[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 404, March 15, 2025

Mon Mar 17 16:44:41 EDT 2025

Thank you for getting this out to all of us! :D

Sincerely,
David Ladd
***END OF LINE***

On Sun, Mar 16, 2025 at 10:13 PM R. Allen Murphey via Coco <
coco at maltedmedia.com> wrote:

> The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 404, March 15, 2025
> ===============================================================
> Collected by L. Curtis Boyle and presented by Mark Overholser
>
> Interview schedule:
> --------------------
> April 5th we will have a special about the RiBBS BBS system - this enabled
> Coco 3's to join Fidonet back in the 1990's. We will have it's original
> author Ron Bihler, the person who took it over from Ron - Charles "Chuck"
> West, and Marc Bosley who was one of the testers.
>
>
> 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/
>
> Retrofest 2025, organized by Tony Jewell, is a retro computer festival
> happening in Swindon, England May 31-June 1, 2025. Some Dragon people (like
> Richard Harding and Chris Poacher) have already committed to attending
> the show, being held at STEAM (the Great Western Railway museum):
> Retrofest website:
>   https://retrofest.uk/
> They even have a promo video:
>   https://youtu.be/UCZ-BtFW9Ok?si=B441wLvpDI2iekLN
>
> 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 (now International Retro Computer Expo) will be July 11-13 in
> Hurricane, WV. There is now a promo video for it:
>   https://www.ticketsource.us/ircexpo2025/t-eanjyje
>
> VCF-Midwest (the largest retro show in North America, I believe) is
> September
> 13-14 at the Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, 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/
>
> Canada is getting it's own official VCF - Montreal, January 25-26 of
> 2026. I don't see any more details (the venue, for example) yet:
>   https://vcfed.org/vcf-montreal/
>
>
> Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
> -------------------------------
> 1) I somehow missed that TRS-80 Retro Programing on YouTube released some
> videos last week, taking further his concept of doing Atari style graphics
> and gameplay from Extended BASIC:
> Asteroids clone-ship control & Code explanation part 1:
>   https://youtu.be/ObadtmKfVSo?si=914-ms89CN-B4LQ-
> Shooting the asteroid (really slowly) (no commentary):
>   https://youtu.be/2PlGd-S5WHk?si=6NrznpLtu2ChteCqs
>
> 2) Coco Town does a deep dive into NitrOS9's module memory management:
>   https://youtu.be/ELSqN9uLgyM?si=kS6tgrnQbgHjGp3j
>
> 3) Richard Goedeken started a project a few years ago to benchmark various
> BASIC's against each other on 8 bit machines (and some 16 and 32 bit as
> well). This is non-compiled, inteprative BASIC. The Coco 3 faired fairly
> well, with Microsoft Extended BASIC, and Richard ran benhmarks at .895,
> 1.78 and 2.86 Mhz (regular speed, double speed, and GIME-X speed). He
> recently ran it using Microware's BASIC09 under NitrOS9/EOU 1.0.1, which
> is 1.78 Mhz and justing using the 6809. He ran it both with everything in
> floating point (REAL in BASIC09), and then with INTEGER variables where
> possible. Even the floating point version ran faster than all other 8 bit
> machines (and even faster than several 16 bit machines, including the Apple
> IIGS ROM3 Applesoft BASIC at 2.8 MHz, the Atari 1040STe with Atari ST
> Basic,
> and the Mac Classic with Microsoft BASIC 3.0 in REAL mode - these last
> two are 8 MHz 16 bit machines!). Some further tests with 6309 optimized
> NitrOS9/BASIC09, and GIME-X speeds, may be forthcoming as well... but the
> Coco 3 is already very competitive with a well written BASIC designed for
> the 6809 architecture (and it's been out since 1980):
>
>
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Zlicfj__PcycbKEbfoiYRijUZh1dqujWPXgh6Um9YO4/edit?gid=0#gid=0
>
> 4) George Janssen has started his next lesson series for assembly language
> programming on the Coco 3, this time working on his pop-up windowing
> system:
> Part A (where he explains what his subroutine package does (and the fact
> that it is a TSR), how it came about, etc.):
>   https://youtu.be/02qg3BbffsU?si=kd9Yne5ceXrBZZWi
> Part B, where he gets into the code and explains how it works:
>   https://youtu.be/IDbUS4gp5YU?si=ucFrnS2GYyCYkWKn
>
> 5) Allen Huffman posted some photos of manuals, etc. that are from
> Microware's history (the people that did OS-9), all the way back to their
> RT/68 days before the 6809 existed:
>   https://www.facebook.com/groups/1929079184021683/posts/3881548492108066/
> Allen also emailed the current holder of the Radio Shack brand to find out
> what all they have control of... and he got a response, which he posted
> on the Coco Facebook group:
>   https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162377131177641/
>
> 6) Mauricio Matte has released a new version of his CP-400 "Brazilian
> Black Beauty" joystick. This version is slightly larger, has 4 buttons
> (I believe they all function as the single button on regular joysticks,
> but this allows the player to choose left/right handed and/or back/top
> buttons, whichever is more comfortable:
