The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 395, January 11, 2025

Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

NOTE: This covers two weeks since we had our holiday break. So Dec. 21 to
Jan. 4

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:

“Tandy Showcase” (Ed on the TRS-80 Discord, and the person who hosts
the history of Videotex on the web), posted that there is a Winter Retro
Computing Meetup on Saturday, January 18th from noon to 4 PM, sponsored by
DFW Retro Computing & the Vintage Computing Collective of North Texas. It
takes place at Bingo Bingo in Grand Prairie (and there will be a concession
stand open). Quote from Ed:
“The Winter Event for the DFW Retro Computing Group has been announced (Sat Jan 18); here’s their event listing. “Anyone in/near the Dallas-Fort Worth area is encouraged to attend the free event.
The Winter Retro Computing Meetup of 2025 will be on Saturday, January 18th. Brought to you by the DFW Retro Computing Meetup group and the Vintage Computing Collective of North Texas. Sponsored by Mouser Electronics who has, for the second year, graciously donated to cover the cost for the venue rental. The meetup will begin at 12:00pm and end at 4:00pm and is taking place at Bingo Bingo in Grand Prairie who will also have their concession stand open so please bring cash and support them for allowing us to use their venue. We encourage you to bring something for show and tell. It could be a new addition to your collection or a favorite system you’ve showcased before. Don’t be shy we love seeing the unique treasures our community has to offer. And if you’re not quite ready to exhibit, no worries–just bring yourself and your passion for retro computing. As on prior meetups, you are welcome to bring your items for swap, sale, or giveaway. However, you must ensure that all items are removed from the venue at the end of the meetup. We cannot leave behind boxes of donation items. You are welcome to bring your family. If you bring young children, please keep an eye on them. When parking, please be careful to observe the parking lot markings, and only park in marked parking spaces. Last time, some people parked in areas intended for parking lot navigation, which can cause issues with parking lot traffic and fire/first responder access. We look forward to seeing all of you there!“
https://www.meetup.com/DFW-Retrocomputing/events/305135267/

Virtual Coco/Tandy Fest is January 25, 2025, and now has it’s own website
site up: Mark Overholser is the driving force for it, and can give updates
on speakers, etc.
https://tandyretroshow.com/

VCF-SoCal – Feb 15-16 (Hotel Fera in Orange, California.
https://www.vcfsocal.com/

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

Bookings for tables will be going up in January.
https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/
Tables go on sale January 1 at noon, Central standard time.

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.

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/
There were some issues with people getting the room discount for Tandy
Assembly, so a direct link to the Tandy Assembly discount page is available:
https://www.marriott.com/event-reservations/reservation-link.mi?guestreslink2=true&id=1736272541233&key=GRP&fbclid=IwY2xjawHuW9JleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHRD9cHXLrz9m2RLsPGX_Xm-h-vUdAv8vvjVcv-4h8YBQOtvU5qwd2eqQ2g_aem_FQ2XTnEEbx8JK0elPC48xg

Tim Lindner let me know that next 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)

0) First, to go over a few of the stories from last week:
Vintnerd / Brian Cox talking about the various Fujinet’s and where each
platform is, development wise, including the Coco:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XcsSznKbTs&t=4725s

Some of the Coco Crew’s discussion topics from the latest episode 99 –
maybe we pick one to discuss amongst ourselves?:
They first had a few “quick” topics:

Should the Turbo9 project be upgraded in the future to support the
6309? (obviously yes)
CocoFest North? (in Canada – they joke about annexing Canada first –
it should be the other way around). But yes, we should. I am not the one
to organize it, though.

Longer topics:

MegaminiMPI – any software support for the OPL 3 chip? (there are
some players for it – both DECB (by Ed Snider) and NitrOS9 (by Todd
Wallace). R. Allen Murphy is planning on supporting it (and other sound
cards) in his game port of Nostromo)
legacy of Steve Bjork – John thinks that the “beautification” of Steve
might be holding the community back. His original Coco 3 hype on launch
vs. what he was able to program gamewise.
(my comment if this topic is picked – unlike modern hobbyists on the Coco
who have been pushing the boundaries… he had deadlines to meet which we
don’t, especially since it was how he made his living and he got bonuses
for getting them done early)

1) Henry of The Break Key posted another episode on his YouTube channel,
going back to his Forth project. This time around, he is fixing long-standing
bugs, adding signed arithmetic and adding some “quality of life” features
as well:
https://youtu.be/88wEoOfvtyM?si=T9D6d69-TcUr913Y

