The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 354, March 9, 2024

Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

Special Guests today:

Interviews schedule:

None.

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:

Interim Computer Festival: March 23-24.
Intraspace
3100 Airport Way South, Seattle, Washington
This is a pre-announcement for a retro computer show in the Pacific
Northwest Area.

The Indy Classic Computer & Gaming Expo is April 13-14 in Indianapolis.
Crowne Plaza
Randy Kindig of the Floppy Days podcast helps with this one – and he was
our guest not too far back.
https://indyclassic.org/

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/

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) is also one of the speakers
at VCF-SW this year!
Speakers list:
https://www.vcfsw.org/speakers

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.
Courtyard by Marriott Springfield
Springfield, Ohio
http://www.tandyassembly.com/

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

1) Paul Fiscarelli, on his Long Branch Never YouTube page, released a video
walking through the latest updates to his Coco Waveform Generator utility:
https://youtu.be/rTq5EUAgGmE?si=8oOoqJUBORRp3A_3

2) And, somewhat along the same line… Coco Town has released ASM sound
part 5 – after fixing his waveforms in the previous episode, this time he
tackles multivoice chords:
https://youtu.be/SeGuVIYFlHI?si=fFQ5M5_Vgqc8hJzn

3) Allen Huffman has released part 6 of his blog of convert Rick Adam’s Coco
3 game Lights Out to Coco 1/2’s. As of part 5 he had the game basically
working, and now he is making some upgrades from the original version,
including bigger grid sizes & formatted headers:
https://subethasoftware.com/2024/03/05/lets-write-lights-out-in-basic-part-6/

He is also now seeding the incredibly high res scans of the GIME 1986 chip
(he will be adding the 1987 version in the future) that we covered a few
years back. These are scans of the interior of the chip layer by layer:
https://subethasoftware.com/2024/03/02/decaps-of-1986-gime-chip-via-sean-riddle-erik-gavriluk-and-roger-taylor/

Allen also posted a video from Roger Taylor’s YouTube page (“Mr. Coco”),
showing the insides of the MicroSEP II – a Mexican Coco 3 that has
modified ROM’s:
https://subethasoftware.com/2024/03/03/the-mexico-coco-3-clone-no-one-told-me-about/

Roger’s video, showing the Microsep labelling on the top and bottom, and
opening the case to show it is a pretty stock Coco 3 (although the ROM’s
apparently have some Spanish):
https://youtu.be/vEBsR_yt660?si=P8RsjxxOQF5zb624

4) As a follow up on the MicroSEP II, Roger posted on Facebook about
his adventure in burning a 32K ROM to try on it. He tried an AT28C256K
EEPROM at first, but it wouldn’t work. When he switched to a 27C256 it
worked. As mentioned in the comments by Neil Cherry – those two chips are
NOT completely compatible:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161197126132641/

5) From Roger’s Patreon link, Roger is the one who purchased the Steve
Bjork estate re-selling of source code, etc., too, and he has plans to
duplicate the disks and source in the future, but with no specific time
schedule. Since this is going to take a lot of time to do, feel free to
join his Patreon (which also goes to his developing his Coco 3 MiSTer core
and other projects):
https://www.patreon.com/posts/roger-taylor-99555827

6) TRS-80 Retro Programing put up a video showing how to use the TRON/TROFF
(Trace On/Off) commands to help track down complex bugs in BASIC:
https://youtu.be/IQoL_qpYbW0?si=EbJdWtTCO_3WDmEY

7) Boisy Pitre put up a quick video showing that the Foenix F256 Jr. is now
stable and booting OS-9 Level II, and he shows it display several text screen
modes and some of the colors possible. This is the machine running a cycle
accurate 6809 core, but at 3.3V and at 6.29 MHz using an FPGA. It currently
is using a 65C02 pin out, so it can’t be plugged into a regular 6809 machine:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161197970252641/

Details/price on the system & FGPA CPU:
https://c256foenix.com/product/f256-junior-mini-itx/?v=3e8d115eb4b3
https://c256foenix.com/product/fnx6809/?v=3e8d115eb4b3

8) Alex Redman posted a video to the Coco group on Facebook showing both
his extensions to Coco 3 BASIC that he did back in 1989 (including key
repeat), and a database program he did:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161197879732641/

9) Robert Hamilton posted a cool photo that he took of Tom Mix at his
booth at the very first Rainbowfest in May 1983 in Chicago, as a part of
a discussion about Tom Mix Software started by Richard Kelly:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1599007467324464&set=p.1599007467324464&type=3

10) Paul Shoemaker has made a 64K Coco 1/2 graphics animation demo in the
theme for this year’s Chicago CocoFest (“May the Fourth Be With You”),
and he released a video on the Coco Facebook group of it in action:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161191742572641/

He uploaded the DSK image itself to the #glenside-cocofest channel on the
Coco Discord, if you want to try it yourself.

