Special Guests today:

None.

Interview schedule:

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:

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/

The next Bay Area (San Francisco) Tandy Assembly meetup has been
announced. June 15 from 1-5 pm at San Franciso State University. There
is an online signup sheet to join the event, and they have announced that
Bill Hogue of Big Five Software fame is the Special Guest speaker:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc9ZDlEGBrd6okI9xIoKPjwLb4kHmdVFPvNog4lOUPEe5NaLQ/viewform

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

Retro-Computing Expo ’24 is from 11 am until 7 pm at Anvil Center in New
Westminster, British Columbia, Canada. It is actually 2 shows in one:
the Retro-Computing Expo and the Retro-Gaming Expo. They already several
presenters lined up, including 4 people to talk about the NABU, including
Leo Binkowski who was an engineer at NABU. George Philips, the author of
the TRS-80GP emulator and a regular on the TRS-80 Trash Talk podcast is
also presenting, amongst others. This is supported by the Chilliwack Retro
Computing Club, which has it’s own Facebook Group:
(show the copy of the “poster” that I was sent from my local desktop –
“Retro-Computing_Expo_24.jpg”).
Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ChilliwackRetro/

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, etc
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. NOTE: thanks to Randy Kindig, it is confirmed
that it is a 2 day show.
https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72253/Retro-Computer-Festival-2024-Saturday-9th-November/

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

1) RichN posted a video updated of his Coco 1/2 Spy Hunter game – the first
“playable” version but still buggy – to the Coco Discord:
(show Spy Hunter.mov from my desktop)

2) CocoTown has released his next video of his series on finishing up a
Moon Patrol game that he started as a teenager. This episode he starts
getting the moon buggy moving left to right… with his traditional
“everything that happened including mistakes” mantra:
https://youtu.be/72hi1h9eo_Q?si=WrMASv03Sb8HM0kl

3) M.David Johnson (who will be at CocoFest!) has updated his BDS software
page with some academic papers and demo DSK images using his ML Foundation
System – a couple of game images as well as printer routines and disk
utilities. They are available on his website (along with his previous Coco
projects). The ML foundation system is for the Coco 1/2, and is meant to
run faster than regular Extended BASIC:
https://www.bds-soft.com/cocoPapers.php

4) George Janssen has uploaded the DSK images (to the Coco Discord) and two
more episodes (Lesson 11, parts 1 and 2) of his Coco 3 assembly language
series (to YouTube). Lesson 11, Part 1 stars with drawing a rectangular
spiral in the 320x192x16 mode (the same as HSCREEN 2 in BASIC), calling
the HPRINT routine in BASIC, and then he shows you how to change the
GIME settings to uses 320x200x200 (well, 199 in reality). Part 2 adds a
BASIC program and another option for drawing, and some programming tips
on modifying code using BRN/BRA, and using indirect JMP’s.
George is also wondering if many people are watching/using his lessons. Is
there certain subjects/topics for Coco 3 assembly language that viewers
would like George to cover?
Lesson 11, Part 1:
https://youtu.be/Ip_yB_axo6Y?si=ACqqQlgtwZUR4dqR
Lesson 11, Part 2:
https://youtu.be/mlyT7OBW6Kk?si=UWXEJIARM6WLJ378

5) The next TRS-80 Trash Talk podcast/live stream is on May 4 at 5 PM EDT

during the Fest. They are asking if anyone would like to pop on during
the show to do a live update from the CocoFest show floor. If you can,
please reply to the message on the Coco Facebook group (or on the TRS-80
Discord, if you are a member there):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161275931052641/

6) Joe Lowe on the Coco Facebook group has posted a few pictures of him
running Fujinet on his Coco 3, including mounting a 40 MB file that contains
256 floppy drive images into Drive 0:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161275727482641/
He also showed a photo of TELNETing at 80 columns:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161275703017641/
They will be demonstrating the new Coco 3 functionality at CocoFest,
too! And for those who aren’t able to build their own boards, they have
parts on order for 10 units, that they are hoping to have assembled and
available by late May.

