[Index]
The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 420, July 5,2025 (June 28-July 4)
===============================================================
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:
------------------------------------------------------------
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 West at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California is
August 1-2, from 10 am-6 pm Friday and 9 am-5 pm Saturday. There are
usually some Coco people at the show (both attendees and exhibitors),
and we have had walkthroughs before that show it to be a fun show
with a lot of history since it is in Silicon Valley:
https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-west/
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/
Tentative date for CocoFest 2026 - April 24-25, as mentioned in the
Glenside meeting this past week. Not 100% confirmed, but sounded
pretty solid.
**** NEW NEWS ORDER TO HELP OUR LIVE EUROPEAN VIEWERS ****
NOTE: We are planning to do a special �Coco 4� episode in the
future, which will included all the computers that were announced in
the 1991-1994 time frame that were supposed to be successors to the
Coco 3. We have Joel Ewy who has volunteered to show off their MM/1,
I am going to try and get my TC-9 up and running at least enough to
show it working, but we still need volunteers with TC-70�s, Kix-20 or
Kix-30, Delmar System IV or System V�s, AT-306, MM/1 B�s. Anybody
still have these machines that they would like to show off in an
upcoming show? Email me at curtisboyle at sasktel.net if you are.
Dragon 32/64
------------
1) John Whitworth announced on the World of Dragon forums that he has
SuperRGB boards available again � both on his DragonPlus Electronics
website, and on ebay. He also has his Extender cables available again
on ebay:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11293
https://dragonpluselectronics.com/product/superrgb-6x09-for-dragon-and-coco-12-computers/
He also said that he is planning another run of the lower case boards:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4077935809132724/
2) The Mastertronic Collectors Archive website celebrated their
200th software review (which happens to be a C64 game). But they
also breakdown the number of reviews by machine, and the Dragon 32
is currently at 4 reviews:
https://mastertronic.co.uk/mastertronic-collectors-archive-200-reviews-and-counting/
3) Kataja Kirjuri posted in the Dragon group on Facebook about an
article (in Finnish) about �1980�s Computer Gaming on Marginal
Machines�, and the article not only mentions the Dragons, but that
there was a Dragon specific computer club that ran in Finland until
at least 1986. (NOTE: There is a direct link to a Google Translate
version in English in the comments):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4081424175450554/
4) Julian Brown posted a photo of a bunch of the board designs he is
using for the card based Dragon ATX system he is working on:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4081365025456469/
Julian also showed off modular 6(8/3)09 based computer running at a
bit over 3MHz that is not meant to be a Dragon or Coco:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4081274115465560/
5) Sundby Kell posted in the Dragon Facebook group that he has a
cartridge & disk emulator hardware solution using SD cards that works
on Dragons and Coco�s. It allows using a menu or buttons to switch
between both cartrdiges and disk images. It also supports multiple
disk ROM�s (saved on the SD Card), and the exact same SD card can
work on both the Coco and the Dragon:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4079347135658258/
6) Malgorzata Bartosiewicz-Kucharuk posted a photo of of the
Dragon dust cover that she designed (both Dragon 32 and Dragon 64
versions). In the comments, she mentions that they are on sale:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4075758132683825/
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
1) Coco Town returns with another video showing how to use the
MAME debugger with the *original* source code (not just the raw
disassembly), including the newer feature of MMU-aware debugging:
https://youtu.be/QZawpC10UBg?si=aVvlS0juYoazbT_K
2) Allen Huffman posted an article on his Sub-Etha blog about BASIC
and how it generates random numbers, with sample code. In this case, he
is figuring out how evenly distributed each number in an RND range is:
https://subethasoftware.com/2025/07/01/a-basic-coin-flip/
