The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 429, September 6,2025 (Aug 30-Sep 5) ============================================================================= Collected by L. Curtis Boyle and Presented 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/ Thundercon (A Comic Con at the Canadian Lakehead Exhibition Grounds in Thunder Bay, Ontario) is September 20-21. Ken Waters (Canadian Retro Things) will be hosting his Tandy display along with the Thunder Bay Retro Computer Club on the 2nd day (Sunday, September 21). If you are in the area, pop by! 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 at the 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) Ciaran Anscomb has released XRoar 1.9. This fixes some bugs, adds SAMX8 support, adds support for emulating the CP-400 Brazilian Coco clone, and more: https://www.6809.org.uk/xroar/ 2) Julian Brown posted about his Configuration remote control, for which he has most of the software done and now needs to add the hardware. It will let one boot a Dragon or Coco with various hardware configurations: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4144654169127554/ He also posted a photo of his new boards all together (some small components still needed, and the GAL needs some programming): https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4142243299368641/ 3) The Mastertronic Collectors Archive has blogged “Micro Natters Part 3: A Mastertronic Re-Release Guid – Other 8 bit formats”. This includes the Dragon game Bug Diver, along with other 8 bit systems: https://mastertronic.co.uk/micro-natters-part-3-a-mastertronic-re-release-guide-other-8-bit-formats/ 4) Sebs Place on Facebook posted in the Microdeal group that Chris Poacher (who runs the Microdeal group) has donated a Dragon 32 and many add-ons to him, and that he is now working on a video about what it was like growing up with a Dragon 32: https://www.facebook.com/groups/204334613785733/posts/1771056480446864/ 5) Chris Poacher posted a scan about the unofficial history of Cuthbert that originally appeared in Home Computing Weekly magazine issue 124 (Aug. 6-12 1985): https://www.facebook.com/groups/204334613785733/?multi_permalinks=1772469970305515&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform) ------------------------------- 1) Sheldon MacDonald released an hour long video showing how he preps MIDI music files for both his Coco and Sega Genesis projects, using his Qmidi Studio program: https://youtu.be/MUksBNj_gvQ?si=A-GEFHuBiuoa0Vw6 2) La Coco Strangiato (Bob Emery) uploaded a video to his YouTube channel, where he attempts to get rid of the yellow bar in video output on a Coco 2: https://youtu.be/YaalJ70wBaY?si=_1b8bj8Sl5krP3bO 3) Wayne Campbell uploaded an hour long video to YouTube where he investigates BASIC09 and how it’s Icode works with both BASIC09 and RUNB: https://youtu.be/HV_wQSKhDKc?si=zNP1GGrYQfJJhCMZ 4) I think this was missed by Curtis last week: Allen Huffman on his Sub Etha Software blog did a part 3 to the UnderColor magazine’s spiral challenge, including optimized submissions and corrections to the actual mission of the original article: https://subethasoftware.com/2025/08/21/undercolors-spiral-challenge-from-1984-part-3/ 5) Nicolas Maillouski posted in the Coco Facebook group that Canada’s first VCF in Montreal this January is still taking exhibitor registrations. Hopefully some Coco people can make it: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163157280987641/ 6) Alison DeNu has returned for SepTandy, releasing a utility called the Character Doctor. Written in Extended BASIC and available for download, and is used for generating text characters on a PMODE 4 screen. (NOTE: There is a screenshot in the comments): Main post: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163155844807641/ Direct Google Drive link (it may be on the Color Computer Archive by showtime): https://drive.google.com/file/d/19jpUeb0YsviXdRGBknZoy02iUqFM68hQ/view 7) Andrew Ayers released a DSK image on the Coco Facebook group that contains page flipping demos for the Coco 3: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163148896202641/ He also uploaded a DSK image for PRINT speed tests, based on Jim Mullis’ earlier upload. It contains 3 original and 3 optimized versions: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163145659887641/ He also released a DSK image of 512K BASIC from Microcom, including some instructions to the Coco Facebook group, for those who want to expand the Coco 3’s capabilities in Super Extended BASIC to take advantage of 512K RAM: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163158857442641/ 8) Rich Stephens posted a few updates to FujiNet’s news client, specifically for the Coco 3. The latest video improvements (which now supports 32, 40 and 80 column modes) is shown in the Coco Facebook group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163143905167641/ 