The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 333, October 7, 2023

Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

The interview with Doug Masten (author of The Contras) with co-interviewee
Glen Dahlgren of Sundogs Systems that was originally going to happen
on August 19 is being postponed, due to a fairly major surgery. We are
shooting for around October/November depending on doctor’s orders.

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:

Dragon MeetUP 2023 : NOTE: THE LOCATION OF THIS HAS MOVED DOWN THE ROAD
TO THE CAMBRIDGE MUSEUM OF TECHNOLOGY,
RATHER THAN THE CENTRE OF COMPUTING HISTORY:
https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/71156/Dragon-Meetup-7th-8th-October-2023/
(They were doing roof repairs but they fell behind schedule and won’t be
fixed in time for the meet up).
OCT 07-08, 2023
https://www.facebook.com/events/225011523831254

Retrospace47 (Duisburg, Germany)
This retro event just happened today (sorry I missed listing it earlier),
and was hoped to have had Dragon’s on display as well:
https://www.space47.ruhr/doku.php?id=event-20231007-retrospace47

Portland Retro Gaming Expo: Portland, Oregon U.S.A.
OCT 15-18, 2023
https://www.retrogamingexpo.com/

Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)

1) Unfortunately the new venue for the Dragon meetup shut down a couple
of hours ago so we can’t get any live coverage. Thankfully Ciaran Anscomb
managed to take some photos and a couple of short videos from the show
that we can share:
(I have a folder on my desktop with the photos and clips)

2) Rocky Hill on YouTube (Pedro Pana) released a video just under the wire
for SepTandy last Saturday evening, showing transferring files from one
Coco to the other via the cassette port using a cable and audio amplifier:
https://youtu.be/zRwh_XXR4UU?si=6CFdj1O57n32ps51

3) Ron Klein announced a few updates to get if you have a CocoPi:
New XRoar 1.4.2846 (WIP) available (lots of graphic option tweaks, some
bug fixes, screenshot capture option, etc.):
https://coco-pi.com/new-xroar-1-4-2846-wip-snap-package-available-for-coco-pi/
64 bit Coco Pi update (Ron is getting close to the actual release. The 64
bit version will ONLY run on Raspberry Pi’s 3,4 and 400. He doesn’t have
a Pi 5 yet to test/build for):
https://coco-pi.com/coco-pi-project-update-2023-10-01/
ugBasic updates to the latest Beta which features preliminary Coco 3 support:
https://coco-pi.com/new-updates-for-ugbasic-now-available-for-coco-pi-including-latest-beta-version/

4) CocoTown has released his 2nd “Game Revolutions” video – the 2nd in
his new series where he takes the Moon Patrol clone that he started as a
teenager, and improves/adds to it. This 2nd episode is about double-buffering
to smooth out the graphics scrolling, RLE compression, etc.:
https://youtu.be/Ce7SGSE-mtk?si=mZJ9d3oO8ZmvH8_y

5) TRS-80 Retro Programming posted another update to Coco Ultimate –
updating healthbars in realtime and a spell menu update:
https://youtu.be/P5KIJ2gIquw?si=iNa4dwqRnuPmk-LR

6) YARC (Yet Another Retro Channel – Todd Horch) posted a late SepTandy video
(it was record in mid-September, but he didn’t have time to edit/upload it
until this week). This covers him doing Coco 2 upgrades including adding
Bluetooth for cassette program loading, and starting on replacing the RF
modulator with a composite out:
https://youtu.be/TdXG1AhJiVQ?si=WIXuShyEmusvwRa6

7) Chad Doeblin put up a SepTandy video last weekend showing his
installation of a 512k RAM upgrade on the Coco 3 – based on a kit from
Evietron / Backbit. He didn’t remove the 2 capacitors most upgrades do,
which was mentioned (and answered by Evie herself) in the comments:
“The capacitors extend the RAS and CAS signals. In the original design,
if the trailing edge of CAS occurs too early, the bus transceiver window
ends, and written data doesn’t reach the RAM chip. My design latches data
at a timed interval from the leading edge of the write pulse, so the CAS
timing doesn’t affect writes.”
https://youtu.be/K2P3hFPLD-E?si=2d_o94XmpsDc_nTY

8) Mr. Dave 6309 posted a demo video and a screenshot of some BASIC
sourcecode where he has created a new HSPRITE command (replacing HCIRCLE)
to do software sprites:
(saved in Discord so I had to save them locally on my desktop to show
them on the show).