2) TRS-80 Retro Programing put up another video update to his Tales of
Suburbia game project, showing an update to the inventory system and
changes to his new map screen:
https://youtu.be/koUVIQQFq0I?si=F6P3nKuqz66W41dz

3) La Coco Strangiato (alias Bob Emery on our Coco Nation panel) released
a video on how to make your own splash screens for the SDC Explorer
program. The SG4 editor he modified (the original was by Bob van der Poel)
is available on the Coco Discord if you want to try it:
https://youtu.be/1QNxATCaL6o?si=mdIS3v2Ed_WthENr

4) D. Bruce Moore and David Kroeker put up an new post about their MP3 player
project for the Coco. Since they have the basic functionality working now,
they discuss going to PCB’s and what kind of case should be made (live
recorded at the Manitoba Computer and Gaming meetup I attended last week):
https://coco.gracenote.ca/design-meeting-pcb-case/
(The above link also has a link the YouTube video)

5) “seat safety switch” on Discord posted a blog entry about making his
own mechanical keyboard for his Coco 1, including multiple revisions and
experimentation:
https://www.leadedsolder.com/2025/01/07/coco-mechanical-keyboard-build.html

6) Simon Jonassen is working on a higher semigraphics machine language
demo for the Coco 1/2, and posted an update:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162221526642641/

7) Carlitto Camacho posted a link to a copy of the long out of print book
“The OS-9 Guru”, which is a reference manual about the inner workings of
OS9/68000 version 2.4. This is the OS used by the MM/1, TC-70, and System
IV/V machines that were trying to be the “Coco 4” in the early 1990’s:
http://www.icdia.co.uk/books_os9/os9guru/index.html
He also put up a link to the source for “Collapse OS”, which labelled as
a “bootstrap post-collapse technology” for the Coco 1/2. This is a cross
platform OS of some sort… even after reading it’s history, I still don’t
know exactly what it does. Just that it uses Forth (I think), from it’s
docs on sourcehut:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162225604312641/
Does anyone else know more about this? The last updates to the Coco 2
version seem to be from summer of 2023.

8) John Whitworth of DragonPlus Electronics posted that he has another
batch of SuperSprite boards sent to James Dexter to professionally fit the
SMD components. This will be the last batch to support a “real” V9958 chip
(they are no longer made, I believe). If he does another run in the future,
it will be using an FPGA version of that chip:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/277387053720893/posts/969649581161300/

9) Some photos from the Manitoba Retro Computing and Gaming Club meetup
last weekend:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/mbretro/posts/1829500417800309/

10) David Collins posted a shot of an ASCII Mandelbrot he ran on his 6309
based SBC via a terminal program he had hooked up to it. It took less than
30 seconds to generate:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3559026627724027/

11) The Glenside Color Computer Club had their monthly meeting this past
week, and it was recorded for those who want to catch up on the club
(some talk about the Tandy Fest and CocoFest – including how expensive
the dinner has gotten):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/glensideccc/posts/10162538552771163/

MC-10

Dragon 32/64

1) zephyr in the World of Dragon forums has released a utility to auto-run
BASIC programs on the Dragon, that is compatible with both cassette and
DragonDOS systems, for the Dragon 32/64. This latest version does NOT
require 64K RAM (and copying ROM’s to RAM) to work:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11223
He also released an inverse video patch that works with the above CLOAD
patch, but this patch requires 64K (either a Dragon 64 or a Dragon 32
upgraded to 64K):
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11222

2) This should be resolved by now, but last week the DragonPlus Electronics
website was being moved to a new server and was taking longer than expected
to propogate the new domain address (something I went through a couple of
months ago myself). It does seem to be fully up as of my
trying it yesterday:
https://dragonpluselectronics.com/

3) bluearcus (and updated by Zephyr (Steve Evans) posted a copy of the
DragonPlus cartridge version of Edit+. The disk version has been around for
awhile, but the cartridge version has not. The 2.0.1 modified version works
with real Dragon 32/64’s and should now also work with all Dragon emulators:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11224

4) bluearcus also uploaded a utility to copy autostarting cartridge programs
(when you have a multi-pak) to the CocoSDC or other DragonDOS compatible
disk systems:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=11221

