[Index]
The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 423, July 26,2025 (July 19-July 25)
=============================================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
Interview schedule:
-------------------
Interviews are being coordinated ...
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/
This year’s RetroSC (a general retro show in Brazil, with a lot of
Coco and Coco clones present) is November 15, 2025 in Florianopolis,
SC, Brazil:
https://retrosc.org/
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.
**** 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) Julian Brown posted a brief update that he is currently
troubleshooting the PAL padding logic for one of his video projects:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4096909433902028/
2) John Whitworth posted an interesting chart of how many of his
various Dragon hardware boards he has sold (through DragonPlus
Electronics) over the last 7 years:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4096592183933753/
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
0) Ken of Canadian Retro Things will be talking about his latest
video – programming the Electronic Book, during our Project updates
segment, since he has to leave the show early:
https://youtu.be/q3Pf-wfpRw0?si=uHv5v1fv1EEpoUT3
1) Desi Villaescusa posted some photos of his CocoEPROMpak cartridge
cases that he made for the PCB’s that he is working on:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162990552552641/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162983092207641/
2) Toni W Ryan posted in the Coco Facebook group about a custom Coco
3/Os9 Level 2 system they used at his school, where they had Apple
2’s and Coco 2’s hooked up to the Coco 3 via serial ports (they
also had a multi-pak, Eliminator, etc.) including custom terminal
software for the Apple II that emulated OS9 Level 2 escape codes:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162990398142641/
3) Somewhat along the same line are some posts by Toni W Ryan in the
Coco Facebook group talking about a Coco program he wrote for Pizza
Hut back in the day, and how a BASIC program he wrote ended up saving
them hours of drudgery previously done by hand:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162977475872641/
And an inventory program he wrote on his Coco 1:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162973431402641/
4) Dannielle just about has her Coco-Musik solo album, and wants
to include video clips of Nick’s Coco Pong game as part of the
video. She is wondering if Nick can make Pong run itself in a demo
mode. Nick?
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162983284742641/
5) Erico Monteiro posted an updated animated gif showing a possible
new game he is working on – showing the cat he demoed last week,
but adding a Coconut crab and some insects:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162980551542641/
And an earlier clip showing what happens when the cat encounters water:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162966857597641/
6) Terry Trapp – the sysop of he RiBBS Coco 3/NitrOS9 BBS system
one can hit through Telnet – shows that he can even log in through
his phone:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162976978112641/
7) Dave Bernazzani has posted yet another update to his Draco-DS
(a Coco ˝ and Dragon 32/64 emulator for the Nintendo DS, now up to
version 1.2, which has the following updates:
Improved FDC disk handling - OS9 games now load and run! Go play
Robot Odyssey and enjoy.
Improved artifacting - less glitches and 50% faster. DS-Lite no
longer has any frameskip!
Added 'Muddied Green' artifacting for the non Black/White
color set.
Added 'Diagonals' as a d-pad option for Q-Bert like games.
Speedup POKE is now available to boost CPU speed to an effective
1.78MHz
Fixed Skiing cart so it now runs past the 'Get Ready... Get Set'
voice.
