[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 401, February 22, 2025
R. Allen Murphey
exile at weylan-yutani.com
Sun Feb 23 09:53:03 EST 2025
The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 401, February 22, 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) CocoTown returns with his first experience with NitrOS9 under MAME with
his part 2 video - where he goes inception running emulators under NitrOS9
running in the MAME emulator:
https://youtu.be/3EY2ptgH3jw?si=ucIokPWXjoFcY1o8
2) Voidstar did a blog review of his experience at VCF SoCal last weekend
(that we had live streaming from Wayne Campbell... thanks, Wayne!):
https://voidstar.blog/vcf-socal-2025/
3) Allen Huffman has been digging through some old disks and software for
the Coco, which has resulted in several Coco related blog posts on his
Sub-Etha Software website:
His 1992 Atlanta CocoFest graphic adventure style game:
https://subethasoftware.com/2025/02/17/sub-etha-graphical-adventures/
Talking about the &O octal number mode in Extended Color BASIC:
https://subethasoftware.com/2025/02/18/color-basic-and-octal/
Talking about a 3D maze graphics engine demo (that is included with
NitrOS9/EOU), but expanding on what he had planned for it (a Phantom Slayer
style game, a 3-D Pacman style game). He even hints that he *might* pick
this ball up again:
https://subethasoftware.com/2025/02/20/recreating-pac-man-in-1993/
He also posted on the Coco List about organizing his Coco disk files. This
is an ongoing project that he will make a blog post/tutorial about once
he has finished:
(show "Allen Huffman - Organizing Coco Disk files.pdf" from "Coco Nation"
folder on my desktop)
And finally - an equivalent to Rainbow Check+ that Rainbow magazine used for
typing in BASIC program listings, but for assembly language listings. Thanks
to a reader who pointed Allen to a Dragon User magazine article (November
1988 issue) that had this program (with a small typo in the listing):
https://subethasoftware.com/2025/02/21/dragon-user-magazine-and-typing-in-assembly/
4) Juan Castro posted a link to his dropbox available download for his
HDB-DOS version 16H on the Coco mailing list. This includes multiple releases
for different hardware (Arduino, Becker ports, SCSI, SDC, Disto SASI drives,
Drivewire 3, IDE, etc. It now supports all Coco 3 tokens being recognized
(though they won't run on a Coco 1/2, obviously), graphics text screens
in PMODE 4 for 51x24 and 64x24 screens, 2 button mouse support (requires
hardware mod on Coco 1/2), extended functionality in HPOINT (can return
CPU type (68/6309), whether running in all RAM mode, graphic mode text
cursor support, &B for binary number support, and a lot more.
(Show "Juan Castro-Coco My souped up BASIC HDBDOS16H now does B
constants.pdf" from "Coco Nation" folder on my desktop)
5) Antonio Cabellero recently acquired an X-Pad graphics tablet, and has been
playing around with it, including using a patched version of Coco Max II:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162298263657641/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162301129232641/
6) Erico Monteiro released an etch-a-sketch type program for testing
joysticks, which he used to test the CP-400 modern replacement joysticks
made by Mauricio Matte & Giovani Gualdi. Written the cross platform
compiler, ugBASIC:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162299614927641/
7) Carlitto Camacho has uploaded a compendium of Allen Huffman's Coco
optimizing blog series into a 70 page "book". He has uploaded it to the
Color Computer Archive (although I don't see it yet), but showed some
preview pages in the Coco group on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162292778022641/
8) Henry of The Break Key fame (and infamous as a regular panel member here
on The Coco Nation) did a video review of a local retro gaming gathering,
NECG (New England Classic Gaming):
https://youtu.be/8q03eZ-2kLQ?si=mOOmSfFU6OYfFbZv
9) George Jannsen has uploaded the DSK image for Lesson 15e of his Coco 3
assembly language programming series, but the video isn't up yet. He did
send me a small teaser video that shows some of the popup window stuff
that he will be talking about, however:
(Show "PopTest_Intro_Final (lesson 15e).mp4" from "Coco Nation" folder
on my desktop)
MC-10
-----
1) The Clueless Engineer on YouTube posted a Quick update on his Alice/MC-10
fixes and upgrades (amongst other computers):
https://youtu.be/BOSYe07yjPQ?si=W4hTVa8M2YpTcLzF
2) Paul Shoemaker posted some screenshots and a short video (with sound)
to the Coco Discord to show his progress on a high resolution graphical
version of the classic Star Trek on an MC-10. Because he made this for a
2 color mode, this allows him to use 128x192 pixels (rather than the more
commonly used 128x96x4), which looks quite good on the MC-10:
(Show 3 screen shots & 1 MP4 saved to "Coco Nation" folder on my desktop)
3) Robert Sieg rewrote his 64x32 24 bit BMP to SG8 converter (although
he posted in the MC-10 group - don't the higher SG modes require a SAM,
which an MC-10 don't have) and shows some early test results:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/9066797290113679/
He showed a picture from an updated version which should make the colors
much better/more accurate. The sample he shows is 6 screens combined,
from his description, so don't expect the pixel detail to be this good,
but the color accuracy looks much better:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/9077782292348512/
Dragon 32/64
------------
1) The Laird's Lair YouTube channel released an over 1/2 hour review video
of the Dragon 32:
https://youtu.be/8X3C3En8qto?si=4Tgbb5XRNUipYPkC
2) Julian Brown showed a revised draft of his updated Dragon 32 motherboard
(X4 prototype):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3944302125829427/
Also his FPGA board for the project:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3942593416000298/
3) Enfys on YouTube put up a brief video to test his Brickbeat routine
(166 bytes) on the Dragon 32, using SG4 graphics and background 6 bit DAC
sound with different volumes:
https://youtu.be/nuVnNyqOPls?si=uDbOx44A3YKw113R
This was part of the Lovebyte 2025 demoparty - The Oldschool 256 byte intro
competition (which means the demos must be <256 bytes, but can be BASIC,
ML, etc. I believe):
https://youtu.be/2uz8Pr0upSk?si=qeVmIOkK9veWuXxa
4) Stephen Woolham has uploaded a paged listing program for Dragon 32/64
to the World of Dragon forums:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11253
He also uploaded a utility for copying the 64K mode ROM from a Dragon
64/Tano Dragon/Dragon 200/Dragon 200E to save to cassette:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11251
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Jim Jewett has released his first public alpha/beta of his Missile
Command inspired game that we showed recently, on to the Coco Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162299489452641/
2) Jim Gerrie released his MC-10 port of Dodgem originally published by
Creative Computing magazine in it's March 1977 issue, written by Mac Oglesby:
https://youtu.be/KVT3xmSEzQM?si=kVSpp3HmpkGvkr8d
Just this morning he also released a port of "Bally's Alley" originally
by John Collins in 1980 for the Bally Astrocade that runs in 4K of RAM:
https://youtu.be/nZrZcj2XwiQ?si=O5NNreE7Go1PM5Hg
3) Marco Spedaletti, the creator of ugBASIC, has produced a new 10 line
BASIC programming contest game for the Coco 1/2/3 using ugBASIC, called
Beauty Contest:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162311903407641/
==============================================================================
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--
R. Allen Murphey <exile at weylan-yutani.com>
Weylan-Yutani Corporation
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