The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 416, June 7, 2025 =============================================================== Collected by L. Curtis Boyle Special NOTES: -------------- For those who want to try an online BBS running on a real 512K Coco 3, you can reach Terry Trapp’s RiBBS system here (please note that this an active development machine so the BBS occasionally goes down when Terry is working on hardware, etc).: telnet ribbs.griswoldfx.com 6809 Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people: ------------------------------------------------------------ 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. I will mention that Dr. Boisy Peter has a special seminar on doing brain transplants to an Atari 800 and Commodore 64, replace their 6502’s with 6809’s. https://www.vcfsw.org/ The next meetup for the Manitoba Retro Computer and Gaming Club is June 21 at 11 am Manitoba time at the Fort Rouge Leisure Centre in Winnipeg, MB. No specific theme this meeting, anything retro will do!: https://www.facebook.com/events/3910772042522182/?acontext=%7B%22event_action_history%22%3A[%7B%22surface%22%3A%22group%22%7D]%7D The Southeast Michigan Vintage Computer Club is having their 8th public meeting/display June 28, 2025 from 11 AM to 5 PM Eastern at Grace Chapel's Gymnasium, 2515 N. Williams Lake Road, Waterford Township, Michigan (near Pontiac). This covers all retro gaming consoles and home computers. https://semichiganvcc.blogspot.com/2025/04/se-michigan-vintage-computer-club-ver.html International Retro Computer Expo (formerly BoatFest) will be July 11-13 in Hurricane, WV. There is now a promo video for it: https://www.ticketsource.us/ircexpo2025/t-eanjyje VCF-Midwest (the largest retro show in North America, I believe) is September 13-14 at the Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, Illinois. This year is the 20th anniversary of this show, and there is a lot of collaboration between CocoFest and VCF-MW, so expect a large number of Coco and Glenside people at the show! Still free admission, and hotel booking is open already. https://www.vcfmw.org/ That same weekend, Retro World Expo will be held September 12-14 at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford, Connecticut. Tickets and vendor applications aren't quite ready yet but will be soon. This is a gaming oriented retro show (including tournaments) but also includes things like wrestling: https://retroworldexpo.com/ Also that same weekend, for Canadians and anyone wanting to travel up to Canada, the WoRC (World of Retro Computing) show is September 13-14 at the old Goudies Department Store location at 8 Queen Street North, Kitchener,ON, Canada (West of Toronto, and right beside The Museum). This is a general retro show with a bunch of gaming and home computer platforms, vendors, seminars, LAN parties, workshops, door prizes & raffles and is sponsored by Retro Rewind. Admission is free, and it runs noon to 5 pm Eastern on both Saturday and Sunday: https://worldofretrocomputing.com/ Tandy Assembly for 2025 is Sept 26 to Sep 28 at the Courtyard by Marriott Springfield Downtown in Springfield, Ohio. NOTE 1: If you attended CocoFest this year, bring your badge to Tandy Assembly, and you will get in for FREE! NOTE 2: Peter Cetinski issued an update on May 13 - all tables are officially sold out: https://www.tandyassembly.com/ And they have some exhibitors already (click Exhibitors link) This year's Portland Retro Gaming Expo runs from October 17-19 in 2025 (they just had this years Sept 27-29). Oregon Convention Center, Portland, Oregon. https://www.retrogamingexpo.com/ Canada is getting it's own official VCF - Montreal, January 25-26 of 2026. It will be held at the Royal Military College outside of Montreal, but I don't have any more details (the venue, for example) yet: https://vcfed.org/vcf-montreal/ **** NEW NEWS ORDER TO HELP OUR LIVE EUROPEAN VIEWERS **** Dragon 32/64 ------------ 1) RetroFest 2025 was held in Swindon, UK last weekend, and included some Dragon setups. Various people have posted videos and photos from the show: (show folder of some pics Richard Harding forwarded me) Richard Harding's photos posted on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4049278535331785/ Chris Poacher's Powerpoint presentation about Microdeal (over 17 minutes): https://www.facebook.com/groups/204334613785733/posts/1699214204297759/ He also made a 30 second video video (there is another video in the comments showing when it got much busier): https://www.facebook.com/groups/204334613785733/permalink/1696530531232793/?mibextid=K35XfP&rdid=8dXxvMzP2ihaAN2B&share_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fshare%2Fv%2F1Bz45E3Ma8%2F%3Fmibextid%3DK35XfP YouTube channel "More