Special Guests today:

None.

Interview schedule:

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:

Both the Indy Classic Computer & Gaming Expo in Indianapolis & VCF-East
in New Jersey are happening right now this weekend. Hopefully we can get
some live reports!

CocoFest: May 4-5, 2024 in Carol Stream, Illinois (near Chicago)
Holiday Inn & Suites
https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/
Table bookings (the main hall is completely taken up now, and 5 of the
extra overflow tables have now been sold):
https://www.tandylist.com/

The Festival of Portable Computing: May 18-19, 2024
Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England
This show is dedicated to portable computers. With Frank Swygert, Taylor
& Amy, and now portacoco.com, we actually have portable Coco’s and
MC-10’s… we should qualify for this show, right? 🙂
https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72231/The-Festival-of-Portable-Computing-18th-19th-May-2024/

BoatFest 3: June 14-16, 2024
Social Event Space
Hurricane, WV
https://www.ticketsource.us/boatfest2024/boatfest-retro-computer-expo-2024/e-raedpb

VCF SouthWest: June 14-16, 2024 (same weekend as BoatFest)
Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at University of Texas – Dallas
Dallas, Texas
https://www.vcfsw.org/
UPDATES:
Also this year they are doing “Shows within the Show”, and one of those
is a Tandy Assembly meetup, which includes a separate hall for just Tandy
machines. The main hall is already sold out for tables, and as of March 6,
only 2 of 21 tables in the Tandy hall were still available:
(scroll down on the main page)
Jeff Wires (the host of Chronologically Gaming) and Boisy Pitre are both
speakers this year.
Speakers list:
https://www.vcfsw.org/speakers

VCF-West looks to be happening August 2-3 (Fri-Sat) at the Computer History
Museum in Mountain View, California. This year they are a full partner with
the museum, so that admission for both the museum and VCF can be done with
one purchase, and the are taking people booking to be speakers/presenters
now as well.
CHM (Computer History Museum)
1401 N. Shoreline Blvd.
Mountain View, CA
https://vcfed.org/2024/03/14/vcf-west/

VCF-Midwest has finally announced their new, larger venue for this year
(#19) – the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg,
IL. Sept 7-8, 2024 (Sept 6 evening (Friday) is reserved for vendors, et.c
to set up). Unfortunately, their original block of rooms already sold out
in 3 hours after they announced yesterday. VCF is working with the hotel
to get more, but that won’t happen until Monday)
https://vcfmw.org/

Tandy Assembly for 2024 has been announced for Sep 27-29, 2024. UPDATE:
THEY HAVE STARTED POSTING EXHIBITORS ON THEIR WEBSITE
Courtyard by Marriott Springfield
Springfield, Ohio
http://www.tandyassembly.com/

Retro Computer Festival 2024: November 9-10, 2024
Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England
In the early stages of planning for this year, this is (I believe) the
largest general retro computing show in the UK (it’s their VCF style show),
covering all retro machines. I am not sure if it 1 or 2 days; the header &
ordering part of the site says November 9th only, but just below that it
says November 9-10.
https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72253/Retro-Computer-Festival-2024-Saturday-9th-November/

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

1) Thomas Cherryhomes has been making rapid progress on the Fujinet
capabilities for the Coco 1/2 – after the Mastodon client last week,
he also put up a a video showing the ISS (International Space Station)
tracker. This one runs in the 128x192x4 color graphics mode:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XGEPfu1arQg
He has also released a short intro video showing off Fujinet on the Coco:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/2144589165904127
And a YouTube short showing the NETCAT dumb terminal program connecting
to a BBS over the net:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NjqIwa6XLLk

2) CocoTown, after a series on getting background sound & music working
smoothly on a Coco 1/2, is back to finishing off his Moon Patrol style
game that he started writing as a teenager. In this episode he works on
using VSYNC to time drawing and double buffering, and optimizing routines
for speed rather than ease of programming:
https://youtu.be/TtoTSr1Up_M?si=5b_YtddIbK-upbkY

3) Glenside had their last meeting before CocoFest this past week. I only
caught a few minutes of it, does anyone on the panel know what was all
discussed, how much has effect on CocoFest, etc.?
https://www.youtube.com/live/HN-9l9ID34k?si=itdek2m4BUsIeG60

4) Allen Huffman release a video called Coco: The Musical. This features
AI generated music and vocals, with the lyrics supplied by Allen, I believe:
https://youtu.be/A5LI7NzaFKI?si=8Taoh61uYYNesF_R
While not specifically Coco related, Allen also posted a blog entry about
some of the TRS-80 Model 1 source code by Steve Bjork from before he got
onto the Coco, including some programs that we have mentioned in previous
episodes:
https://subethasoftware.com/2024/04/09/steve-bjork-trs-80-model-1-source-code/

