The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 431, September 20,2025 (Sep 13-Sep 19) ============================================================================= Collected by L. Curtis Boyle Special Guests today: --------------------- Glen Dahlgren – he has a new book launch, and we may talk a bit about the PhantAsm assembler (I have it downloaded so we could show the editor and the assembler, although I have no idea how to use them). His main website: https://glendahlgren.com/ Something I missed earlier at the end of July, is that he released a free ¾ hour audiobook (that he narrates himself) of a short story from his Chronicles of Chaos series, called The Dice of Chaos, on YouTube. If you want to get a flavour of his books (and audiobooks), this is a great place to start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqCroro7Ajo 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: ------------------------------------------------------------ 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 Portuguese site: https://retrosc.org/ Google translate to english version: https://retrosc-org.translate.goog/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp 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) Mike Miller posted in the Coco Nation Discord’s News Topic Suggestions channel about a project to make an IP stack for the Dragon 64 and it’s built in hardware serial port: https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11305 Direct project page on github: https://github.com/fridgemagnet3/uip/tree/dragon 2) More Fun Fixing It on YouTube did a video showing his trip to the Northwest Computer Museum in the UK, including some shots of the Dragon 32 and 64 (32:25 to see the Dragons), as well as other TRS-80’s, MC-10’s, etc. Of special note is that he picked up a Dragon 32 but is replacing the motherboard with modern versions that he got from Julian Brown (see: 1:11:46): https://youtu.be/iwLaeubVD-c?si=OtsiZFQomGOt6Hea 3) Tony Jewell posted in the Dragon group on Facebook that he is thinking of moving the Dragon Meetup to the spring of 2026 vs. the normal fall of 2025: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4161412747451696/ 4) Julian Brown posted an update about his remote control device and getting the WiFi on it working to the Dragon Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4161041164155521/ 5) John Whitworth posted a photo of a batch of SuperRGB boards for the Dragon that he is getting ready for sale: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4162233100702994/ 6) robcfg posted on the World of Dragon forums that a new tool for DragonDOS images is out, thanks to him an bluecarcus: https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11145&start=20 Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform) ------------------------------- 0) I will mention that there are quite a few posts for SepTandy on the Coco related groups on Facebook, showing various peoples machines (both from back in the day and now with collecting. I won’t show them here on the show, but you can go to the various Coco groups and change to sort by newest to see a lot of them. 1) Retro Rick has released a demo program for the Coco in the Coco Discord Events → SepTandy channel: Ron Delvaux made a short video of it: https://www.facebook.com/reel/806769232089192 2) Catching up on some Coco Town videos that I have missed over the past month or so (still trying to figure out why they were not showing up for me in my searches): Discussing how using AI to help fix the random number generator… didn’t: https://youtu.be/KKnkESbWv_M?si=RcUKb4sFJ0gdZmQ- Figuring out why RND gives skewed results: https://youtu.be/x7T3ghCYpdA?si=Wv6OzVkSr-zR0eA_ Comparing & ranking 6 different ways to randomize numbers: https://youtu.be/MVCMf6M5Wcw?si=U5UWHEoWbokVTZOu He then returned to the Moon Patrol style game he is working on, with Game Revolutions cycle 27: Teaching video game aliens to fight back: https://youtu.be/AxUhE42V-X0?si=WED5fPLSrpZ7WwmG Game Revolutions cycle 28 – Designing a big boss for my big game: https://youtu.be/-3kNPomxTvc?si=na-bOYfWcoT5ia3g Game Revolutions 29 – Animating multiple layers of shield: https://youtu.be/uMTnz0qXIXE?si=MIr6GtFlN1SSxRvF 3) La Coco Strangiato (alias Bob Emery from our panel) released a video showing him assembling the CocoSDC kit that BoysonTech sells: https://youtu.be/5xtE-6fkAMU?si=zAOEWk1ThebB74On 4) Since VCF-MW was last week, a few videos from the show are already available: Xiphod’s Photo Album of the show: https://youtu.be/ld1CXUTusDI?si=VQw3BeZNx0gedVPP Jason “CocoMan” Reighard: https://youtu.be/S7THr04IQWU?si=6vmSgpKV85TkAfP4 5) Z4RT4N on YouTube posted a short video showing him calling the Tuxedo Cat Lounge BBS from a Coco 3 via a Direct Connect modem pak at 300 baud: https://youtu.be/eSQbJvcQ0Lo?si=AFinbvKj_1awPo9G 6) 8bitsinthebasement posted VLOG 3 of his Super Shooty Aliens VLOG, showing development of his space shooter game in assembly for the Coco 1/2/3 & Dragon 32/64. He decided to use SG-24, and now he continues