[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 400, February 15, 2025

[R. Allen Murphey]

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 400, February 15, 2025
===============================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

Special Guests today:
---------------------
Hopefully some people from VCF-SoCal including Wayne Campbell


Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
------------------------------------------------------------
The Interim Computer Festival is happening at Intraspace in Seattle
Washington from March 21-23. This is the Pacific Northwest Show that is
hoping to get back to VCF status in the near future:
  https://sdf.org/icf/

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/

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. There is now a promo video
for it:
  https://youtu.be/4KRVVRHlj6g

VCF-Midwest (the largest retro show in North America, I believe) is September
13-14 at the Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumberg, Illinois. This year
is the 20th anniversary of this show, and there is a lot of collaboration
between CocoFest and VCF-MW, so expect a large number of Coco and Glenside
people at the show! Still free admission, and hotel booking is open already.
  https://www.vcfmw.org/

That same weekend, Retro World Expo will be held September 12-14 at the
Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford, Connecticut. Tickets and vendor
applications aren't quite ready yet but will be soon. This is a gaming
oriented retro show (including tournaments) but also includes things
like wrestling:
  https://retroworldexpo.com/

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/

This 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 released Lesson 15, part d of his Coco 3 assembly
language series, this being the 4th installment about palette
automation/animation. Source code can be gotten without having to type it
in on his channel in the Coco Discord:
  https://youtu.be/pbP7A4CGycM?si=-ezplKXUQfXhgneZ

2) Allen Huffman wrote a blog post about an old maze game he wrote for
his Coco BBS back in the day:
  https://subethasoftware.com/2025/02/10/maze-bas-for-the-coco/

3) CocoTown takes a stab at running NitrOS9/EOU in MAME, and has released
part 1 of a 2 part series:
  https://youtu.be/sOruke8vf9k?si=zereFnvJ4cIo3EGn

4) David Collins has an update to his 6809 based single board computer -
documentation on how to customize it's MiniMOS for different UART serial
chips, and for beeb6809 - which is a 6809 based version of BBC BASIC IV:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3583989668561056/
github for the project:
  https://github.com/lindoran/beeb6809

5) I just stumbled on Michael Martin's Bumbershoot Software page/blog,
where he summarized what he had accomplished in 2024. One thing he was
working on is ML coding for the Dragon/Coco. The 1st entry (from February
10, 2024) that links to rest of the series starts here:
  https://bumbershootsoft.wordpress.com/2024/02/10/the-year-of-the-dragon/

6) The Anechoic Chamber, an original music channel from Canada on YouTube,
put up a demo of the Zyklop free resynthesizer program. Why is this on
the Coco Nation? From his description, the source audio that is getting
transformed is from a Coco voice synthesizer (the Sound Speech Pack by
the sounds of it), and he is using it on his upcoming Zulu Matrix album:
  https://youtu.be/JltdGgRVE68?si=dskjEWU4GDWVhOoU


MC-10
-----
1)


Dragon 32/64
------------
1) Julian Brown posted several updates this week on his Dragon 32 updated
motherboard sets, including revision 3 Multi-Composite video board:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3938881126371527/

2) Steve Evans (Zephyr) has posted a number of utilities to the Dragon
forums at worldofdragon.org:
Paged directory listing utility - works with a variety of DragonDOS ROM's,
including upgraded ones that we have mentioned that past few weeks:
  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11242
He also made a paged directory listing utility for the rival DOSPlus 4.9B:
  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11244
And a utility to disable any connected DOS or FIRQ auto-starting cartridge
for the Coco:
  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11246
He updated his CLOAD Auto-Run utility to version 2.0. This version can
load into low or high RAM, and is compatible with both DragonDOS 1.0 and
DOSPlus 4.9B.
Dragon version:
  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11223
He made a Coco version as well:
  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11249


Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Jim Gerrie ported a game we showed Chronologically Gaming playing last
week on the Coco (Conveyor Belt by Andrew Pakerski and published by T&D),
within a day, to the MC-10 (and from ML to BASIC). He also crammed it into
10 lines and it is now an entry for the BASIC 10-Liner contest:
  https://youtu.be/NSUxVOFTYmY?si=zzlzb_Ygoop9o0Ts
He also released the MC-10 version of WhoDunit, originally by Dave Vinnedge
for the August 1983 issue of Color Computer Magazine. Kind of a combination
of text adventure and the Clue board game. This game was a runner-up for the
Game Programming Contest that Color Computer Magazine held; if I remember,
Bugs was the grand prize winner:
  https://youtu.be/C8qxyU7MPx8?si=9MrEvHNnugXB3wYv

2) David Mitchell also did a 10 line game - called Lightning Dodge -
as his entry using the Dragon 32:
  https://youtu.be/ICMKXoMmvBA?si=tn0x4jn3lW2JeDHk
Github with source:
 
https://github.com/daftspaniel/RetroCornerRedux/tree/main/Dragon/Originals/LightningDodge

3) Jim Jewett put a video of a game in progress that he is working on based
on Missile command, onto the Coco group on Facebook. It doesn't look like
the collision detection is working perfectly yet, but I like the fact that
the incoming missiles curve somewhat:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162277978282641/
He also uploaded a DSK image that contains a Poker game that he worked on
in the 1980's, but never finished:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162285814027641/

4) Chronologically Gaming covered some more Coco games released in November
1982 this week:
Aardvark's Golf:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaEXG7seUC0&t=35s
Lothar's Magic Staff:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSQWkFn6ro8&t=428s
Monkey Kong:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSQWkFn6ro8&t=1153s
I should also mention - there will be multiple Coco games on Monday's
episode of Chronologically Gaming.

5) YouTube channel 'daffys2142' did a 7 minute video showing video clips
of a variety of Coco 1/2/Dragon 32/64 games (I think with a Dragon emulator
since all of the artifacting games show up as black and white), but a good
mixture (Mute, it has background music and not sound from the games). At
the end is one Coco 3 game:
  https://youtu.be/6o7_VzA18RE?si=Y0ohdpwCyBrjPqyT

6) Buzzsaw Gaming on YouTube did an 11 minute video showing the 512K Coco
3 game The Contras - running on real hardware:
  https://youtu.be/BClBK2vo8hw?si=t2NDEbzAvVNX3IT7

7) V.E.D. (Videogame Endings Database) on YouTube released a quick video
of Warrior King, one of Sundogs very first Coco 3 games. But rather than
showing beginning of the game gameply, he shows the very end of gameplay,
including the win screen, which I have never seen before:
  https://youtu.be/6U-83ikEpfo?si=PyU0rKcp3KVUAZcq

8) Tim & AJ tackle Nick Marentes' 6309 Coco 3 game Gunstar on this week's
Sibling Rivalry show:
  https://youtu.be/wfkCRbCRHpc?si=XJZVH3r5bWtAwb0u


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

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-- 
R. Allen Murphey <exile at weylan-yutani.com>
Weylan-Yutani Corporation
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