The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 422, July 19,2025 (July 12-July 18) ============================================================================= 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 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, and Rick Ulland will show off a Delmar System V… but we still need volunteers with TC-70’s, Kix-20 or Kix-30, Delmar System IV, AT-306 and 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) bluearcus on the World of Dragon forums has uploaded a link to a utility called VDK2DSK on his github, which will convert VDK disk images to the JVC/DSK format, including options to control header output. This is the native Dragon format with extended info (like and SDF or DMK) to the simpler JVC format which is basically just the readable part of sector data. Github link: https://github.com/bluearcus/vdk2dsk 2) Tom Erik Gundersen (regular live viewer of the show) has uploaded a ZIP file of variety of Dragon games in DSK format for use with the MiSTer FPGA and it’s Dragon emulation. You can down them from the Dragon group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4093949664198005/ 3) Gary Moulton posted a video showing the production test software used by Dragon Data, running a Dragon 32. As Gary notes, normally this was interrupt driven, but he is doing it manually so there are pauses that would not have shown up in production testing: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4092798740979764/ 4) Julian Brown posted an updated – he has the CPLD programming timing for the 6847 (VDG) chip basically working now: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4090743664518605/ Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform) ------------------------------- 1) Spanish YouTube channel ‘felisuco’ posted a video showing a European PAL Coco 2 getting unboxed, and that’s some history about the Coco (7:14 shows the “haul” that was found): https://youtu.be/RCNQn_cRgtI?si=qci7nJqnZrOXxhhb 2) Dave Bernazzani on the Coco Facebook group posted that he has released version 1.1 of his Nintendo DS Coco ˝ and Dragon emulator, fixing most bugs and allowing more of the cassette, disk and cartridge libraries to work. OS9 Level 1 programs are still not running properly yet, due to timing in the emulated disk controller: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162960163512641/ 3) Antonio Caballero released a video showing his latest “Tower of Power” cartridge (and now) and SD card holders. He also gives links to thingiverse that allows one to make their own with their own 3D printer: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162957459082641/ 4) Erico Monteiro released an animated GIF showing an artifacted cat character traveling between screens – possibly an upcoming game? https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162951530892641/ 5) Website leadedsolder.com has an article on making a composite modifiactio for a Coco 1… and a Mattel Aquarius: https://www.leadedsolder.com/2025/07/15/tandy-trs80-coco-composite-mod-aquarius.html 6) Adam Behrendt posted a picture of his dad’s Coco 1 (with Super Pro keyboard from Mark Data Products), and mentioned that his did was one of the co-authors of the Intracolor games, including Colorpede: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162963019482641/ 7) Mark Casteleijn posted a photo of a Coco 3 from the Canberra VCF going on this weekend in Canberra, Australia: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162962734022641/ 8) Alex Comber posted a photo of his Coco 1 system from the Wisconsin Computer Club show that happened last night: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162962488197641/ MC-10 ----- 1) Game On news (all Coco related platforms): ========================================== 1) I missed this last week, for Sibling Rivalry last week played the Coco 3 version of Lunar Lander (By Jeff Donze): https://youtu.be/YUag5uXn44s?si=rP-FR5p-TMB_wqxe 2) Paul Shoemaker has released his next Coco 1/2/3 and MC-10 arcade style game, this time porting Paku Paku (originally by Kenta Cho of ABA games). This is a single line/row of dots version of PacMan, with one ghost and one power pellet with screen wraparound. Videos of both the Coco and MC-10 versions: Coco 1/2/3 version: https://youtu.be/Vz-en9-oNLg?si=spm3U8ENJn0DVXST MC-10 version: https://youtu.be/HRBoEwLvu4E?si=9MRPPizNo8LwoXQw Free download link for both from his itch.io page: https://pshoemaker70.itch.io/paku-paku He even got a mention on the website Vintage is the New Old: https://vitno.org/2025/07/15/paku-paku-tandy-trs-80-color-computer/ 3) YouTuber Attempts: A Gaming channel by LRU did another high score attempt video this past week, this time taking on Screaming Abdabs with a score of 3,210: https://youtu.be/hysm-_epsGI?si=SFLGFvPuByjNcIos He also played Ugh! With a score of 37,875: https://youtu.be/MxDYamB8Mrg?si=q0N37u8YnlaXe3jm 4) Marlin Lee seems to be making up for lost time. After return to Coco gameplay videos (or any videos, for that matter) in years, he has 2 weeks in a row with multiple videos: Planet Raider by Aardvark: https://youtu.be/xgdzhvf66wg?si=l04Vlk8ucGxrJw91 Coco Croaker from a series of articles in Hot Coco magazine: https://youtu.be/pu4l8DGbRVk?si=0utOFCl4QIYaKn7y Fighter Pilot from Saguaro Software: https://youtu.be/7MeW3Bc7oVU?si=tBr6voQbwFfeBKbP Sea Dragon: https://youtu.be/4XsTSyO46Ao?si=7sj5iKvMI88Bv2BW Shooting Gallery: https://youtu.be/1BVyEXYcEnI?si=BTh3xXx4zGU9uhG6 5) Jim Gerrie ported Family (sort of a game or simulation), using genetics to determine what later generations will look like), originally by Andy Gamble for the Commodore PET from the March 1982 issue of COMPUTE! Magazine: https://youtu.be/ElFQAtOK3uA?si=SoddaYA1muliCXxZ He also ported CHKSRUN2 originally for the TRS-80 Model 1 by an unknown author in the early 1980’s. Jim notes that this Checkers style game end may be a bit buggy: https://youtu.be/vyBHk0NeLnY?si=Aj-klld2YYDsVLQc 6) XperTek continues on Disk 7 of his old Coco games collections. This time around he covers: Pirate (another of the Tandy Card Games collection) originally by James Garon: https://youtu.be/751aFbbU_IQ?si=0kaNt-HdrDV8PM9k 7) Paranoid Cactus (not sure who that is) has released Spooks – a Halloween game that bears some resemblance to Lode Runner, but with more complex enemies and treasure gathering. The DSK image can be found in the #general-gme-discord channel on the Coco Discord: 8) pw_32x on the Coco Discord put up a new work in progress video showing Downland game play. His description of the current version: “Re: Downland for 3DO. Current progress on the port. Player still needs the squashed animation and the regen effect. Still need to display hud text and lives icons. Encountered the touch-treasure-and-die bug once again. Speak your mind! 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