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