The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 434, October 11,2025 (Oct 4-Oct 9) =========================================================================== 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 East is holding a swap meet October 18 in Wall, New Jersey. This is a fund raiser for the VCF-East show. Specific location is in a parking lot, and they have a Google Maps link to find it: https://vcfed.org/vcf-swap-meet/ The DFW (Dallas/Fort Worth) Retrocomputing Show and Tell is happening Saturday, October 18 at the Bingo Bingo in Grand Prairie, Texas: https://www.meetup.com/dfw-retrocomputing/events/310440840/ 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/ The Vernon BC Retro Mania is happening November 8th, showing off various retro computers: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163312949837641/ The Retro Computer Festival is being held November 15-16 at Cambridge in the UK, and this year's theme is gaming: https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/74558/Retro-Computer-Festival-2025-(Gaming-Edition)-Saturday-15th-November/ 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/ 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) Dave's 8-Bit Basement on YouTube continues working on fixing the Dragon 32 he has: https://youtu.be/8BadcQi8cls?si=9OqWG4XuL0IMV0nq 2) Robcfg on the World of Dragon forums posted the ROM image and some BASIC code for the Driving test program that we talked about last week: https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11310 3) Seb's Place on YouTube has an interview with Chris Poacher (who maintains the Microdeal page on Facebook) about his Dragon 32 back in the day: https://youtu.be/P73pIGbJ4lU?si=MawRWbYUDREBY9sd 4) John Whitworth talks about Claude Code ' mainly for analyzing Verilog and VHDL code, but he is also experimenting with Coco/Dragon BASIC code with it: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4185540625038908/ 5) Barry Metcalfe posted photos of a few souvenirs that he picked up from the Northwest Computer Museum: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4182077968718507/ 6) Julian Brown posted in the Dragon Facebook group that he hasn't had much time to work on actual hardware, but he has been playing around with KiCad: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4180640432195594/ Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform) ------------------------------- 1) Tim Lindner pointed to the fact that Unicode includes a bunch of character sets for retro computers' including the Coco: https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2019/19025-terminals-prop.pdf#page=27 2) ugBASIC's Beta branch had an update. While most of it is for other platforms, there is now added support for high precision arithmetic for all platforms including the Coco: https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/beta 3) The CocoSDC has a new firmware update. This fixes a bug that causes some files to not be 'see-able' if certain attributes are set, and also changes the default creation date stamp of files to be the last build date, rather than a fixed date that never changes. This means each firmware update from now on will get a later date: https://cocosdc.blogspot.com/ 4) Wayne Campbell has been sleuthing out BASIC09 internals, and has updated his I-Code page to reflect his new discoveries about unpacked I-Code: https://wayneca.neocities.org/Basic09/The_Structure_of_I-Code 5) Keronian on Github has released details on two composite video mod boards for the Coco 2: https://github.com/keronian/CoCo2 6) 8bitsinthebasement release VLOG 5 of his Super Shooty Aliens development process, an SG-24 alien shootemup game for the Coco 1/2/3, Dragon 32/64 and clones: https://youtu.be/yJvrXQtfTGY?si=sv7jInRrs9NzRfIK 7) Brian P. Cox discusses Fujinet and all of the platforms and capabilities on the Vida Digital and FutureVision Research YouTube channel, with the host Alex Neuman: https://youtu.be/yvLmjTOkRVA?si=duXJNweiHKooFY9M 8) The newly relaunched print magazine Compute's Gazette is actively looking for a regular column for Tandy/TRS-80 machines: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163324978422641/ 9) Rich Stephens put up a Facebook video going into the Bouncy World client for the Coco running through Fujinet: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163313049222641/ 10) Adam Bouzane posted in the Coco Facebook group that the Vernon BC Retro Mania is happening November 8th, showing off various retro computers: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163312949837641/ 11) Thomas Cherryhomes posted in the Coco Facebook group that he is looking for someone to code OS-9 drivers for Fujinet: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163310626807641/ MC-10 ----- 1) Spriteworx has another ad/story background video on YouTube for his upcoming MC-10 game: https://youtu.be/kb-wMcKxGAo?si=6OM4C6RvHZOoR6XQ Game On news (all Coco related platforms): ========================================== 1) YouTube channel hirudov put up longplay videos of both Dunkey Munkey and Donkey King, as well as 7 Card Stud: Dunkey Munkey: https://youtu.be/RMTZpbLaXhQ?si=BGCYrWUs_tAUA5-6 Donkey King: https://youtu.be/EaCVzRg__Bg?si=dm9U2Ye80iYhQSEQ 7 Card Stud: https://youtu.be/ikyr0da5dIw?si=yu9YlGAF5O-kq3-B 2) Kamehouse on YouTube posted video shorts of several Coco games, on real Coco 2 hardware: Microbes: https://youtube.com/shorts/VzATNZ7RtYc?si=vo-ukMH5ksiHZ2-m Dragon Fire: https://youtube.com/shorts/FfMipdrDS1E?si=cAQ6Nn0CYrxZtHlL 3) XperTek covered Quasar Commander on his amber screen real Coco 2: https://youtu.be/uRgNB-bljY0?si=0JPmrDCzAmJ99Aem 4) The Coco/Dragon game port Glutton that we showed last week (itself a port from an Atari ST game) has been now converted to the MC-10 by Jim Gerrie: https://youtu.be/fAuk8aAHjeg?si=5fUzTACqVIoYujFk 5) Attempts: A Gaming channel (by LRU) covered Copta Snatch on the Dragon 32/64: https://youtu.be/uEIzmEbJlDg?si=HN8UKsZ1-j6wmMhe 6) I missed this earlier, but the latest Inufuto game Svellas has been converted to the Dragon as well: https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11302 Speak your mind! 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