT FIRE command for the Dragons &
Coco's, as well as other multi-platform bug fixes.
https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/main
5) Henry of The Break Key Youtube channel (and hey, a regular on our
show!) released a video showing his progress on making a USB -> Coco
keyboard adapter:
https://youtu.be/HPn5Yd4ht-I?si=S2yhXEhdI0X7wM4P
6) Simon Jonassen released the source code to his Tandy Assembly demo
(including utilities for for image / music conversion) on the World of
Dragon forums:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5637
He also uploaded the source to his fire plasma demo, to the Coco Facebook
group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162231074002641/
He also released a video update to his semigraphics plasma demo (this uses
the extra orange/red colors the original 6847 VDG):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162227714107641/
7) The Lunduke Journal channel on YouTube did an hour long interview with
Thomas Cherryhomes about the Fujinet, including the project's history and
where it is now. He goes into the technical details about how it works
more than I have seen in previous interviews:
https://youtu.be/MNoqaYgF51g?si=27HxbmOzlGXoD4Qy
8) Retro What If posted a question on the Coco Facebook group - would the
Coco have sold much better if it had sold in stores other than Radio Shack
(they did do this to a limited extent with the TDP-100). It sparked a
large discussion:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162234681457641/
9) Juan Castro posted on the Coco Facebook group that he has a patched
version of HDBDOS, that uses a 16K ROM - and this is for the Coco 1/2 only
(by comparision, the standard Disk BASIC ROM is <7K). He has a zip file
that contains multiple builds to support a variety of hardware (including
Drivewire, Arduinos, the Becker port, IDE controllers, the Cloud9 & Kenton
SCSI interfaces, and more.
Some of the features of these ROM's are:
- Coco 3 BASIC tokens recognized, for LISTing
- graphical text displays with 51 or 64 columns by 24 lines
- LOCATE command
- BUTTON command that supports 2 button joysticks if you do a hardware
mod on your Coco 1/2
- DIR patched to handle new screen widths
- 32 bit TIMER option (TIMERL)
- Commands to copy BASIC ROM's to RAM on 64K machines
- built in USR8 call for graphics text mode support
- Drivewire printer support
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162230325177641/
10) I don't normally mention items for sale, but a massively hacked
cartridge (with both MUSIC and AUDIO SPECTRUM ANALYZER labels on it) also
has a switch and much wiring, and some text written on it. Anybody have
a clue what this would do?
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162237971442641/
MC-10
-----
1) See game news
Dragon 32/64
------------
1) Iain Lee - a TV host, retro enthusiast, podcaster, etc. from the UK
has fired up his Random Access Memories podcast again, and his first guest
on the new shows is none other than Aaron of the Amigos. And a surprise -
what got him back into retro was his memories of his first home computer -
the Dragon 32:
https://youtu.be/gSPDTW4qYc8?si=6cavM5Ft6rxOTAxY
2) Lee Perkins posted a large chart from Personal Computer magazine
in 1984, that compared a variety of machines (including the Dragon 32)
Microsoft BASIC implementations, and showed which machines supported which
commands. Unfortunately it doesn't cover Extended BASIC, so no graphics
commands, PRINT USING, etc.:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162237055847641/
3) Julian Brown has an update on his FPGA breakout board concept, including
a picture of his current design - he is currently shooting for 65x65 mm
with 480 poins:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3916526091940364/
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Jim Gerrie release "End-Game", originally written by John P. White for
the MZ-80 and published in the December 1981 issue of Your Computer magazine,
for the MC-10. This is an simple AI for playing end game scenarios in Chess
(the author was a prominent chess player & author):
https://youtu.be/PJXeszKVa_Q?si=ZzEBBTD494mIHYJy
He also released "Chateau Gaillard", originally written by Tim Hartnell in
1983 for his book "Creating Adventure Games on Your Computer". Jim also
merged what was originally 2 programs together into one to make running
it simpler:
https://youtu.be/8qWHLI3AgJQ?si=PjJ9EzWOCx9UHnzq
He also ported the game Treasure House (originally written by C.J. Davison