Boosted sound 50% across the board (it was sounding a little weak)
Announcement
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162976238162641/
Download from his github:
https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/DracoDS
8) YouTube channel JimsElectronicShop posted a 5+ minute video of
6809 general info, if one prefers looking at it in video format (and
with voiceover explaining what one is looking at) rather than a text
file format:
https://youtu.be/q4awmhNgspE?si=lK0ljLwiIvHMJqzK
9) Coco Town has released another video in his series about his Moon
Patrol style game. This episode covers generating random numbers in
6809 assembly language… but generated by AI (originally done by
Glen Hewlett). He deep dives into the how the algorithm works. He
promises a followup to explain how the Microsoft BASIC one works –
which appears more truly random, but slower:
https://youtu.be/nhuOyMNIbHk?si=ZkxNY8aAq2VAloy5
10) Richard Lorbieski, owner of the resurrected Boysontech, has 3
new product announcements today, all shipping starting Monday (and
will show up on store.boysontech.com on Sunday)
https://www.facebook.com/BoysonTech1/posts/
pfbid0fUz1xYco6QviwT24t5izgwKVsuGPyeqpAcFw3BAJiY8CtrueMHudaLP3xZWt2hJpl#?dgf
Paragon Joystick adapter
This allows one to use Atari or Sega Genesis joysticks through
the analog ports on Coco 1/2/3’s, Dragon 32/64 (which need an
adapter cable), and Tandy 1000’s. $23 USD each
Boomerang Classic 512K RAM expansion board
Uses static RAM like most modern Coco 3 RAM upgrades, thus drawing
far less power and generating less heat than the older dynamic
RAM model. No soldering required. $24 USD each
CocoSDC – now being sold either as a kit or a fully assembled unit,
including 3D printed cases from John Strong. $85 USD each including
the case.
11) EJ Jaquay had put up a preview release of the next version of the
VCC Coco 3 emulator – version 2.1.9.3p1. This version contains some
bug fixes, as well as better support for CocoSDC emulation:
https://github.com/VCCE/VCC/releases/tag/vcc-2.1.9.3p1
MC-10
-----
1)
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) For those who loved the SPOOKS game that we mentioned last week,
Paranoid Cactus has an itch.io page which shows a lot of different
games that he has made for other platforms (as well as Spooks
itself, which we now know will run in 32K RAM, and has 6 different
screens). And we learned a bit from the Cactus himself – he is a
fellow Aussie to Nick!:
https://paranoidcactus.itch.io/
2) Pere Serrat has converted the newest Inufuto game Mazy2 to run on
the Dragon, and you can download this updated version from the World
of Dragon forum:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11299
3) Marlin Lee has added some more Coco game video playthroughs to
his channel:
“A clone is as good as a port” – going through some of Marlin’s
favourite unofficial clones of popular arcade games:
https://youtu.be/DB9v8iOwOXs?si=bEk5D8Eivu5R0DHu
Flying Tigers – a Defender clone we just played recently on the
Game On Challenge:
https://youtu.be/ErEAV-q_knE?si=i9EtUnMVP1qcKzAY
Germ Warfare – a cassette magnazine game:
https://youtu.be/xFlnKhrnpQ4?si=QXEZnoZCBC8wPhUq
4) XperTek covers the game Protectors by Tom Mix Software this week
on his real Coco 2 with amber monitor (After a short bit on a dice
game written in BASIC):
https://youtu.be/e_ddze4rZ6s?si=oZbEwMcPDXjktZ4T
5) YouTube channel Roy (Random Precision) is making a modern port of
the Dragon 32 specific version of Chuckie Egge. It’s running slow
and is still in development – but the graphics, sound and game play
seems to pretty well be there already:
https://youtu.be/M03Q9rr9swQ?si=FFUr64mtYfzZSMKd
6) German YouTube channel EORetro (whom we covered recently when he
showed his Dragon 32) released a 45+ minute video that aims to cover
a wide range of games on the Dragon 32. He does this with original
tapes and original cassette inlay instructions, starting with Ring of
Darkness, but including classics like Manic Miner, Downland, Return of
the Beast, Dunjunz and more. There are even some demo’s at the end:
https://youtu.be/s1GmNP3ZKIA?si=V1hLK7CNZIGHdC0C
7) Marco Spedaletti, author of the cross platform ug (Micro games)
BASIC compiler, posted a link to games written using ugBASIC, and
which platforms each game is currently available on. There are multiple
Coco, Coco 3 and Dragon entries, even including some Coco exclusives,
if one wants to try them out or even program their own:
https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/games
8) Paul Shoemaker put up a teaser of a Ms. Paku that he is working on
– which is his latest Paku Paku game but with full Coco 3 graphics:
(show local file “Coco Nation News/upcoming ms.paku by Paul
Shoemaker (ugbasic channel) - Coco 3 only version of paku paku
WIP.png”
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/