The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 330, September 16, 2023

Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

Before we get going, some sad news to pass on: Brian Joyce, fellow Cocoer
from Australia and whose website hosts Nick Marentes, passed away on
Wednesday, September 13. He also did the famous David Ladd movie trailer,
amongst other things. He will be missed by the whole Coco Nation.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160904338177641/

Today we have our interview with Mark P. & Charlie from Portacoco.com. If
you were at the Fest, you would have seen them at their booth showing Coco’s
(and monitors) running wirelessly together and off batteries that do NOT
require modifications to a Coco case to attach.
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:

Manitoba Retro Computer Enthusiasts: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
SEP 16, 2023 1 pm to 4 pm. At GameKnight Games, 519 Osborne Street
(Thanks David Kroeker!)

World of Retro Computing : Kitchener, Ontario Canada
SEP 16-17, 2023
https://www.worldofretrocomputing.com/2023-worc-expo

Tandy Assembly 2023: Springfield, Ohio U.S.A.
SEP29-OCT01, 2023
http://www.tandyassembly.com/
** REMINDER: TRS-80 Trash Talk Live episode #35 is next Saturday (September
23) at 5 PM Eastern, and it’s focus is Tandy Assembly, going through vendors,
seminars and more! Live on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/@TRS80TrashTalk

-=- The Interim Computer Festival -=- : Seattle, Washington U.S.A.
SEP30-OCT01, 2023
https://sdf.org/icf/

Dragon MeetUP 2023 : The Centre of Computing History, Cambridge, UK
OCT 07-08, 2023
https://www.facebook.com/events/225011523831254

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) Ron Klein posted some more updates for those with Coco Pi’s, namely
MCBASIC & TASM6801 (by Greg Dionne as part of his MC-10 BASIC compiler:
https://coco-pi.com/new-updates-for-mcbasic-and-tasm6801-now-available-for-coco-pi/
I think MCBASIC has added support for the LPRINT command. TASM6801 it says
“Fix(ed) header” – I have no idea what this means.

2) As mentioned last week when we reviewed TJBChris’ video showing his
Model 3/4’s using the Tandy Network Controller 2, Vintage Geek did one
as well with Coco’s. Between the two of them, it looks like they only
properly work with Coco 1 (or TDP-100) hardware, but not Coco 2’s or 3’s
due to some difference in the cassette port hardware. (Maybe it will work
with Dragons?). This is part 1, which shows the ability to send a simple
test program from the “host” Coco to the Coco’s on the Network 2, and from
a single networked Coco back to the host. A followup video with a “real”
program will be coming in part 2:
https://youtu.be/hWHTr5OVEQw?si=PwIyKFMJB2UJY7IR
And the follow up dropped this morning:
https://youtu.be/qakMWOM-7GY?si=8I_svW-8m2TCecoY

3) 8-Bit Retro Journal released their SepTandy video (they published a
short that we covered last week) showing a Coco 2 that he inherited from
his wife’s family. It currently doesn’t fire up properly – I think the RAM
is either worked it’s way out of it’s sockets (he hasn’t checked that yet)
or is bad:
https://youtu.be/Cf48nwb2Wys?si=Sgs5p9wMPtDB1suk

4) YARC (Todd Horch) on YouTube has put up part 2 of his Coco 2 restoration
and upgrades SepTandy video series. This part covers: Upgrading the CPU to
a 6309, upgrading the RAM from 16K to 64K, and testing the new video board
in addition to the RAM and ROM’s and the keyboard. Part 3 still upcoming!:
https://youtu.be/xNcEQFNXDqw?si=4nuGJiIkCBF4wWJ3
And part 3 (cleaning & retrobrighting):
https://youtu.be/A15jAcV4D3Y?si=eDg7bLFDmOlRf-oT

5) CocoTown released part 3 of his SepTandy video series on revisiting
his first attempt at a machine language game back when he was a teenager –
this time checking how his teenage self did scrolling:
https://youtu.be/tEASVDbcgTI?si=zdeQvGvQ1V3MDBN4
And part 4: reading the joystick, animating the car / rover, and firing
bullets:
https://youtu.be/codemzOziZs?si=s3Z4DSHgIaPFfEIG
And part 5: dealing with enemies:
https://youtu.be/6wPmoa-88K0?si=8ZKPN5wLDaZmW8Bx

6) Dave Veary released another sprite routine video, this time showing large
(64x98x16) sprites on a 6809 Coco 3):
https://youtu.be/agJ2-zpjlak?si=zsStNwU_I_lEk1Gn
He also released a video showing some additional sprites he already has done
(with 40×40 resolution):
https://youtu.be/JRhZlPsJrsg?si=I_WVCpaNEBhBd-HG

7) As part of my contribution to SepTandy, I scanned some manuals that were
not previously on the Color Computer Archive, and they are now approved
and available to the public. Some of these are multi-part, with addendums,
etc. The ones I uploaded are:
ChessSD from Software Dynamics
O-Pak from Frank Hogg Laboratory
Word Power 3.2 from Microcom Software
Word Power 3.3 addendum from Microcom Software
Starblazer from Ark Royal Games
I have also been patching some old games to function properly off of disk
(particularly some old ML or BASIC/ML hybrid games from both Chromasette
and T&D Software). Recent ones:
Inspector CLUEseau from Petrocci Freelance Associates
Astro Blast (Chromasette, not Mark Data)
Rowboat (Chromasette)
More coming as the month goes on!