Fun Fixing It" did a 1+ hour video about the whole show in general: https://youtu.be/nX9UIJkQ7Hc?si=zJ8xy8N90YxM6fQO Photos album on Google: https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipN83D4xA5iZlpJSFmnGuwLb_fLzxxhSQN-BuMXFsDKQKe6VLY4pSvDTkyxtMHZ_1A?pli=1&key=Z29pekNDTnV0OUpKTk14SW1vU0N3X19IOGZNZmp3 2) Julian Brown posted a summary update on his Dragon ATX project to the World of Dragon forums. He mentions that the ATX machine is running and everything except the cartridge port, real time clock and expanded audio built and working. He then goes through updated boards, etc. and the status of each: https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=11282 He also posted an "inbetween" version of his CPLD based VDG replacement board, which will handle things like switching between PAL and NTSC: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4053734601552845/ 3) John Whitworth announced that he has SuperRGB boards available via eBay and his website. Based on Phil Harvey-Smiths's original DragonRGB board, it outputs clear RGB for both Dragons and Coco 1/2's, and plugs sraight into the VDG socket. Works with the T1 variant too: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/236131257361 https://dragonpluselectronics.com/product/superrgb-6x09-for-dragon-and-coco-12-computers/ He also has the extender cable available (this allows extending a 40 pin socket to move such a chip out of the way of upgrades, etc.): https://dragonpluselectronics.com/product/superrgb-6x09-for-dragon-and-coco-12-computers/ 4) Reselling Ashley on YouTube showed a "rare Dragon 32 console bundle" (not working) that he got at a garage sale style event in the town of Bridlington. He is a reseller (flipper), so he sold it, but it came with a box of stuff as well: https://youtu.be/Y2Dhd5---P8?si=8ukGk5vUzx57fU1G Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform) ------------------------------- 1) Glen Hewlett has announced that Version 4.40 (and then 4.41) of his BASIC-TO-6809 cross compiler. The biggest change this week? It now supports code output for Dragon 32/64, including proper keyboard mappings. There are also minor bugfixes and crunching of the INKEY and INPUT routines to save about 300 bytes: https://github.com/nowhereman999/BASIC-To-6809 2) Not to be outdone, the cross-compiler for many 8 bit targets, ugBASIC, had an update to it's main branch , mostly bug fixes but also adding support for string constants in DATA statements using square brackets: https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/main 3) Juan Castro has been working on additions to HDB-DOS for the Coco 1/2's to add extra functionality, and has been posting updates to the Coco listserv mailing list. Some things that he has added: ON ERROR GOTO Drop box download link for the disk image to try (note that there are over a dozen builds for different hardware configurations). This is the same project we mentioned a few weeks ago where he has all Coco 3 tokens now recognized (so programs can load without errors), but some commands are re-purposed. Things like 51x24 and 64x24 screens on PMODE 4 that are set with the WIDTH command, and LOCATE works on them; LPEEK and LPOKE (which originally allowed those commands to work on the entire 512K RAM of a Coco 3) now allow 16 bit values as an example (show readme from link below for some details): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/9p5ydq5hqgp4b1fbqyyif/AKnngotPgk1PLUm6kw0nn5U?rlkey=pxtfum7dzwno0ej42bfb8ucrb&st=duyykgkj&dl=0 4) It was pointed out on the Coco Discord that a blog website is up called "Tandy TRS-80", which features some Coco related material (the last 4 entries up to May 18 are Coco related, with the May 15 & May 18 entries are about adding cooling to a TDP-100 case/Coco "F" board computer combination). I don't think that I have covered it before, but it's been around since March 2024 (there are some formatting issues, at least for me, on the main home page): https://tandy-trs80.com/cool-my-coco/ 5) Pierre Sarrazin, hot off of a CMOC update last week, has now added a new library as well called WydeAlloc. This offers dynamic memory allocation suitable for a 16 bit platform, and can implement C functions like malloc() and free(). It is distributed uner GNU GPL version 3 or later. I think this is for CMOC itself to use?: http://gvlsywt.cluster051.hosting.ovh.net/dev/cmoc.html#wydealloc 6) Simon Jonassen put up another sample of his wobblemode/semigraphics-24 picture renderings - from his comments, the best one he has managed yet: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162716407327641/ 7) Andrew Ayers has uploaded a DSK imaage containing some pretty good sound utilities for the Coco 3 to the Coco Facebook group, that were