The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 425, August 9,2025 (Jul 26-Aug 8) ============================================================================= 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-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/ A sad announcement, but the WoRC (World of Retro Computing) show that was supposed to run September 13-14 in Kitchener, Ontario will not be happening this year. But it will be back next year. 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 numerous updates the past two weeks for his cards for his Dragon ATX system, as well as regular Dragon board & case replacements. Regular Dragon – in a 4 part 3D printed case, new motherboard and power supply boards, and keyboard: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4117085125217792/ More about the case: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4113175798942058/ More about the various boards, etc. in the case: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4109804129279225/ SAMx8 update (and speculation of adding an optional serial port) with 64, 256 or 512K of RAM: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4116926451900326/ Updates on the FPGA 6847 (VDG) board: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4108726926053612/ 2) John Whitworth made an announcement on the Dragon Facebook group that since DragonPlus Electronics can now both produce CE-certified products or declare as CE-Exempt vintage components, he has re-opened sales to EU countries from his website. He has also restocked Oojamaflips (both 2020 and 2021 versions), and 6x09 Pullup adaptors: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4110848089174829/ https://dragonpluselectronics.com/product-category/hardware/ 3) Tom Erik Gundersen has made another small batch of Dragon games converted to DSK format (so things like the MiSTer can run them, since they don’t support the default extended Dragon .VDK format). 20 more games are included with this image, available in the files section of the Dragon Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4105984126327892/ Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform) ------------------------------- 1) As Mark Overholser announced earlier this week, the next CocoTECH episode will be recorded live on Tuesday, August 12, where Ken Wilmott (aka CaptainKirchoff in the Coco Discord) will do a deep dive into his 32K RAM expansion and MMU project for the MC-10, that was talking about on last week’s episode of The Coco Nation. 2) Coco Town returns with his promised explanation of how the RND function in Microsoft BASIC works, vs. the AI generated version he showed on his previous episode, and how it more truly random: https://youtu.be/XzXvcamBzOk?si=Ih1R_vHxeKVQ3SWW He also released an episode called “There is no bug. My code is beautiful”. This covers a bug from the previous episode: https://youtu.be/MkcJ1tOA7Mo?si=klHVNYg5-4nsfpWP 3) Tim Lindner pointed out a project on github to create a 6309 interposed board for the C-64: https://github.com/0x444454/Commodore-6309 4) JustinZ in the Coco Discord posted a link to his github that contains his Coco Desktop program that was published in the March 1989 issue of Rainbow magazine. This was some BASIC subroutines for a Coco 3 the supported a point and click interface for BASIC programs, including pull down menus, buttons and pop-up windows. A Tic-Tac-Toe program demo using these features is also included. Both the BASIC source code and a disk image are provided: https://github.com/zamora/coco-desktop 5) 780Tech.com (Antoinio Caballero) put up a video showing another cartridge holder for the Coco 3, called the Pentagon of Power. This is a 5 sided spinning design, increasing the amount of carts you can fit from his 4 sided Tower of Power design. He even shows how it is put together: https://youtu.be/C5V1youuw40?si=kQgiMKqW4EWd8Ddy 6) Steve Strowbridge has started CocoTalk back up (to be published irregularily at this point), this time interviewing “The 3 Pauls”… Paul Thayer, Paul Fiscarelli and Paul Shoemaker (with bonus guest Simon Jonassen). I haven’t time to watch the full show, but it looks great from what I saw so far: https://youtu.be/pYtjivpOpek?si=isxV_JwsvlR0Tqb- 7) Jim Brain/Retro Innovations posted onto the Facebook photos from his in progress switching a Coco 1 to using static RAM rather than dynamic RAM: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1929079184021683/posts/4024052867857627/ He also posted about his Banker+ project as well: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1929079184021683/posts/4018835805046000/ Jim also posted an article on the Glenside Coco Club website about “The Multi-Sensory Sound Laboratory, Part 1”. This goes into how sound and music can be represented visually for deaf people, and also shows how the Audio Spectrum Analyzer software by Stever Bjork for Tandy can be used for this purpose, as it was actually done in the 1980’s by Norman of Oval Window Audio (including pictures): https://www.glensideccc.com/the-multisensory-sound-laboratory-part-1/ 8) James Jones posted in the NitrOS9 Facebook group about some ideas he has for BASIC09 and discusses that BASIC09 (the program) is actually a primitive IDE (which I agree with), and that he plans on writing a “language server” for it: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1929079184021683/posts/4017742021822045/ 9) Jeffrey Worley posted that Fujinets are in stock (this is the original bit-banger required version; a new version is being worked on): https://www.facebook.com/groups/1929079184021683/posts/4005939233002324/ 10) Speaking of Fujinet, Rich Stephens posted a DSK image in the Coco Facebook group that his 3 small utility programs for Fujinet: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163045495572641/ 11) Erico Monteiro posted another animated GIF showing his progress on more enemies for his PMODE 4 artifacting game in progress: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163037358002641/ And another one: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163033573492641/ 12) Allen Huffman posted a teaser of him working on recovering some old videos from CocoFests in the 1990’s – with I believe Dave Wordell from one of the 1994 Fests: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163019193702641/ Allen Huffman wrote a blog post about a small snippet of BASIC code that allows performing a PCLEAR 0 without having to patch the actual BASIC ROM’s, that was originally written by Ciaran Anscomb, author of XRoar, Dunjunz and many other Coco and Dragon projects. This allows Extended (Disk) BASIC to return the last 1.5K of RAM that is reserved for graphics screens to BASIC, which is excellent if you only need text or low res semi-graphics and you need as much RAM as possible: https://subethasoftware.com/2025/08/04/ciaran-xroar-anscombs-pclear-0-without-assembly/ Allen also posted multiple blog posts about a programming challenge from UnderColor magazine in 1984 (this magazine was from Dennis Kitz, famous for writing operas, the LowerKit and Color Quaver for the Coco, amongst many, many other things). The challenge was to write the fastest Extended BASIC program to draw a spiral patter in PMODE 4: Part 1: https://subethasoftware.com/2025/08/07/undercolors-spiral-challenge-from-1984-part-1/ Part 2: https://subethasoftware.com/2025/08/08/undercolors-spiral-challenge-from-1984-part-2/ 13) Danniielle posted a video on the Coco Facebook group showing her Coco D project 99% finished: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163027580872641/ 14) Keith Frechette posted on the Coco Facebook group that he has gotten “last modified” timestamps” working as an extension to DECB disks, and includes screenshots: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163025824622641/ 15) Davy Mitchell posted a link to a YouTube short by JohnRiggs showing a still open Radio Shack in Layton, Utah: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wsjSKx3eSAA 16) Brian Blake posted photos of a custom 3D case (multi-color even!) for Jim Brain/Retro Innovations Philharmonic 12 card (itself a remake of the Symphony 12 card from back in the day). He does mention that he will need to change the font he used for “Philharmonic” as it isn’t printing cleanly, but it looks great even in it’s current state: https://www.facebook.com/groups/colorcomputer/posts/1275408354074894/ And he posted a ton of videos showing various songs running through the Philharmonic 12, including one with a graphic demo (with sound effects in addition to music), and another comparing the Coco’s built in 6 bit DAC output vs. the Symphony/Philharmonic 12 (for music samples, only play a short clip so we don’t get copyright tagged): https://www.youtube.com/@BrianBlake1968 17) Craig Iannello posted a Facebook short video showing his SBC project running on real hardware with almost everything he wants it to be able to do in text mode – including colored fonts, etc. The two things he still wants to add are horizontal