[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 405, March 22, 2025

[R. Allen Murphey]

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 405, March 22, 2025
===============================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle


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:
------------------------------------------------------------
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/

The same weekend, the Indy Classic Computer & Video Game Expo is going on April
12-13, 2025 at the Crowne Plaza Indianapolis-Airport Hotel in Indianapolis,
Indiana. This is the show that has Randy Kindig (of the Floppy Days podcast
fame, amongst others) as one of the organizers, who we interviewed on our show
some time ago. Entry is $5/person or $10/family
  https://indyclassic.org/
  
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. It
will be held at the Royal Military College outside of Montreal, but I don't
have any more details (the venue, for example) yet:
  https://vcfed.org/vcf-montreal/


Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
1) Coco Town returns with a detailed description on how he got the realtime
overlay showing the PMAP's of all active processes in NitrOS9 working in MAME,
that he showed on his previous episode:
  https://youtu.be/e-G-pIzkJpc?si=6ez_7u6KGuV4AfVH

2) TRS-80 Retro Programing posted a video of his further progress in his
Asteroids style game in BASIC, but hit a problem that he thinks is in the DRAW
statement of the explosion, when used to erase the original white version of
the explosion graphic with a black version.
  https://youtu.be/TtuVSFVjVno?si=HUDKfhT_pgYN-0iO

3) Eddie Malphrus has been collecting original documents for former Tandy
engineers (like Jerry Heep). One of the ones he got recently was the original
Bill of Materials for the original Coco 1. Some parts have price estimates,
others do not:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162393237842641/
He also has one for the TRS-80 Videotex data terminal, that came out a few
months before the Coco 1 (this particular copy was a revision done August 24,
1980). This also includes documentation "BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF VIDEOTEX
OPERATION":
 
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid02UDcitNDEk8BXFYTnxb3yfAhPata5JbTvnLWmCXr5cTSjv9yoAiVSA2Eiqq5sE4G9l&id=61570145349315

4) For those that missed it last week, the TRS-80 Trash Talk Live #42 was last
Saturday evening. And for those that caught the interview with George Philips
about his Coco game Blitz (and being the author of the TRS80GP emulator - both
he and his twin brother Peter (who also programmed for the TRS-80 and the Coco)
were on the show:
  https://www.youtube.com/live/bWArC3d0f9g?si=3aaLU_mGHGG8zpgz

5) Henry of The Break Key on YouTube (and panelist on The Coco Nation) released
a video about his getting Fujinet for the Coco working in a virtual machine in
MAME & XRoar, and both under Linux and Windows:
  https://youtu.be/jZf4gcYgAqw?si=llBMCKUO2PTffzHl

6) Juan Castro posted some more updates that he has done to Microsoft BASIC on
the Coco, including having hex and his new binary values extended to much large
numbers:
  (Show screenshot from Cocolist: "Coco Fun with tweaking BASIC continues
returning numbers.pdf"

7) Allen Huffman posted, as he called it, "A life changing letter" on his Sub-
Etha Software blog. This shows both his original letter and the response he
got, which got him his job at Microware in 1995 (the creators of OS-9):
  https://subethasoftware.com/2025/03/17/a-life-changing-letter/
He also posted both a diagram and a photo of what his computer room looked like
40 years ago, and what his booth banners at CocoFests looked like:
  https://subethasoftware.com/2025/03/10/my-early-90s-coco-room/


MC-10
-----
1) MC-10 News Coming Soon! 


Dragon 32/64
------------
1) Ciaran Anscomb posted on the World of Dragon forums about some further CPLD
programming that he has done based on his SAMx4 project... now the SAMx8. This
update includes a new webpage and manual for it. This allows a few things:
 - full double speed on a Dragon 64 (ie Coco 3 speeds)
 - support for 16k banked 512K of RAM (with a COMMON flag that fixes the top 8K
(including IRQ vectors)
 - Video RAM can be anywhweres in the 512K, on 32 byte boundaries (allowing
smooth scrolling)
The post:
  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=11264
The project webpage:
  https://www.6809.org.uk/dragon/samx8/
The manual:
  https://www.6809.org.uk/dragon/samx8/samx8.pdf

2) Julian Brown posted some more updates on his Dragon ATX board to the
Facebook Dragon group... here is the latest one (note: the matching CPU/memory
card is shown in the comments):
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3973662129560093/


Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) YouTube channel NMI (Non Maskable Interrupt) posted a few game play videos
form his real Coco 3 on the CM8 monitor:
Silpheed (showing the Coco 3 version - the cartridge also has a Coco 1/2
version):
  https://youtube.com/shorts/gOIowkmSRTo?si=mpxbKfNYV_ymweyH
Space Assault:
  https://youtube.com/shorts/xdhRqYRyi_I?si=i4GiOVr2x9kFBADh
He also released a YouTube short with Pegasus & the Phantom Riders - including
speech from the optional Sound/Speech Pack:
  https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5XapLOBMgb8

2) Buzzsaw Gaming on YouTube showed Robocop running on real Coco 3 with CM-8
monitor. He gets up to the 2nd level during his gameplay:
  https://youtu.be/GWLpgox-d2Y?si=ur-Rctf1wdmn4RZ-

3) Ellimist on YouTube appended to an earlier video where he showed speedruns
through the text adventure "Voodoo Castle" by Scott Adams/Adventure
International. He added the Coco and Exidy Sorcerer versions to his revised
video (he also joined our Coco Discord this week!):
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=helToVz9S0M&t=1812s
He also released his multi-platform speed run of another Adventure
International game, Pirate Adventure (link is to start of Coco run):
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kk_Hc6qiu0&t=5637s

4) RetroGamingLoft on YouTube put up a longplay video of Paul Burgin's
September 1991 port of Shanghai to the Dragon 64. This monochrome 256x192
version has quite good looking graphics, and even features different tile
layouts (playing 2 of them fully through), unlike the official Coco 3 version.
16:05 shows the end of the first level/start of 2nd. If Paul's name looks
familiar, it is because he also wrote the first Dragon emulator:
  https://youtu.be/8zw0sr6Kq2I?si=ENH9XqjDmMkDQmE9

5) Spanish YouTuber XperTek did 2 more Coco games playing on a real Coco 2 with
an amber monitor this past while, coming from his personal disk #5 collection:
Clowns & Balloons:
  https://youtu.be/PqAPNtaRk0I?si=GkEWO2Bfr6MtGlzn
Buzzard Bait:
  https://youtu.be/DwwNn0UZID4?si=k-8-jvukja8GIAa8

6) YouTuber ZXFrankie did a video playing Spectral Associate's Alcatraz II, a
BASIC game by Mike Hughey before he progressed to machine language classics
like Grabber and Draconian:
  https://youtu.be/8LptEZH_klA?si=lZ7gAVamjZH44b5M

7) Gentleman's Pixel Club on YouTube put up a 4.5 minute video tutorial on how
to get the Dragon 32 version of Jet Set Willy running on a MiSTer FPGA, from a
request from a viewer:
  https://youtu.be/swhxssx8p64?si=AF16TENC7ZbLebPk

8) Chronologically Gaming continues to work his way to the end of November
1982, and this week finished a couple more Coco games from this time period:
Tube Frenzy from Aardvark:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN2a4UkQhT4&t=454s
Tumblers (a type in from the November 1982 issue of Color Computer News - a
BASIC loader for an ML game by Andrew Pakerski, who also did multiple games for
both Chromasette & T&D Software magnazines:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN2a4UkQhT4&t=935s

9) Erico Monteiro has another 10 liner BASIC game to enter in the contest that
he showed in the Coco Discord. Here is an animated GIF of it in action:
  (show local file "erico monteiro 10-liner game.gif")

10) Pere Serrat has released two new AGD based packs:
AGD Pack #66, which contains 4 quite new games (2024,2025):
Enter the Prilel
Mr. Hair & Kitty Katakombs (Tiger version)
Lunar Patrol
Retro Robbins
  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11263
He also released NP pack #12 (AGD games converted for color and sound for the
SuperSprite FM+ board upgrade):
Dan Terrifik II
Funky Fungus Reloaded World 3
Kyd Cadet 3 V2.0
Sophia II Part 3
  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11265

11) Jim Jewettt couldn't help himself and did even more modifications to his
Extended Basic Spacewar game on the Coco Facebook group, adding 3 difficulties:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162401386367641/

12) Jeffrey Duncan posted photos and a video to the Coco Facebook group for the
educational game from Walt Disney, called Space Probe Math. This is one of the
multi-media games that Tandy sold for the Coco that had recorded voices, etc.
using the cassette port:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162392464337641/

13) The Mastertronic Collectors Archive did a review of Castle Adventure on the
Dragon 32, from Virgin Games and written by C. Jacobson:
 
https://mastertronic.co.uk/game-review-castle-adventure-dragon-32-virgin-games/

14) Tim & AJ return to the Coco (and Nick Marentes) with their play of Jumping
Joey in episode 172 of Sibling Rivalry:
  https://youtu.be/0_NAAXTg-jM?si=TIEfWlkmaKwr1yCu=


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

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