[Index]
The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 426, August 16,2025 (Aug 9-Aug 15)
=============================================================================
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/
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 some thoughts to Phil Harvey-Smith, which I
will let our hardware technical guys explain:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4118861138373524/
Julian also posted that he is basically ready to order the next batch
of Dragon Extended boards for prototyping. He also mentioned that he
has designed an ESP32 based board that has a little colour screen,
but also has a rotary switch that controls the operation mode with
16 positions, of which will change between different machine types
(Dragon 32 with or without an extra 32K RAM and/or DriveWire), Dragon
64 with / without DriveWire, and Coco mode:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4123187221274249/
2) The Laird’s Lair on YouTube did a video about 5 unreleased British
Home Computers… and the Dragon Professional made the list (see 7:17)
https://youtu.be/lL6-Q_kuCVg?si=9lfcFbhjT4huSN02
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
1) A bit of sad news that was pointed out by Richard Lorbieski of
Boysontech: The old Falsoft building in Prospect, KY (the eventual
office for Rainbow magazine after they outgrew Lonnie’s kitchen
and house) is to be torn down to make room for a parking lot:
https://www.facebook.com/ProspectAreaChamberofCommerce/posts/the-prospect-area-chamber-needs-a-new-homeallthe-falsoft-building-where-we-are-c/1038137611833599/
2) Tim Lindner guested on The Intellivision Gamer show this past
week, talking about Lumacode and adaptors for consoles. This isn’t
strictly Coco related, but since Tim is such an active member of the
community (including MAME), I wanted to plug the show. His segment
is at the beginning:
https://www.youtube.com/live/NY-y-JMg3Do?si=lDxOplm7T_9qdojR
3) Erico Monteiro posted a few more GIF’s showing progress on this
Coco 1,2 artifact game work in progress:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163062079872641/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163066999492641/
4) ugBASIC (the cross platform cross-compiler) has been getting
updates the past few weeks. In the Main branch, some bug fixes in the
DRAW command were added in addition to some non-Coco bugfixes. The
Beta branch has been getting extensive updates; including adding new
commands like FCIRCLE & FELLIPSE (filled circle & ellipse), TRIANGLE
command, and adding support fro Vtech computers like the VZ200 - which
while not directly Coco related, is a distant cousin since it also
uses the 6847 VDG chip, just like the MC-10, Coco 1,2 and Dragon 32/64:
https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/beta
5) Jim Brain did a part 2 blog on the Glenside website about the Oval
Window Audio Coco based project using Audio Spectrum Analyzer to help
deaf students:
https://www.glensideccc.com/the-multisensory-sound-laboratory-part-2/
6) D. Bruce Moore posted a video of of him retrofitting an old game
he wrote at age 16 called SpaceLab with new audio, using the CocoMP3
him and David Kroeker have been working on:
https://coco.gracenote.ca/retro-fitting-an-old-game-with-new-audio/
MC-10
-----
1) Following up on Ron Delvaux’s big reveal last week of Spriteworx
upcoming MC-10 game release, it turns out TJ Ferreira is also a secret
agent for this game:
https://youtu.be/fiDry-rLKA0?si=hv5uESchjFA1asMf
2) Dave Bernazzani, whom we mentioned last week is working on an MC-10
emulator for the Nintendo DS, has an update – the first public beta
of the emulator will become available to the public this weekend! But
he also mentions that although he already has support for the 16K
RAM expansion, he is
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/24080090905024405/
And un update – the Beta release is now available:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/24086593971040765/
Direct link to Dave’s github page for the project:
https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/MicroDS
Also, Dave has uploaded version 1.5 of his Coco/Dragon emulator for the
DS, adding some features, like cassette swap added to a mini-menu,
improved sound, improved SG4/SG6 handling, a bug fix to the MUL
instruction, and fixed alternative color set:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163075992897641/
Download link:
https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/DracoDS
3) Jim Gerrie posted a link to the Internet Archive with a port
of Harry McCracken’s old game Arctic Adventure,with a few bug
fixes. I think we linked to video of the gameplay before, but not
the download link. Harry is still in tech these days as a reporter
and magazine writer:
https://archive.org/details/arctic_202508
4) David Collins posted a schematic of how to do a 15KHz NTSC YPbPR
(Component video, I believe) output from the VDG (6847) chip:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163065298362641/
5) After showing videos of how his new Pentagon of Power cartridge
and SD card case storage assembles and works, Antoinio Caballero has
released the 3D Model files for printing your own to Thingiverse:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163065243677641/
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7117194
6) Simon Jonassen posted that since his server is offline, his SGEDit
online tool can still be found and used elsewhere:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163075161627641/
The app direct link:
https://daftspaniel.neocities.org/tools/sgeditremix/
7) Thomas Cherryhomes posted that he is working on an article about
Fujinet for the recently relaunched Compute! Gazette magazine, and
showed a screenshot of some of the text he is preparing, including
mentioning the Coco port:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163073334697641/
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Tim & AJ of Sibling Rivalry fame put up a video showing Protectors
by Tom Mix Software:
https://youtu.be/J_3jp1BsWls?si=MVWZaqLCgHBxlswv
I think I missed one of their previous Coco game videos last month
as well, namely Pac Tac II by Computerware. But this version has
enhanced colors for the Coco 3 by the looks of it:
https://youtu.be/Nb8xmTt4Re8?si=WTTU5K0R1LvEUIi7
2) Brent and Aaron of the Amigos are recording the next Coco
show tomorrow, covering a rarely seen game called Eastern World
Karate. Tentatively there are two more episodes to record this year
as well (dates subject to change), currently planned for October 26
and November 23. And they just announced this week that the next game
coming up is Quix (which was tied in their online voting with Juno,
so a coin flip was required).
Where to find the Livestream:
https://www.youtube.com/@AmigosRetroGaming
A little on the game itself:
http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/eastworld_karate.html
3) PW_32x in the Coco Discord posted a video of his WIP of a Downland
port to the Sega 32X system. He indicated that he is almost done
the port:
(Show local file “Downland-port to Sega 32X WIP from PW-32x.mov”)
4) XperTek on YouTube has released his “summary” video of his
“Games of the 80’s” Volume 7. If you haven’t been following
his individual game video releases, this is a way to catch up to all
of the ones he covered from disk #7 from his Coco 2 collection:
https://youtu.be/-SvYBl26N1Y?si=db7zYS4JC0larGtf
5) Paul Shoemaker posted a video of his conversion of his previously
Coco 3 only Ms. Paku game to the Coco 1 and 2, with just 4
colors…. And now even an MC-10 version as well:
https://youtu.be/w4Qxds4Fq2o?si=ib5dFcga0yA_E_7A
Download page:
https://pshoemaker70.itch.io/ms-paku
6) Nostalgiavault on youtube released a video of Inufuto’s Aerial
gameplay . His description mentions he played it on a Coco 3 – but
he played the Coco 1 & 2 version of the game:
https://youtu.be/5MM2iZGvqdw?si=ajiy5Jkyt3R7ulJ1
7) Speaking of Inufuto – they have started releasing their next game,
called Svellas, although I haven’t seen MC-10 or Coco ports of it
yet as of Friday morning. 40 platforms are out, including things like
the VZ200 (which shares the same 6847 VDG chip as the Coco 1 & 2 &
MC-10), so it should be out shortly:
http://inufuto.web.fc2.com/8bit/svellas/
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