Interviews schedule:

January 6 we have a double interview with Doug Masten
& Glen Dahlgren, covering the Coco 3 game The Contras.
http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/contras.html
January 27 (NOTE DATE CHANGE) Glen Dahlgren comes back – he has the final
book in his Chaos series coming out, and possibly some further Coco stuff
as well.
https://mysteriumstoryworks.substack.com/p/want-a-free-copy-of-the-realm-of?r=2hpgl3&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:

VCF SoCal: Feb 17-18, 2024 in Orange, California
Hotel Fera – Events Center
100 The City Drive, Orange, CA 92868
https://vcfsocal.com/index.html

Interim Computer Festival: March 23-24.
This is a pre-announcement for a retro computer show in the Pacific
Northwest Area. Details (specifically where, etc.) will be coming later,
and registration will open in January.
https://sdf.org/icf/

CocoFest: May 4-5, 2024 in Carol Stream, Illinois (near Chicago)
Holiday Inn & Suites
https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/

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, and usually
has a lot of Tandy people hanging out since that is Tandy’s hometown).
Davidson-Gundy Alumni Center at University of Texas – Dallas
Dallas, Texas
https://www.vcfsw.org/

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

1) TRS-80 Retro Programing put up a video showing his Boot Tape for Tales
of Suburbia, and ending with some questions he needs help on before he is
able to complete it:
https://youtu.be/7tYKdkDWiIY?si=mnflMR88zWbJ80eJ
He also put a video up about “weird Coco BASIC errors” (they are all
related to reserved BASIC keywords):
https://youtu.be/YMTVdX-KZKc?si=sj9ODUTGIEzvoPhm

2) Coco Town on YouTube made an intro guide video to his channel. His
number of subscribers have taken off (1,84K at the time I checked just
before the show), so this is to benefit new people to his channel:
https://youtu.be/NVqnFraNS5o?si=pecb5etzmzy4_ezd

3) George Janssen has lesson 4 up on his YouTube (GBJanssen 6809), as well
as the source listings for this episode on his channel on the Coco Discord:
https://youtu.be/mDyCRRNYUfI?si=FwcqyjbINhTFkI9G

4) Henry of The Break Key fame on YouTube, has his next video out – Part
1 of building a D-pad game controller for the Coco:
https://youtu.be/GvfNK-nwvgc?si=QHJuqzNvFqEtXIYg

5) Simon Jonassen has another update to his online graphics editor – and
it appears that he is adding graphics primitives as part of it’s toolbox,
rather than just drawing pixels. Here he shows a circle (not filled):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161073617212641/
And the eyedropper tool:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161072398677641/

6) Thomas Cherryhomes has another update on his Coco port of Fujinet,
this time showing his WiFi Selection screens:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161073130582641/
His slightly earlier video showing his user interface design:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161071443137641/
And late last night, a Show Info screen (showing the current FujiNet
adapter configuration:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161074469107641/

MC-10

1) Hmmm, what have the MC-10 folks been up to?

Dragon 32/64

1) Julian Brown posted on the Dragon group on Facebook an update on his
PAL daughterboard – still a few things to work out, but it is giving a
great 2 color picture:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3603860836540226/
He also posted an updated revision 3 motherboard design – this includes
spots for an option 6551 serial port, and 1 or 2 AY sound chips:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3602771109982532/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

1) Jim Gerrie has ported “Magic Square” to the MC-10. Originally written by
James Coan in 1977 from his book “Advanced BASIC Applications and Problems”:
https://youtu.be/ydIgG28_t6I?si=gc35UOeDFvTfbgil
He also has an entry for the 2024 BASIC 10-Liner game competition, Snakes
and Ladders:
https://youtu.be/5RVW9bGZNC4?si=uvDtxS4T36sDStlw
Competition website (Scroll down for the English rules):
https://gkanold.wixsite.com/homeputerium
He also released his MC-10 conversion of the Nostromo game that Allen
Murphy is working on (for the Coco), although Jim’s is strictly low res and
text. Both ports are based on the original NEC PC-6001 version from Japan:
https://youtu.be/APa1AZAPfvM?si=3ZmpQi0rq4YQeinw
If one goes to the MC-10 group on Facebook, Jim has the WAV file for Nostromo
available. He also has a rather extensive blog entry about this game:
https://jimgerrie.blogspot.com/2018/05/uchuu-yusousen-nostromo.html
Jim also posted a port of “In the Woods” originally by Ken & ASCII Publishing
(AX-2 compilation of BASIC games):
https://youtu.be/xpC8YPsGKGk?si=aoqyOQrzrBZW2jNj

2) Canadian Retro Things (aka Ken) released a video covering some of the
Dr. Who games for the Coco, since it’s the 60th anniversary of the start
of the show:
https://youtu.be/dWnTf9nknjI?si=D4IWNhl6b5bolYsA

3) The Coco Show (Brent & Aaron) have released their Christmas The Coco
Show episode: Ghost Rush – Winter Edition and Timber Man – Christmas
Edition… along with some Coco generated Christmas music and the Radio
Shack Coco 3 instore demo (sped up):
https://www.youtube.com/live/f4npBBl8REY?si=hnqkVvYQ1viZ1Qz7

4) Chronologically Gaming has started into September of 1982, and the
first Coco game to appear for this month is Bridge Tutor, put out by Tandy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdUo9wNRLXM&t=483s

5) agamingchannelbyLRU has added some more Coco (Cosmic Clones) and Dragon
32/64 (Barmy Burgers, Cosmic Clones, Crazy Painter) games to his high
score attempts:
https://www.youtube.com/@agamingchannelbyLRU/playlists

6) Chris Presley has uploaded his 2nd Coco 1/2/3 Star Trek trivia game to
the Color Computer Archive:
https://www.youtube.com/@agamingchannelbyLRU/playlists
Direct link to DSK image:
https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Disks/Games/Star%20Trek%20Trivia%202.0%20(Chris%20Presley).zip

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

Please trim any replies to just the specific item replied to.

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 343, December 16, 2023

Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and Boxing Day from the CoCo Nation!