11) John Linville posted that “The Great BASIC Text Adventure Programming
Contest” is live for registration since the beginning of last week, and
the link to their Facebook page. Registration closes in 2 weeks:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1059495638638036/

12) John Whitworth posted in the Dragon Facebook group that he just put
together one of his experimental VDG 6847 socket extended cables. It seems
to work, and will enable his SuperRGB board to be put into some models of
the Coco that it doesn’t normally fit in (picture in the comments):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3661765997416376/

13) Craig Iannello posed in the 6809/6309 group on Facebook that he fixed
a bug on his “Pugputer 6309”, so he is back to resuming work on it. It
has 1 MB of RAM, bank switching to 4MB.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3322801381346554/

His github:
https://github.com/caiannello/Pugputer6309

14) A little bit of history was posted in the TRS-80 Discord (thanks to user
“NachoGamer”) – an article on the release of Videotex in the October 1980
issue of Popular Electronics magazine. The interesting part? The photo
of it is not the same design as the Agvision version or the Coco 1 style
Videotex; it’s a Model 1 case with the Coco chiclet keyboard in it:

MC-10

1) Jim Gerrie did a non-game program conversion for the MC-10 this past
week, called “A Problem Solving Technique Based on Genetics”, originally
written by Arthur Radcliffe in 1981. This was a magazine program from
Creative Computing February 1981, and showed some simple AI techniques,
and has a lengthy explanation at the beginning of the program explaining
what it is doing:
https://youtu.be/HjWdOQdA0Yw?si=aJD2w3wDmo79aZZX

Dragon 32/64

1) John Whitworth posted a quick 7 second video in the Dragon Facebook
group of the SuperBob and SPO256 experiment he was working on, fixing a
bug from his original attempt. It now speaks properly, I believe using
the same speech chip as the SSP on the Coco:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3661765477416428/

He also “Got a very definite success with the PAL board!”. Funnily enough

it wasn’t one of the ones he built, but one a friend had built to help
him test… thus working much better than his own. Tracking down the
differences is now going on:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3662431644016478/

2) Gary Moulton posted a quick video showing his Screen Editor code in action

showing text copy, adding new characters and deleting characters. (Mike
Miller mentions in the comments that the code to do this is smaller than
the original Microsoft EDIT command):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3661694067423569/

He also posted docs and the source code (both a BASIC loader program,
and the assembly source as well):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3661691717423804/

3) Clive Townsend posted a question about the graphics capabilities of
the Dragon vs. a Spectrum. Why is this news? Clive is the author of the
Spectrum game called Saboteur, and he is interested in porting it to the
Dragon. He even has some PMODE 4 / B&W screenshots (in the comments) as
mockups to see what it would look like. Wouldn’t be too hard to port to
the Coco afterwards, I would imagine:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3659855720940737/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

1) Bob Emery (La Coco Strangiato on YouTube) released a long play video
that shows what the Sound Speech Pack added to our Game On Challenge game,
Space Wrek from Spectral Associates (see YouTube comments for what the
game rankings that it speaks are):
https://youtu.be/Up1QUJbAPEU?si=L0iKEdTGOnd5gBZL

2) Ken Waters of Canadian Retro Things did a comparison review of Adventure
International’s “Eliminator” game… a strange title where all 5 platforms
that it came out on (TRS-80 Model 1/3, Apple II, Atari 8 bit, Coco, and
the C64), most of them are completely different games:
https://youtu.be/xRr6HBH9jlE?si=HeMRxnq9uiKBjiDE

3) Brent and Aaron of the Amigos have released The Coco Show episode 51,
covering our recent Game On Challenge game Space Wrek by Spectral Associates,
that they recorded live a week ago:
https://youtu.be/6EfescXzyxM?si=uL-R4CwoxfAgTX71

4) Jim Gerrie ported a text adventure game originally published in Softside
Magazine, written by Peter Kirsch in 1980, called “Magical Journey”. This
had a lot of fixes done by Jason Dyer, and then a few more by Jim himself:
https://youtu.be/D4VhgxZTZWg?si=aqE8flFeK79WtTxl

He also posted a link to the cassette WAV file the MC-10 group on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/7142816995845061/

NOTE: He released an updated version to fix a few bugs on Friday:
https://github.com/jggames/trs80mc10/tree/master/quicktype/Text%20Adventures/MJourney

5) Amigo Aaron did a live “Friday Night Disaster Stream” featuring the Coco
last night (I only caught the tail end of it live). (Start 8 minutes in). 2
hours of Coco goodness (and some stuff that didn’t run on his MiSTter):
https://youtube.com/live/jOJ5ZLIutjU?feature=share

6) RetroGamerDiaries on YouTube posted a video comparing 18 ports of Manic
Miner – including the Dragon 32/64 version:
https://youtu.be/8ACkDmXwKe0?si=tj4c-4zP1YokL61Z

7) Sergei Makeev (I think from Kyrgyzistan?) on his youtube channel
“Сергей Макеев” posted a short video showing Startrench Warfare
by Fred Scerbo of Illustrated Memory Banks. This is the original shrunken
version from Rainbow magazine, rather than the commercial larger version
sold by IMB. I don’t know if he typed it in himself, but some of it is
not working properly (like animating the trench):
https://youtu.be/nBIfpS1ET4s?si=aVPR6kiNwRztmyfK

He also did The Force by Charles Roslund (for some reason, only the intro
has sound – the Star Wars theme – the rest of the video is silent (the
actual game has sound effects):
https://youtu.be/Jkz9cXFNCU4?si=RXKWem-g4GoR0Ay1

And Space War by Spectral Associates (this appears to be the Dragon version,
since it runs in PMODE 3 for color rather than PMODE 4 with artifacting):
https://youtu.be/GDVsN9ZmO4A?si=-JNmLWxTCgVOq2W-

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