9) Speaking of FujiNet … it’s originator, Thomas Cherryhomes, will be at VCF-MW Sept 13-14 to show the various FujiNet systems off, and will be attempting an Intellivision bring-up: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163132408862641/ 10) John Papas posted photos and videos showing his Coco 2 portable laptop style computer to the Coco Facebook group. I wonder how this compares with PortaCoco that we have seen the last few years at CocoFest? https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163135091462641/ 11) John Linville posted a photo of the game controller he received from Paul Thayer, showing a different color combination: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163131943512641/ 12) 8bitsinthebasement on YouTube (Hi Peter!) has started a new VLOG series for a new game that he is working on called Super Shooty Aliens. He shows the beginning of the code running, what the plan for the game is, and then goes through assembly source to show how the player’s ship moves and fires: https://youtu.be/arDVAC8kJiI?si=uUtuRXvCb6DC9NGO He posted his second VLOG this morning, covering how he does the starfield effect: https://youtu.be/7mke2fBJpGM?si=ztDMKMTU185zJGh- 13) Ken (Canadian Retro Things) Waters, esteemed panelist on the Coco Nation and the Game On Challenge, has done a follow up video for programming for the Electronic Book. It is titled “Math is Hard”, so obviously he has been listening to Curtis and Nick too long: https://youtu.be/kCPzTBJdgcw?si=orL9OH-uPrzwClNJ 14) CocoTown’s series of videos about Random number generation on his YouTube channel got mentioned in the Portuguese YouTube podcast Reporter Retro, in episode 117 (1:07:29, but one will need close captions and auto translate turned on): https://youtu.be/UA0K1psS2ss?si=SD2Zw3V3C-reRIOC 15) Sheldon Macdonald put up a short video showing a new 64K Coco 1/2/3 game that he is woking on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163159861912641/ 16) Henry over at The Break Key (welcome back!) released an hour long video going into doing comparisons and logical operations in the Forth ROM he is building: https://youtu.be/ga617U_UPow?si=aPMBseqh32Uq4hh7 MC-10 ----- 1) Jay Mundy of SpriteWorx, who is working on a new MC-10 game that he has been teasing (with guests!), suffered a bit of a set back and made a sarcastic post about it. He has recovered (re-written) the code that was lost: https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/24212592775107550/ Game On news (all Coco related platforms): ========================================== 1) Marlin Lee released a video on his YouTube channel showing dot eating games that are not just clones of PacMan: https://youtu.be/4KwkkRc62v4?si=0gCojc4gY0uwjPNP He also released a video showing one of the possible solutions in the text adventure game Bedlam (which had a randomized solution each time you played it, so it isn’t the same game every time you play it): https://youtu.be/EVNFTrUhdCo?si=1Z6WucnhuJBQ9idL 2) Coco-Synthesis on YouTube released a video showing his Coco 3 version of PacMan, written in Coco 3 Super Extended BASIC. It has 6 mazes and 7 bonus fruits: https://youtu.be/irhWQPIApoc?si=vB6vnS3ZTp-Llhxe Download and source code links: https://github.com/CoCo-Synthesis/BASIC-Pac-Man/releases/tag/v1.0.0 3) Andrew Ayers released an updated version of Color Blitz (like Canyon Bomber on the C64, I believe) on the Coco Facebook group for the Coco 1/2/3 (NOTE: Screenshots in the comments). This was originally ported to the Coco by Matt Voss based on the original VZ-200 version: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163139168042641/ 4) Tim and AJ have released episode 196 (or is it 156? lol) of Sibling Rivalry on their My Drunk Sibling channel, playing Blitz on the Coco: https://youtu.be/F9XWoSK3Geg?si=JzmtUiHjzwtfabql 5) XperTek continues going through his Disk #8, this time playing Gomoku Renju from Tandy: https://youtu.be/wG3DwWj6Cj4?si=TlUnrTSt_zG5s7-r And Megabug: https://youtu.be/V52AYq3AFAU?si=HJkjOaC7c2KTUwpk 6) Dragon32 on YouTube posted a video of playing Shenanigans (one of the early graphical text adventure games, originally by Mark Data Products) on XRoar, right to the end and winning the game: https://youtu.be/8CPIdFAD4zk?si=Fo855l8zeN1A1BqE 7) As part of SepTandy, YouTube channel WhiskyTangoFoxtrot posted some game streaming videos playing Coco games, including his commentary: Cashman: https://youtu.be/EbN2S8Dk8Wo?si=3mqaY3TxrDnGUJ1C Calixto Island part 1: https://youtu.be/jWIjmdcyGME?si=evJz-Zi3-o4IYP4j 8) YouTube channel Cybercrime Debunkers posted a video showing scans of every page from issue #1 of TILT magazine in France. There is some Dragon 32 content hidden away in it’s pages (sorry, didn’t get a chance to find where specifically): https://youtu.be/l9P6mDGFZRU?si=2MKxlmBK7h3cHjfJ 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/