MC-10

Dragon 32/64

1) Jackb01 on the World of Dragon forums showed how he used and modified
a Commodore 64 Power Supply to work on his Dragon 64:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=11129

2) Also on the Dragon archive is a downloadable zip file that was
created from the Home Computer Museum in Helmond (Netherlands) from a
large collection of disks they have. This includes stuff for DragonDOS,
OS9 and FLEX, including:

64 and 80 column text mode support driver from Eurohard (the Spanish
company that took over the Dragon after Dragon Data failed)
Cobol, Xmodem and various games for FLEX
and a lot of stuff (including Coco conversions) for DragonDOS
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11125

3) There was a retro show in Malaga (I believe hat is in Spain) called
“Amstrad Eterno” (the 8th one), but they also had Spectrum’s and Dragons:
https://youtu.be/oJwwRQUcKOc?si=AZksdmNa2AtZL-1g&t=85

4) Julian Brown this past week ordered up some boards to be fabricated of
his first updated Dragon motherboard, which has some (but not all) of the
upgrades he is planning: support for Bigger eproms, 256K of paged memory,
and internal cartridge/expansion port and discrete video circuits:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3560275477565429/
A little later he also posted a question up on the Dragon Facebook group. His
first question for possibly buyers of the future upgrade board is: How
many audio channels is enough? Post your answers (multiple answers already)
for that and which possible sound chips should be integrated onto the new
board design:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3560602840866026/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

1) Jim Gerrie ported the game Dragon Lord (originally by Dennis Mellican)
that was published in Australian Coco magazine back in the 1980’s to the
MC-10, but also enhanced it by adding a dragon graphic and various speedups,
and fixed a bug when backspacing on the high score screen. This is a game
that Brian Palmer just recently uploaded to the Coco Facebook group after
typing it in himself on the Coco:
https://youtu.be/viu9xfeMy7I?si=juNPiovaLB-Ezu49
He also is part of a double-bill project – he ported Nick Marentes 4K
challenge program from some years back to the MC-10, a low res version
of Space Invaders with some clever tricks Nick used to speed it up (but
without ML routines):
https://youtu.be/VsDH0Nj4kAo?si=KYZ0e-Ga0Av6xiP0

2) Paul Shoemaker is working on his next Coco 1/2 game project – a side
scroller port of Cafundo Studio’s Fire Playtest VII. The current video
that Paul has released is low resolution, but features parallax scrolling
of background layers in 4 colors:
https://youtu.be/pHLreoilDnc?si=o2aDC6nLndm1dRDT
And the original that inspired it, by Erico Monteiro (also active in our
Coco community):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9gctzQTpZY&t=2s
itch.io link for Erico’s original:
https://ericomont.itch.io/ptvii
Paul also uploaded a video of his previous game “Camel” – his animated ML
game based on the classic type in BASIC game of the 1970’s:
https://youtu.be/REZcVPkVvnY?si=ZfC5FLAj85HSBJo9

3) A Youtube channel new to me called “CrossGenGameplay” did a video showing
the rare “Invasion” game written by David Crandall (of Doodle Bug fame)
that was originally published through Creative Computing magazine’s software
division. This is a Space Invaders derivative, but with two simultaneous
human players. Played on real hardware:
https://youtu.be/FgO4NIErG8E?si=IsIntXgQ_ESCEqaE
(I should mention he also released several other Coco game play videos –
Pegasus, Warehouse Mutants, Germ Warfare and Dungeons of Daggorath)

4) Nostalgicvault on YouTube also released a couple of Coco gameplay videos:
Megabug:
https://youtu.be/rnue0SG5huo?si=-mlkS_3qFDR_AWzz
Goose Eggs (from the book The Color Computer Playground in 1984) (He labels
it as Coco 3- but it was written at least 2 years before the Coco 3 came
out and definitely doesn’t required one):
https://youtu.be/Z3yMGpo6cUo?si=yZmtd49BNCObY_S0

5) Erico Monteiro, inspired by Nick Marentes and Richard Kelly’s effort
with the BASIC PONG game they went back and forth on, has started a new
BASIC low res game, loosely based on “Frogs and Flies” from the Atari 2600.
Initial post/screenshot:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160936643427641/
Go through the comments – animated GIF’s how actual game play later on.

6) Chronologically Gaming covered some more Coco games from July of 1982:
3D Ghost Mania (a rarer one)
Astro Blast (Mark Data Products)
https://www.youtube.com/live/L7q8HuWC4kE?si=VC3x3Do9vLqKrZPG

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Get connected with more of the CoCo, Dragon and MC-10 community here:
https://thecoconation.com/community/

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