[Coco] The CoCo Nation News stories for Episode 428, August 30, 2025 (Aug 23-Aug 29)

Sun Aug 31 10:31:52 EDT 2025

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

==============================================================================

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