7) Speaking of Fujinet, Thomas Cherryhomes is asking for some help in
porting his 5 card stud cross-platform client program to the Coco, so that
they can join with C64, Apple II, etc. users. Details in his Facebook post,
including a link to the Github with the current clients and an example
makefile for CMOC:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161274381112641/

8) Matthew Coffron posted photos of him upgrading his Coco 2 to 64K and
adding Extended BASIC He used a 2364-27C128 adaptor card from PCBWay with
27C64 EPROM. It even worked on his first try, and this may be an option
for those having trouble finding some of the original EPROM sizes that
the Coco 1/2 used.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161275201272641/

9) Mark Lowe is migrated his site Coco Central to Dreamhost from Godaddy,
which he mentions is now 4x faster. Now that the migration is complete,
I look forward to him adding even more Coco content!:
https://cococentral.com/

10) Jeffrey Duncan put up a post on the Coco Facebook group, asking if Disk
Color Scripsit was ever released (it was; I used it for a bit back in the
day until I got Telewriter-64). He may have been thinking of OS-9 Scripsit,
which did appear in a Radio Shack Catalog, but was never released. However,
since it was written by Robert Kilgus and Brian Wieseler has gotten all of
Robert’s old disks, it is possible we may get to resurrect it (assuming the
disk works). It actually looked pretty advanced, including proportional
text support and full justification based on word or character, amongst
other things:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161271336752641/

11) Julian Brown (who has been working on the replacement (and now enhanced)
Dragon 32 motherboard, has aquired, I believe, his first Coco (a middle era
Coco 2 – full travel keyboard, but the original VDG). Congrats! Hopefully
you can find a Coco 3 as well!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3694343400825302/

12) Bob Emery (La CocCo Strangiato on YouTube) released a video – “HDMI
On Board Revisited”, where he uses more recent technology to get the Coco
3 RGB Analog output working with HDMI TV’s/monitors, using SCART and some
custom cabling:
https://youtu.be/MYk-C6K9roo?si=Fds4HtR2UGyN50oK

13) I was one of the guests on the International Computer Club show on
the Amigos network, going through a bit of NitrOS9/EOU version 1.0.1,
and also some preview notes on the interview with Robert Kilgus that Ken
and I will be doing this upcoming Friday. But there are lots of presents
covering a wide range of retro topics:
https://www.youtube.com/live/_efz3edJt4Q?si=-SOdseciHVp10Y4w

14) TheRetroChannel went into a deep dive talking about RGB and composite
video outputs and getting them working with SCART. Although not a Coco
specific video (he uses a Sega Master System in the video), the general
principles here should apply to the Coco 3:
https://youtu.be/1gSMNLwl96Y?si=XX4swwyxZoW3zvyu

15) Practical IT with Jeremy Leik on YouTube did their Sunday Night Retro
Talk, and he mentions that he started on a Coco – and then he brings
up Cloud9Tech (Mark Marlette) and RetroRewind (Frank) for RAM upgrades
(although the link was broke) and the CocoSDC, respectively:
https://www.youtube.com/live/QAngh_vaDUI?si=2eBpmdTxlO1EOTF3&t=151

16) AnotherMaker posted a video about building a diagnostic cartridge
for the Coco 1,2 or 3 (note that it is the Tandy version 2.0 version,
so it doesn’t check any of the things unique to the Coco 3):
https://youtu.be/0L6OtoY7bHo?si=t_qPCWpnvOEZ9G9o

MC-10

Dragon 32/64

1) Julian Brown posted an update of his getting the PAL daughterboard
working although he is still missing the amplifier to get full proper
stable color). But he likes how clear the signal/text is now:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3693672364225739/

2) Allan Macpherson posted the 6809 assembler source code for his high res
graphics screen text driver for the Dragon, which supports 32, 51 or 64
columns (x 24) for the Dragon 32 or 64 (It even has a 32×24 PMODE 3 color
text option). If I understand right, it also adds some commands to BASIC
to support the new text “modes”:
https://github.com/Abimelef/DragonTextXX

3) Julian also posted a question on the Dragon Facebook group, about his
upcoming experimenters SuperBOB boards (for both Dragons & Coco’s); he
is wondering if what people think the pros and cons are of providing both
male and female header pins for each node, or just rows of male header pins
(which is the prototype he currently has made). Please leave any comments
on his post:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/3693032567623052/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

1) Pere Serrat has released Supersprite-FM+ ehanced AGD games pack #13,
adding 4 more games to use the hardware sprites, enhanced color and sound
chip included in the upgrade, for both the Coco and Dragon.
This pack includes:
Bubble Frenzy 1.1
Nixy the Glad Sprite
Page’s Castle Quest
Springbot
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11171
He also has added the SSBigPack#3 – which is all games for the Supersprite
so far. There are now 55 games supporting the new hardware!
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11172

2) D. Bruce Moore, who will be at CocoFest, will have a sale on for the
show for both his Forest of Doom RPG and his Coco Forever multimedia radio
play series (even if you aren’t at the Fest and are ordering online):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10161274334737641/

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