5) Roger Taylor has added a Deluxe Color Computer option to the MiSTer
FPGA system, similar to what Tim Lindner did for MAME, and wrote a blog
post on his Patreon about it (along with a 1 minute video demo – note the
AY sound near the end is really quiet):
https://www.patreon.com/posts/real-glimpse-at-101654782
If you wish to help support Roger’s work on a variety of projects for the
Coco, including his scanning and backing up disks from Steve Bjork’s estate
sale, please consider supporting him on his Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/rogertaylor

6) As promised, Brazilian YouTube channel Tropical Retro has published
there history/rundown of the CP-400 translated into English:
https://youtu.be/v7uo8jmuARM?si=6rTK3OPI95sUy63O

MC-10

1) Jim Gerrie has started translating the French Alice series of programs
called “Ecology: Cycle of Life” to English and the MC-10. The first 4K entry
is done, and called “Bio”. This is very early software from Infogrames,
which became famous for a variety of modern games, I believe.
https://youtu.be/Idgyr1FpzOI?si=2owo_aTWYF92zH9Q
He finished all the 4K programs into one or “Ecologie/Cycle de Vie”:
https://youtu.be/kwgexaXJV3E?si=Of3in4jri9UtJ-rP
Jim also posted a link to a french page that shows the original Alice
version with screenshots as well as pictures of the manual cover page,
original cassettes, etc.:
http://alice32.free.fr/programmes/ecologie/index.html

Dragon 32/64

1) Userlandia on YouTube posted a video of exploring British Computer
museums from an American’s perspective, starting with Cambridge’s Centre
for Computing History, which even has mentions of the Dragon, and This
Week in Retro’s Cave (the Retro Collective):
https://youtu.be/3sz4L_h_6I4?si=SkFf4q829cSABiL7

2) Polish YouTube channel Tromasz Ogarnia did a video inspecting & replacing
capacitors on a Dragon 32, and tries some games as well. Unfortunately
one thing it doesn’t do is allow translation into english :
https://youtu.be/_ztKCaurOZ0?si=eRw-PArMglUdJFvi

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

1) Tropical Retro (portugese site from Brazil) that we showed last week
put up a 2 minute gameplay video showing the Portugese translated version
of Polaris, on a CP-400 cartridge:
https://youtu.be/W8jH7gwwyVE?si=YxlPHn7BkY-loN17

2) Russian site DFU has released their next blog post on Star Wars
based/inspired games, now switching over to the Apple II. But Sergei took
my suggestion of Project Nebula (a Star Raiders clone but with tie fighters
and the player controlling X-Wing style guns to give it a Star Wars flavour)
and covered that first to help close the Coco segment out:
English translation (note: Video links do NOT work, will ned to go to the
Russian site for that):
https://dtf-ru.translate.goog/retro/2611989-igry-po-star-wars-s-drevnih-vremen-do-nashih-dnei-chast-53-apple-ii?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp#comments

3) Pere Serrat has released AGD games pack #63 for both the Coco and
Dragon, which has 6 games (Pere notes that 3 were programmed by students
from Bearsden P6 (I believe that is grade 6?):
BOD Run
Bubble Bobble 2023
Devil Run
Invasion of Japan
Roasty
SHMUPKIT
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11166

4) Paul Shoemaker has his Coco 1/2/3 port of Fire Playtest VII (originally
by Erico Monteiro) out as of this morning, and available on his itch.io
page. Requires 64K:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161254428697641/
video of game play on Coco 3:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161248921592641/
itch.io download page, including screenshots of the Coco 1/2 version as well:
https://pshoemaker70.itch.io/fire-playtest-vii

5) Speaking of Erico, he released an animated GIF showing his low res Coco
graphics “The Savage Sword of COCON”:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161253723987641/

6) The Laird’s Lair on YouTube did a comparison video of Lady Bug (official
and clones) between the MSX, BBC Micro, Dragon 32 and Philips P2000. Like
his previous comparison videos, he isolates sound between each platform. On
the the Dragon he goes through the 3 graphics modes too (green, buff &
black/white):
https://youtu.be/pyQJSbG7t8c?si=VE6m05y-LUfcB5VK

7) XperTek, the spanish speaking site that has covered Coco games on his
amber monitor in the past, covers Cashman this round:
https://youtu.be/3cHIVUpfZ0E?si=VtVqjXLXRsu91lim

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