development based on that: https://youtu.be/GFY6tM_4ZuE?si=IQocW5g_JjxlTh6n 7) JaceFuse, who we showed last week is working on a Dungeons of Daggorath port to the Amiga, posted a short video update showing some updates to his port so far, and also shows the Coco original & a little bit of history to the game: https://youtube.com/shorts/sC6kUeUIuQ8?si=ldH--NoeoKAi2VMn 8) David Chesek posted a video for SepTandy to the Coco Facebook group showing a 32 column friendly version of RiBBS to Go by Terry Trapp, and shows a 64K Coco logging into a 2 MB RAM Coco 3 running RiBBS, both using WiFi paks: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163212856967641/ 9) Luciano Scharf posted about a heavily modified Coco 1 he received. It’s a European PAL version with 16K RAM, but modified to use Peritel/SECAM video, and was sold in Belgium, but has some things that are not at all common, which he mentions in the post, and he has a ton of up close photos of the mods: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163207340422641/ 10) Sheldon MacDonald posted a video showing his SID player hardware/software for the Coco that he demoed at CocoFest this past May to the Coco Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163202288147641/ He also posted an updated video for his upcoming game that we showed last week, and this is the final preview before the games release. This also shows the support it has for the SID chip player hardware that Brendan Donahe (of CocoVGA fame) will be selling. It is a good demo of what the Coco could have done with a sound chip (like the Deluxe Coco was going to have, although that was more primitive than the SID): https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163198041637641/ 11) Joel Ewy uploaded a first shot at making 3D printer files to print replacement CM-8 door clips to the Coco Facebook group. In the comments he mentioned some changes he is already doing: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163201182967641/ 12) David Collins posted an update on his VZ compatible RC39 Bus computer. This is a Z80 based machine (I believe) but does use the same VDG as the Coco’s, Dragons and MC-10/Alice use: https://www.facebook.com/groups/173737063356725/posts/1876967146367033/ 13) Jim Brain announced the executive for Glenside for the next year: https://www.facebook.com/groups/290791956162/?multi_permalinks=10163633558341163&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen 14) Canadian Retro Things (Ken Waters) posted another SepTandy video about the Electronic Book: https://youtu.be/Ibifdw145iA?si=w9Op03zWnRa2ifUp 15) raxfale on the Coco Discord mentioned that he has written a BASIC09 interpreter for a hobby os dev he is playing (although his public release on github is for Window, I believe). He notes it “isn’t complete, and rather untested”: https://github.com/pniekamp/basic09 MC-10 ----- 1) dougv4850 on the Coco Discord posted a link to his case design for the MCX32-SD: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7144973/files He also posted about it in the MC-10 group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/24329724976727662/ Game On news (all Coco related platforms): ========================================== 1) Retro Gaming Nook posted a video to YouTube showing Donkey Kong clones on the TRS-80 Model 1/3/4 and Coco computers as part of SepTandy (including Coco 3 Donkey Kong transcode and Donkey Kong Remix by John Kowalski (Sock Master): https://youtu.be/piOk0M3X6Vg?si=x7Pt_OSfif5pe6gG 2) Jim Gerrie posted a new MC-10 conversion of the game Super Mind (originally by Marc Petitqueux & Micro Influx back in 1983 for the Sanyo PHC-25. It is based on the popular Mastermind game: https://youtu.be/KznjFdvLLQ8?si=wKKfELtcQkPXQ26Y 3) XperTek tackled another Coco game from disk #8 in his Coco 2 amber screen collection, this time playing Space Sentry by Spectral Associates (and the 3rd place winner in the first and only Spectral Associates Game Programming contest): https://youtu.be/zws5z3m66ZY?si=b0JtYHr061isMCpV He also covered Tandy/DataSoft’s Shooting Gallery: https://youtu.be/n0TyU1f7MLg?si=HneEN0R-aybSqxZk 4) Polish YouTube channel Retro Borusk will be hosting a live stream on September 22 (10 AM CST) about Dragon 32 games – although they call it the “unknown Dragon 32”, if Google translate is to be believed: https://www.youtube.com/live/WCPq7rB8Kus?si=RsGF7Ij5T2-TXxJQ 5) WhiskyTangoFoxtrot on YouTube released a video showing Pitfall games for the Coco for another SepTandy video (including the port Trapfall): https://youtu.be/PknVv4jUcxA?si=_U_wBe2ZhlUomaYt He also played Coco Zone – a graphic adventure game, in a part 1 video: https://youtu.be/KI0JENItru4?si=FEOKPrr9tcmadc0A 6) Kari on Facebook just got a Coco 1 and is looking for suggestions on what games to try on it (thanks Brian Wieseler for letting me know about this post shortly before the show): https://www.facebook.com/itskarilawler/posts/pfbid0AKZziGFvULaNNbT1r4ETVLjaxCweLhBVDegLb4hdqgXACvjEXG7M69z6RJ7t4jREl 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/