originally from Rainbow: Bells & Whistles 2 by Matt Thompson, and Super Play by Jeremy Spiller (author of Zenix and The Crystal City): https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162716125107641/ 8) Terry Trapp found out that someone was cuasing his RiBBS system to hang up (not allowing other callers) using the old Hayes +++ATH trick echoing back. He thinks that he has it fixed now. His post on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162715474867641/ How to Telnet to his BBS (running on a real Coco 3/512K): telnet ribbs.griswoldfx.com 6809 9) Dannielle posted on the Coco Facebook group about her Coco based drum sequencer through the joystick port. She is using the fire button to sync via external clock pulses: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162701794527641/ She also posted a video showing it in action: https://youtu.be/4-QPW7l5j-o?si=nzZji3LnwnqKCScu 10) Luciano Scharf posted some photos from 9th Color Rio Club meeting, held in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil a week ago: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162695698002641/ 11) Joel Ewy has been working on disassembling the iffs graphics utility for the MM/1, and has hit some undocumented (as far as he knows) SetStat calls. For those who may still have any documentation for their MM/1's - would you be able to help him? https://www.facebook.com/groups/3194643584094250 12) Steve Strowbridge has added After Dark, Retro Talk and Geek Talk episodes to his YouTube CocoTalk! channel. I think he has pretty well everything uploaded now: https://www.youtube.com/@cocotalkforever/videos 13) Juan Castro, member of the Brazilian Coco group and Retropolis, was interviewed on the YouTube channel TByteCreator. They covered the Coco, Dragon, Alice and many other early systems (Set close captioning with Brazilian/Portugese -> English): https://youtu.be/z8REQFZ_Ql0?si=dk8_9q--2DPu0P9W 14) MrDave on the Coco Discord point out a review of the Sanyo PHC25 Japanese home computer by YouTube channel Olipix RetroTech... a Z80 style machine which uses the a Mitsubishi clone of the Motorola 6847 VDG, like the Coco, Dragon, MC-10, Acorn Atom, etc. It did come with lowercase built into the VDG ROM, and a larger font... and a sound chip: https://youtu.be/FSkXsMMBAYU?si=zjMEuYeY-tJ3ZK1M&t=2209 15) Keith Frechette posted a photo of the inside of the Coco 3 he recently required (thinking it 128K RAM)... turns out it is 512K with an actual Tandy 512K upgrade: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162721560007641/ 16) Tony Licari posted some photos from the Tandy catalog showing Coco's and some other TRS-80's, but from the Australian version of the catalogs, with Australian dollar prices from the time: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162720389482641/ 17) The Tandy/TRS-80 people have released the latest issue of TRS8BIT, the long running newsletter for all Tandy computers, including Coco’s. The current issue (June 2025, volume 19, issue 2) is 92 pages: (Show local PDF copy) https://www.trs-80.org.uk/downloads.html MC-10 ----- 1) YouTube channel Testudo Tech did part 4 of their series "The Worst PC Computers Built from 1977 to 2008) - and the MC-10 is one of the machines. The do mention that Alice was successful in France, however: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh8f4WVeKu0&t=281s Game On news (all Coco related platforms): ========================================== 1) Retro Rick in the Coco Discord has uploaded a beta of an updated T&D game called Squeeze that he is working on, as well as a video showing the gameplay. You can find it in the BASIC channel: (show local file KBB_beta gameplay.mp4) 2) Jim Gerrie modified the Blackjack game from the original "Getting Started with Micro Color BASIC" Tandy manual: https://youtu.be/lrvTOSPvExw?si=4b1uHD9sOBKIdwF0 He also posted a port of a Lunar Lander game from the Coco (author unknown) to the MC-10 with Extended BASIC (MCX-128 add on) to run in medium resolution: https://youtu.be/sNDhaxryNIM?si=Nfr5WJoRhHeY1GTI 3) XperTek covered Spectral Associates Froggie (a Frogger clone) on his real Coco 2 on an amber monitor: https://youtu.be/E51i7PRvD3k?si=gAfZEaVi4Ma87des 4) Aquanaut 471 on YouTube added more Dragon game videos, including original cassette artwork and some gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/@CuthbertintheJungle/videos 5) ZXFrankie on YouTube did another Dragon 32 game high score submission, this time playing Planet Invasion: https://youtu.be/u4yWYwRoZTA?si=1039m5NlvoEK3Djd 6) Attempts: A Gaming Channel (by LRU) posted his high score submission for Mudpies: https://youtu.be/l_1GW4OAEEY?si=aOCm5n3dQDyu0zIn Speak your mind! 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