scrolling and 40 column support: NOTE: Mute sound – it’s just background noise and key presses. https://www.facebook.com/reel/615867544520722 18) A new 63C09E SBC was also shown by it’s creator Tadeusz Pycio, that will run on the RCBus standard (RC2014): https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3744028312557190/ 19) Craig Jones also posted about his 6809 based SBC, which he is calling an MP-09: https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3743194862640535/ github link: https://github.com/crsjones/68Retro 20) Mike Moore posted a video showing ColorWare’s TalkHead software (which ran with their Real Talker hardware voice synthesizer card). This allowed an animated digitized head to talk in sync with the speech coming from the card. Unfortunately Mike doesn’t have the card itself so no speech comes out, but it does show the program’s fancy intro and the head animation. And that was programmed by none other than Tim Jenison, who later became famous for creating the Video Toaster on the Amiga, and his documentary on how hyper realistic painting were made hundreds of years ago called “Tim’s Vermeer”: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163010782197641/ 21) Alex Gayer uploaded the Coco 3 BASIC source code to show a 3D cube demo with rotation and wobble. Since it’s in BASIC it is quite slow (even with the double speed up POKE – it would be a bit better with a GIME-X/Z in triple speed mode) and recommends trying it in an overclocked emulator. I wonder how fast BASIC09 would do it, since it’s match and drawing functions are faster than Super Extended BASIC? https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163008695492641/ 22) Some video from the official VCF event in Canberra, Australia was sent to me by Amigos Discord member Mark, which included having Ian Mavric of Tandy Assembly fame (and also manufacturer of Coco hardware including a modern implementation of the RS-232 Pack), including show his Coco 3, a deluxe joystick and a Coco SDC. (This jumps straight to the Coco related section, but the video covers the whole show and is almost 23 minutes long): https://youtu.be/CKDZi9BqwQI?feature=shared&t=408 23) G.B. Janssen silently released Lesson 18 (in 3 parts) of his Coco 3 assembly language series, this time covering how to do text in graphics modes, including 90 degree rotations, different spacing between characters, etc.: Part 1 (shows some examples, and then goes into the history of ASCII, etc.: https://youtu.be/SRlPkfvqWHE?si=6LVGJPNff90oGyOh Part 1A (this covers some of Super Extended BASIC’s commands for graphic text): https://youtu.be/r1bXESDxUMA?si=MRsABmNf7GWZxvyh Part 2 (This covers extending the character set to use control characters for special graphics characters, how variable spacing works). A part 3 is forthcoming: https://youtu.be/TwAi_bqiNGY?si=ZXEmBcImdgEQPifF 24) NHB Retro on YouTube released a 25 minute video about fixing and adding a Mark Data Products style composite adaptor to a Coco 1 he received – damaged in transit with UPS: https://youtu.be/qFNhQ8IxI0o?si=Kq59uuw0lLoRAIsW 25) Retro Islander posted a video tutorial (almost an hour long) on how to use LLM’s to generate BASIC09 code. Work in progress (as has been discussed in the BASIC09 channel on the Coco Discord) as the LLM gets better at it: https://youtu.be/7ehy7DLp9N4?si=LvCrdkWyPn1xWWrI 26) Marlin Lee released a video that is a bit off of his normal beaten path of gaming videos, where he discusses using the Coco for more serious applications: https://youtu.be/SsRG-IaEiqU?si=AuCAnmf2webLn82a 27) Retrocity Greece on YouTube posted an interesting video called “Home Computer Wars: UK vs. USA” which includes the Coco as well as many other machines (in Greek, so translate): https://youtu.be/pBFqHvNu4Mw?si=R7iwwpH6gZ_3Jvqz They also released a YouTube short video about the Coco – but the graphics they show behind the Coco 1 have nothing to do with the Coco: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/h9D9ZD0Z8zA MC-10 ----- 1) Fresh off of making Coco 1 and 2, as well as Dragon 32/64 emulators for the Nintendo DS, Dave Bernazzani has shown some screenshots of his next work in progress for emulators for the DS – an MC-10 emulator: https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/24037942592572570/ 2) Jim Gerrie posted a link in the MC-10 Facebook group about an Alice/MC-10 Arduino project on sourceforge.net. The project started a 7 months ago, but has received continuous updates, including just last