>   https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162385360657641/
>
> 7) Marco Spedaletti has announced the official release of ugBASIC 1.17.1,
> the cross platform, open source isomorphic BASIC compiler:
>   https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162368274897641/
>
> 8) Craig Ianello posted a video in Facebook's 6809/6309/6800 assembly
> language group from his "PugPuter" - a single board 6309 based computer
> he has been working on that also uses the V9957 video chip. This video
> shows scrolling graphics captured from his actual computer - no emulators
> here. It also redrawing every pixel every 8th frame, so no hardware
> scrolling registers:
>   https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3608790682747621/
>
>
> MC-10
> -----
> 1) Ron Klein posted an update blog post on his Coco-Pi Project, focusing
> on the MC-10 this time around. He mentions XRoar's support for the MC-10,
> and working with the MC-10 BASIC compiler (by Greg Dionne), which has
> resulted in Ron adding a new feature to compile MC-10 BASIC programs &
> launching them automatically in either XRoar or MAME. There is a bug in
> both with compiled programs (that works fine on real hardware); but as Ron
> mentions, Ciaran already has a test build of XRoar to fix the issue, and he
> is contacting Tim Lindner to get the same fixes done in MAME. (It should
> be noted the compiler only does regular MC-10 BASIC, not MCX-BASIC). One
> other thing Ron has added is ability to send programs from the CocoPi to
> a real MC-10 through the cassette cable:
>   https://coco-pi.com/197-2/
>
>
> Dragon 32/64
> ------------
> 1) Robcfg and William Athing have started a thread on the World of Dragon
> forums to talk about their Fujinet for Dragon project (which William was
> on our show last week to talk about):
>   https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=11259
>
> 2) Julian Brown posted some pictures of his updated Dragon ATX boards:
>   https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3966409033618736/
>
>
> Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
> ==========================================
> 1) Renga in Blue did part 3 of their gameplay review of the real
> time/partially randomized text adventure, Keys of the Wizard. This one
> covers playing at higher difficulty levels... and some bugs that were
> found:
>   https://bluerenga.blog/2025/03/08/keys-of-the-wizard-maximum-difficulty/
>
> 2) Jim Gerrie ported "Hex War", a 2 player strategy game that originally
> appeared in the July 1986 issue of Compute! magazine, written by Todd
> Heimarck for the IBM PC Jr. It has 5 variations of play to choose from:
>   https://youtu.be/-7kFR50kSmU?si=TBHYd1PCTwUkfbYu
>
> 3) The Retro Adventurers podcast released episode 18 this past week. The
> podcast is about classic text adventure games, and this episode covers
> (amongst other things) Calixto Island from Mark Data products (5:00 in),
> and they talk about the Dragon 32 as well with special guest Iain Lee:
>   https://retroadventurers.podbean.com/
>
> 4) Pere Serrat has released AGD games pack #65, which has 4 of the newest
> AGD engine games (from 2023-2024) for the Coco and Dragon. This package
> has:
> Ghostly Capers
> The Hairy Fly
> HedgeHogs 2
> Space Thunder DX
> Screenshots and download on the World of Dragon forums:
>   https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11260
> And for those with the Supersprite FM+ board, he has also released the NP11
> pack to use the enhanced hardware from that upgrade, and it includes 4
> games:
> Funky Fungus Reloaded World 2
> Kyd Cadet II
> Sophia II part 2
> Toofy in Fan Land:
>   https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11261
>
> 5) David Ladd let me know that there is a port of the classic Coco game
> Downland to the Atari 7800, and it is a free download.
> Video from John Hancock's YouTube channel:
>   https://youtu.be/nGnqrqU09Sk?si=i_v16HYJW26ITEiW
> Download:
>
> https://forums.atariage.com/topic/380295-downland-trs-80-color-computer-port/
>
> 6) Floyd Resler released some screenshots for his upcoming Gem Quest
> version
> 2.0. Adding more monsters, levels, onscreen help on the attract screen,
> and save/load games in progress are all new features:
>   https://www.facebook.com/groups/1929079184021683/posts/3880563682206547/
>
> 7) Jim Jewett has made another Spacewar update and has added a step by
> step guide for navigating the mission, and added a command to the game:
>   https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162381496932641/
>
> 8) For those who didn't catch it in the Game On Challenge Discord channel,
> but I patched Boris the Bold to work on 6309 machines as well as 6809.
>
> 9) The YouTube channel Classic Retro Games put up an almost 10 minute
> video about Dungeons of Daggorath:
>   https://youtu.be/uPjzjsWcI80?si=Q5XFf8_4ov8PMvdq
>
>
>
> ==============================================================================
>
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>
> --
> R. Allen Murphey <exile at weylan-yutani.com>
> Weylan-Yutani Corporation
>
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>