and published in the January 1982 issue of Your Computer magazine)
for the MZ-80 computer. It was converted to the Dragon 32 by P. Allen
of Gem Software in November of 1982 (and renamed Chateau of Gold), and
Jim's graphical layout is based on that version (and we just talked about
the Dragon version last weekend since the Chronologically Gaming channel
covered it that week). Jim did a few bug fixes as well (some related to
differences in how RND worked between the MZ-80 and the Dragon 32):
https://youtu.be/2FhEAEXwXjk?si=QDdRb9FmxsXug2Cn
He also did a blog post about it:
https://jimgerrie.blogspot.com/2025/01/treasure-house-aka-chateau-of-gold-by.html
2) The Wargaming Scribe returns to a Coco / Ark Royal game for review,
this time covering Company Commander, written by Ark Royal owner Phil Killer:
https://zeitgame.net/archives/16603
3) Don Barber shared a video on YouTube showing a USB controller that he
is using directly from his Coco 3, and shows that he has USB drives and
the USB keyboard both working (and he figures the mouse shouldn't be too
hard to add later, either):
https://youtu.be/BSZMqUnaXe4?si=L6iPAAFQTvjjLOBh
4) I missed this back around Christmas when it was posted, but Renga
In Blue, a website blog that goes through the history of text/graphics
adventure games in roughly chronological order, posted about the Rainbow
adventure writing contest, and Jorge Mir's articles in the June & August
1982 issues of Rainbow showing how to program one (I used his ADVMAKER to
make my Ring Quest game, with some enhancements that I added):
https://bluerenga.blog/2024/12/23/rainbow-adventure-1982/
5) The World of Dragon forum postd that Salvador Cantero has released
a new Tetris game for the Dragon and Coco that runs in text mode, and C
sourcecode is also available. It's called 'DragonTet' (written in CMOC),
requires 16K, allows 1 or 2 players, and supports both keyboard and joystick
controls. It appears to be cassette only on github:
Both Coco and Dragon version are available, in both .cas and .wav formats.
https://github.com/salvakantero/DragonTet (show 'dtet_promo.png' which
is full color artwork for the cassette)
6) Markyd68 uploaded the .CAS file for Droidwar for the Dragon 32/64 -
a 2 player only Semigraphics-24 game from Personal Computer News issue
#28. A version converted to the Coco is already on my site, but this is
the native Dragon version for those who don't have it on their Dragon's
already. Written in machine lanugage:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11226
My game page entry with screenshots:
http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/droidwar.html
7) Ultra Gamer81 put up an almost 10 minute gameplay video featuring
Panic button on his YouTube channel - a game sold independently at first
by First Star Software, and then licensed to Tandy and sold on cartridge:
https://youtu.be/mYBjVlUjiks?si=alukN81O1vC5cV2z
8) Non-Maskable Interrupt posted a YouTube short video showing gameplay of
Ron Delvaux's favorite game on the Coco - Defense by Spectral Associates
(unfortunately without an RGB patch applied, so it shows up B&W on his CM-8):
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7f3KYYax0fk
9) JuxtaCrucem posted a rather interesting game video (partially) on
their YouTube channel... labelled as "Vintage Computer Games have the best
drummers!", he plays electric guitar along with sounds from Computerware's
Mr. Dig on the Coco:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2891sacSvv8
10) TJ Ferreira, in his usual low-key way, posted a full review of
T.H.E.M. for the MC-10 (note - some language during actual game play):
https://youtu.be/xbew-enMgSo?si=rVHwdVK8-OFQUFgc
11) Jim Jewett put up a video of his Spacewar game (that he wrote back around
1982). It is based on an old Compuserve game (MegaWars, I think?) and has
both text and graphics elements:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162235553472641/
He also released a download of his Cave game from around 1981:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162226900387641/
Screenshot:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162226792267641/
==============================================================================
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Get connected with more of the CoCo, Dragon and MC-10 community here:
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--
R. Allen Murphey <exile at weylan-yutani.com>
Weylan-Yutani Corporation
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