The CoCo Nation News stories for Episode 428, August 30,2025 (Aug 23-Aug 29) ============================================================================= Collected by L. Curtis Boyle and Presented by Mark Overholser 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. Native Spanish site: https://retrosc.org/ Google translate to english version: 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. And hotel rates are locked in now (see post on Glenside website) https://www.glensideccc.com/ That same weekend is the first official Latin American VCF, which takes place April 24-26 in Bahia Blanca, Argentina: https://vcf-espaciotec-com-ar.translate.goog/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp **** 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 photo of his Rev 3 prototype board that he just received… but he won’t have time to do anything with it until Sunday: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4138957449697226/ He also showed a new 1.9” LCD display that he got to use for debugging: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4137739043152400/ He also posted an idea for a keyboard with 50 addressable RGB leads: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4133689653557339/ He also posted an update to getting PAL and NTSC video timings working on his replacement VDG: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4131877003738604/ 2) YouTube channel hirudov posted a video doing testing of the BASIC interpreter for the Dragon 64: https://youtu.be/CDBfJmbhzns?si=JJLflboR9AgY0gzR CoCo 1/2/3 (and multi-platform) ------------------------------- 1) Brian Blake did 2 blog posts on his Tandy TRS-80 website about a cooler he has for his TDP-100: Revisiting the Cooler, where he works on making a more aesthetic design than his previous versions: https://tandy-trs80.com/revisiting-the-cooler/ The Final Cooler, where he includes the STL file so people can make the mount themselves: https://tandy-trs80.com/the-final-cooler/ He also showed pictures of the 3D case he has done for the MIDI Maestro board that Jim Brain/Retro Innovations sells: (show local file “Brian Blake - Midi Maestro case.jpg” 2) Dave Bernazzani, the person who made both the CoCo 1&2/Dragon 32/64 and MC-10 emualators for the Nintendo DS, made a post on the Coco Facebook group about his discovery of the actual text colors the VDG supports (like many, he assumed it was either black on green or black on orangish/yellow, rather than the dark green and dark red the VDG actually does): https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163127646177641/ He also released the latest MC-10 emulator for the DS, listing all of it’s hardware and software support (which includes some more modern ones): https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163116103737641/ github download link: https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/MicroDS 3) Guillaume Major (who runs the Color Computer Archive and also did the ports of Sierra Online AGD engine games for the CoCo 3) has announced an updated CocoSDC image update, where he now has Coco 3 programs moved into a separate folder, making it easier to find Coco 3 specific programs (and not accidentally trying to launch Coco 3 programs on a Coco 1 or 2): https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163126465572641/ Direct link: https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Disks/CoCo%20SDC/Image/ 4) This will be added to the upcoming events list as well, but panel regular Henry pointed out that the first official Latin VCF is happening in 2026. VCF LATAM 2026 will be April 24-26 in Bahia Blanca, Argentina (and right near the Atlantic Ocean): Spanish website: https://vcf.espaciotec.com.ar/ Translated to English website: https://vcf-espaciotec-com-ar.translate.goog/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp 5) Andrew Ayers posted a ZIP file in the CoCo Facebook group that has an updated version of his Fracland graphics demo, with updated notes and a PDF of the original Creative Computing article that inspired it: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163123201882641/ 6) Brian Wieseler found an interesting keyboard adapted to the CoCo available on ebay earlier this week (Model 4P keyboard, perhaps?): https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163113545347641/ 7) Bryan Clingman posted a video on YouTube showing him running an updated version of the Micro Core Labels MCL6809 running on a CoCo 3 with NitrOS9: https://youtu.be/bwO4PYt1v4E?si=wbt-bse8SHj7F5qo 8) Jason Vectrex show his CoCo cartridge collection in a YouTube video: https://youtu.be/v4dox8aPu0s?si=b5MGJSgLMigBXiRy MC-10 ----- 1) >>> Your News Here? <<< Game On news (all CoCo related platforms): ========================================== 1) Jim Gerrie has released a new graphical adventure game for the MC-10 called “Quest for Fire” that requires the enhanced BASIC and RAM with the MCX-SD expansion (which, honestly, all MC-10 owners should get if possible). Jim translated the original Sanyo HC-25 code (and from French to English), and did some bug fixes and tweaks to actually make the game winnable (in multiple ways). The game looks really good with 128x96x4 color graphics: Video of game in action: https://youtu.be/v8jErlYWCw4?si=E3iFs8CVGDIFz19V Link to download it: https://archive.org/details/FIREWAR 2) XperTek released videos showing more game play from his disk #8 on his amber screen equipped CoCo 2: Dino Wars: https://youtu.be/rInMQ-YbS2U?si=APSTeI2ylu0MAi8X Galactic Attack: https://youtu.be/4yjj8kFVhRo?si=6C6nlQyggEI7z2K4 3) Ron “Deluxe” Delvaux is a guest on SpriteWorx latest teaser for their upcoming MC-10 game… Along with TJ Ferrera: https://youtu.be/Q93BZkDLlnY?si=N956lTnJwz6hxb1N 4) Attempts: A gaming channel (by LRU) posted another high score attempt, this time with the Dragon game Monsters by Softek (with a score of 12,728): https://youtu.be/2_PbT9huXnA?si=yGSfZ1dYX1QyXa2X 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/