8) More coverage of VCF MidWest from Coco’ers who were there have come out:
Ken @ Canadian Retro Things:
https://youtu.be/Gg4rNQGL_YE?si=-ziwsMlByTwv5iqC
Jason @ cocoman.biz:
https://youtu.be/-CJx9hwojkA?si=RWx07aWy0oM9YiD8

9) An update on TShirts for Glenside – Grant spoke with Joel Adams (son of
Rick Adams, and who designed artwork for CocoTalk in the past), and Joel
has agreed to help with 3 or 4 designs. What we would like from viewers
and listeners is some suggestions for designs.

10) On September 19 at 6 pm Central, Justin D. Morgan on YouTube will be dong
a live stream to fix the “yellow bar” that shows up on some older Coco’s
screens, and also doing a 6309 upgrade to his recently acquired Coco 2, as
his SepTandy contribution. He will be taking and responding to live comments
in the chat (which you have to be a subscriber to join in on, I believe):
https://www.youtube.com/live/NvPTkXcYsDQ?si=XFTR_NjYj8eCbLxf

11) Antonino Porcino is working on an online app called “Ditherton” that
converts images to formats used for older 8 bit computers. One he working on
now is the MC6847, and he has a sample picture of Marilyn Monroe converted
for the 128x64x4 mode, which can be used on an MC-10, Coco or Dragon:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/173737063356725/posts/1400429497354136/
You can try the program here (Sample picture in this link, but you can
upload your own) although it should be noted the VDG support isn’t in the
online app yet:
https://8bitworkshop.com/dithertron/#sys=c64.multi&image=seurat.jpg

12) And lastly a bit of different one: Arkansas Picker on Youtube picked
up a “RARE CONSOLE” at a yard sale thrift, and for a wicked price:
https://youtu.be/-N3Hjga6jZU?si=3YHPehDl6cu7WtFc&t=538

MC-10

Dragon 32/64

1) Julian Brown posted build instructions for his Repro Dragon 32
motherboard:
https://github.com/jimbro1000/Dragon32Issue2/blob/main/build.md

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

1) Since Nick Marentes released his BASIC PONG game and asked the Coco
community to contribute upgrades and optimizations… they have done exactly
that. Nick will talk about some of the updates that happened this past week.

2) Here is something that you don’t see on a Coco very often at all – a
speed run video. In this case, the current world record holder for doing
a speed run through all 3 screens of Canyon Climber. Can anyone watching
beat his time of 1 minute, 6.8 seconds?
https://youtu.be/MHdJZmKVR74?si=vGcFAbaPtZ5ykVrk

3) George B. Janssen, who not only wrote the PAK OS9 utility back in the
day but also hosted one of our assembly language programming series, has
released a Coco 3 game called 2048, which you can download it’s entry on
my game website, or the Color Computer Archive:
http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/2048.html

4) As work has started to die down, I am back to getting ahead of
Chronologically Gaming in catching up my games webpage (another SepTandy
project I am concentrating on), and have uploaded some isolated and/or
patched for disk games to the archive. Showing up so far: Astro Blast (from
Chromasette, not to be confused with the Mark Data Products game of the
same name) and Pennypede originally from Chromasette. There are more coming.
I also (finally!) hit the 800th game listed milestone. Lots more still to
come during SepTandy!

5) RetroGaming Nook on YouTube added a SepTandy video – playing Dale Lear’s
Color Baseball on the Coco. This is the first of 7 new Coco game cartridges
they recently acquired, so expect more. One thing different – they had
the computer playing itself at the beginning, and then switch to 1 human
player after that game is over (with lots of color commentary along the way):
https://youtu.be/mNpq_QrFRNs?si=9YpRLP-79i2uE1_F

6) Christopher Schneider and Garry Francis have released their multi-platform
(several dozen retro platforms) Infocom engine based text adventure game
“The Forgotten Pyramid” as a free download. Pere Serrat helped make a
Dragon 32/64 version as well.
Download the whole set of disk images for various retro machines, including
the Coco, directly from Christopher:
http://www.shift838.com/downloads/Games/adv/TheForgottenPyramid.zip
Announcement with backstory and graphic:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10160898438282641/

7) Chronologically Gaming covered some more Coco releases from June of 1982:
Pyramid 2000, Bedlam and Sky Defense on episode 213:
https://youtu.be/0l9koEyGD6A?si=hXm86haDPZD63Uli
Episode 214 covered Starship Chameleon and Trek-16 (Tom Mix):
https://youtu.be/Gnersh9o5B8?si=Iz29t733aARaZISP

8) Diskyboy on YouTube did a comparison video of 52 versions of
Shanghai. Included is the Dragon 32 and Coco 3 versions.
Dragon 32:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxvsoDWrdBg&t=217s
Coco 3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxvsoDWrdBg&t=1544s

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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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