3) Terry Trapp released a video showing the updates he has done
on his Coco Blender project � which is a SID sound chip, network
adaptor, RTC and more, on the Coco Facebook group. An shows off the
SID running a BASIC09 program. He then shows it slowing down as he
calls into his RiBBS BBS � at the same time:
https://www.facebook.com/terrytrapp/videos/1076714804342422?idorvanity=2359462640
He also posted an update to his RiBBS system, and Coco Blender fixes
that make the BBS a lot more stable:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162840345992641/
4) Michael Pittsley showed off his Tower of Power cartridge holder
(made by Antonio Caballero) , full populated with cartridges:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162856370322641/
5) Stevie Strowbridge did a video showing his Tandy Tower of Power
as well, and even shows some earlier projects by Antonio:
https://youtu.be/3zI3YTKU90o?si=29mPvmeOaJOybOJZ
6) A new version of Compute�s Gazette magazine is coming out, and
they are requesting Coco programmers to submit articles in the Coco
Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162828254207641/
7) Tony Licari showed some more photos of old Tandy Australia catalogs
of the Coco series on sale. It is strange seeing the Coco 3 listing
x25 text (not x24) and 200 lines high graphics modes (not 192):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162838268092641/
8) David Bernazzani posted some photos of his work on a Coco 1,2 and
Dragon 32,64 emulator to run on Nintendo DS/Dsi/XL/LL portable gaming
consoles. This is actually the 11th emulator project that he has done
for the Nintendo platform, but he mentions that he is really close
to a public beta:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162840114147641/
9) Dannielle posted a quick video on her YouTube page showing the
breadboard design and testing for her Coco 3 light chaser interface,
which will control her flux capacitor recreation:
https://youtu.be/AK8zU3WgofY?si=p7Mb4Tfwey8vvDZ5
10) TRS-80 Retro Programing on YouTube put up a video showing how
to load his binary graphics screens, and how to offset them to so he
can load images on the top or bottom of the viewable screen:
https://youtu.be/XJ7g6QFtkSA?si=TdF7t6bodyIK6nKL
11) Retro Dudes on Facebook (in the NitrOS9 group for some reason�
lol) put up a quick video showing what all he found in in a box in
his attic, including a Coco2B, acoustic coupler modem, and much more:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/755391073584137
12) XperTek did a non game video this week as well, where he
experiments with hooking up his Coco 2 via an HDMI adapter and a
video capture device. He does get it working with a good picture and
sound� but no artifact colors:
https://youtu.be/H6Hi29rw-jk?si=gcKlmAoSCE6ye0c7
MC-10
-----
1) Bob Emery, on his La Coco Strangiato page on YouTube, put up a
video about his very first MC-10 � which he just got � and some
hardware hacks and add ons he works with:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0IlEoFGZwo
2) Hackaday had a small article this past week on the MC-10,
titled �Behind Radioshack�s Cheapest Computer, written by Bryan
Cockfield. It links to Spriteworx�s video that we covered almost
a year back. (And he obviously doesn�t know about Jim Gerrie):
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/30/behind-radioshacks-cheapest-computer/
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) RetroGamingLoft on YouTube did a longplay video (almost 14
minutes) of the Coco 3 version of Shanghai� written by Rick Adams,
of course. He plays the game to completion:
https://youtu.be/c300pktls-s?si=S0AWAsgkSKCLm-6f
He also played the Coco version of Imagic�s Demon Attack:
https://youtu.be/m5RpBXTwzYI?si=xM9hm8Os9oXE_HGY
2) XperTek did one of his compilation videos, this time covering
his �Volume 6 disk� of playing games on his Coco 2 with amber
monitor. The 10 games from this disk is shown in the YouTube
description, and we have covered the individual game videos he
posted earlier:
https://youtu.be/ksma5HRjBic?si=H5k7nI-IlGtGsomZ
3) There are updates to the Download port being made for the Game Boy
Advanced. There is a new gameplay video that was uploaded to the Coco
Discord in the #general channel)
(show local file �Coco Nation News/downland_gba_011.mp4�)
And the author�s github for the project (he won�t build/sell
carts because of legal reasons):
https://github.com/pw32x/Downland_C/tree/main
Speak your mind! Let us know what you think at:
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