5) Richard Harding (archivist for all things Dragon) posted a photo of some
of the later Dragon games that were very much “DYI”, and mentions that he
wasn’t impressed with them at the time, but that they have grown on him
(and the author/designer of one of them actually posted in the comments!):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3911388469120793/

6) Julian Brown posted an update to the Dragon Facebook group to his Dragon
Revision 3/X4 update. He has been off the project for a couple of months,
trying to fix an Archimedes 3010), but will be getting back to it soon,
and working on the plug in cards for various core chips, running 6309’s
at 3+ MHz, etc. He has some more technical details also in the comments:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3913368785589428/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

1) Jim Jewett posted a video of a version of Missile Command that he wrote
in BASIC to the Coco Facebook group (note: he has overclocked his emulator
to get the play speed up):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162217282572641/
He also posted screenshots of a couple of other arcade style games he was
attempting in Extended BASIC around the same time: Battle Zone and Star Wars
(no video, but he does mention that they were slowed by running in BASIC):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162220795507641/
He also uploaded the DSK image of his Battle Zone in BASIC to the Coco
Facebook group. It is quite slow, but ambitious (note: the Coco 1/2 or
Coco 3 speed-up POKE’s are not enabled in the program, so doing that helps
a little bit):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162225705912641/

2) Paul Shoemaker is taking another stab at porting the Apple II version
of Oregon Trail to the Coco (with the new knowledge he has acquired about
assembly language programming on the Coco since his last attempt), and
posted a video to the Coco Discord to show where he is currently at:
(show local file “Oregon_Trail_update_2025-01-06_18-41-22.mp4”)

3) Jim Gerrie ported “Schatzoeken” (“Treasure Cave” in English) to the
MC-10. This game was originally from the ZX-81 , but author and date are
unknown (except that it was in Dutch). Jim translated the Dutch to English
and also fixes a bug in the movement routine, and added difficulty levels:
https://youtu.be/1ToF4vhlrv8?si=PgvYmpPz8a7bFnMg
(I will note the YouTube description includes a link to archive.org’s
original Dutch/ZX-81 listing as well)

4) Inufuto’s latest mega-crossplatform game Mieyen has seen versions
released since almost two weeks ago, and this past week the MC-10 version
was released (January 8):
(#39 on the list):
http://inufuto.web.fc2.com/8bit/mieyen/
…. and just under the wire (uploaded yesterday evening) is the Coco 1/2
and Coco 3 versions.

5) non_maskable_interrupt on YouTube did brief play of Pooyan on his Coco 3 –
but the colors look a little odd (even with an RBB vs. Composite color set):
https://youtube.com/shorts/CcCZQ15ye4w?si=088PpWfdTtOYUaWm

6) Ultra Gamer81 put out a couple of long gameplay videos this past week,
including:
BC Bill:
https://youtu.be/cD2DaAyD1xc?si=oRh2x5O1gMdEnBbE
Time Bandit:
https://youtu.be/6hTCD4OrBgM?si=qn1rC0q7Pi6die78

7) TGP High Score Runs also did another Dragon 32 gameplay video this week,
this time covering Cuthbert in Space:
https://youtu.be/7ugfTatIhSw?si=rrMZvLQAG91VntaU

8) YouTube channel xyzzy31 put up a long play game video of Franklin
in Wonderland, a text adventure (with some SG4 graphics) by Salamander
Software, which is the 4th adventure game in the Dan Diamond, private
investigator series:
https://youtu.be/8rTDe2Da8nc?si=lNRU0tzgMUjye_Il

9) YouTube channel DJC Game Studios did Coco 1 and Coco 2 unboxing video,
and even remembers playing Dungeons of Daggorath as a kid:
https://youtu.be/EqyGTe9O5DI?si=j5vf90Bd82IjoigV

10) Polish YouTube channel Gregok1973 released a video showing 3-D Breakaway
by Britt Monk (later sold as 3D-Breakthru from Avalon Hill).
https://youtu.be/U7ImbuQ6ghM?si=qXQpbilEPX1Vl4xD

11) Speaking of Inufuto games – Aaron of the Amigos did his Friday night
Disaster stream featuring Inufuto games, playing a variety of those games,
on a variety of platforms (including the Coco 1/2, Coco 3 and MC-10):
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2349865115

12) Chronologically Gaming, continuing with released in November of 1982,
tried the Dragon 32 game Chateau of Gold by GEN Software, which has
some things pretty advanced for text adventures at the time – including
automapping, menu driven commands, etc.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hBWerWDmts&t=1010s

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