week: Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/23934893869544110/ Sourceforge direct link: https://sourceforge.net/projects/mc10duino/ Game On news (all Coco related platforms): ========================================== 1) Paul Shoemaker has released Ms. PAKU – A Coco 3 only Ms. PacMan version of his Paku Paku game. You can get it on his itch.io page for free, and he has also released a video for it: Video: https://youtu.be/ibzPsCFludo?si=DQsFUjasNB2373-3 Download: https://pshoemaker70.itch.io/ms-paku 2) Jeff Noyle has released a new blog post update to his Mythfarer 512K Coco 3 RPG game in progress, and included a video showing his new Fireball Spell effect, which looks quite impressive: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3577880?updates=true&emclan=103582791475080032&emgid=503958056943487349 3) YouTube channel Legacy Archive Collection put up a 3 minute video about “Item 104: Thexder” for the Coco 3: https://youtu.be/YoLJmkvNL8k?si=ear5ufDJI1JiW0yB 4) The Laird’s Lair did a 4 way game compare of Time Bandit on 4 platforms: Dragon 32, Amiga, Coco and Atari ST (skipping the TRS-80 Model 1/3 original and later DOS VGA versions). For some reason, the Coco version is running much slower than normal (both in sound and graphics): https://youtu.be/FeoPq0-J518?si=MbA4VYReelyfDuK- 5) Paul Volker put up some pics and a video overview of Spectral Associates Space Wrek, a clone of the arcade Star Trek Simulator arcade game: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163031316937641/ 6) Roger Taylor has a Patreon page set up for his modern remake of The Interbank Incident (written by Spectral Associates for Tandy), which he is making for Android & Google Tv’s, tablets and phones: https://www.patreon.com/posts/interbank-2025-135101594?utm_campaign=patron_engagement&utm_source=post_link&post_id=135101594&utm_id=8fe6bb7d-8d13-4bd5-b44f-2f8e23d39737&utm_medium=email 7) Jay Mundy of Spriteworx (who made the excellent recent high res BASIC game for the MC-10 with professional packaging, called T.H.E.M.), has made a cryptic announcement about a new game in development for the MC-10, called Recon Pack: https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/23956771347356362/ And a dramatic video to go with it – with a secret package being sent to one of our panel: https://youtu.be/3VfXerwB1OQ?si=Nt_BDtd8ILxmjocy 8) FRGCB TV on YouTube did a comparison video between various platforms of the Epyx racing games Pitstop and Pitstop II. This included the Coco 1 and 2 version of Pitstop II that Tandy sold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8CiKNFWEeU&t=683s 9) VCF SoCal on YouTube has published the video for the William Volk presentation from this years event, which is titled “The Accidental Gamer – How I stumbled into the Game Industry during the TRS-80/Apple II/Atari 800 era”. He mentions the Coco and how fast it’s BASIC was for his game Voyager, sold by Avalon Hill for multiple machine including the Coco. https://youtu.be/T9dIJpLtgL8?si=iNe-JIFuOJK1EWLj&t=366 10) XperTek released some new Coco 2 game play videos, including Time Bandit: https://youtu.be/8loy7lNhRG8?si=RUv5nekOoyDEyUNh Space Assault: https://youtu.be/9vyg0DwRaAk?si=7uWD2Hvdw_qrOOzu 11) Marlin Lee has kept his frenetic pace with returning to creating videos, with even more Coco gameplay goodness: Zonx (the Rainbow type in game from 1985 with some of the better sound effects of any Coco 1 and 2 game:): https://youtu.be/sfAgYhK44mo?si=QCGTVoj1o9K3KDZj Balldozer – an Arkanoid style game originally for the Dragon: https://youtu.be/i8bN_F1F-Kw?si=H0EUFopGlWdRvdVP Super Pitfall for the Coco 3: https://youtu.be/SHri5U2S0QU?si=ulI3w7w3Fn6ZtVny Advanced Star Trench Warefare – An Extended BASIC 3D game from Illustrated Memory Banks. A simpler version of the game appeared in Rainbow magazine, but it was also commercially sold: https://youtu.be/cTg221GZTVE?si=alBQUpYFUNfzBtto Arex from Adventure International – but also some other things at the end of the video: https://youtu.be/uR24jmEWD3I?si=hWsYsWdpj3a_LR0Z 12) RetroGamerDiaries on YouTube put up a video going through 20 different ports of the classic UK game Chuckie Egg, including the Dragon 32/64: https://youtu.be/USayZUg_uOU?si=S7cT0DTUUWRT24Ds 13) Polish YouTube channel gregok1973 released a video showing a 1983 game called Abecedarian, where the player’s task is to arrange all the letters in alphabetical order starting the upper left corner: https://youtu.be/WE8ZQVe-UXQ?si=-Oz7TxzWW7wAl0UN 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/