[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 420, July 5, 2025 (June 28-July 4)
R. Allen Murphey
exile at weylan-yutani.com
Sun Jul 6 10:06:07 EDT 2025
The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 420, July 5,2025 (June 28-July 4)
===============================================================
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:
------------------------------------------------------------
International Retro Computer Expo (formerly BoatFest) will be July
11-13 in Hurricane, WV. There is now a promo video for it:
https://www.ticketsource.us/ircexpo2025/t-eanjyje
VCF West at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California is
August 1-2, from 10 am-6 pm Friday and 9 am-5 pm Saturday. There are
usually some Coco people at the show (both attendees and exhibitors),
and we have had walkthroughs before that show it to be a fun show
with a lot of history since it is in Silicon Valley:
https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-west/
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/
Also that same weekend, for Canadians and anyone wanting to travel
up to Canada, the WoRC (World of Retro Computing) show is September
13-14 at the old Goudies Department Store location at 8 Queen Street
North, Kitchener,ON, Canada (West of Toronto, and right beside The
Museum). This is a general retro show with a bunch of gaming and home
computer platforms, vendors, seminars, LAN parties, workshops, door
prizes & raffles and is sponsored by Retro Rewind. Admission is free,
and it runs noon to 5 pm Eastern on both Saturday and Sunday:
https://worldofretrocomputing.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/
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. Not 100% confirmed, but sounded
pretty solid.
**** 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, but we still need volunteers with TC-70’s, Kix-20 or
Kix-30, Delmar System IV or System V’s, AT-306, 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) John Whitworth announced on the World of Dragon forums that he has
SuperRGB boards available again – both on his DragonPlus Electronics
website, and on ebay. He also has his Extender cables available again
on ebay:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11293
https://dragonpluselectronics.com/product/superrgb-6x09-for-dragon-and-coco-12-computers/
He also said that he is planning another run of the lower case boards:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4077935809132724/
2) The Mastertronic Collectors Archive website celebrated their
200th software review (which happens to be a C64 game). But they
also breakdown the number of reviews by machine, and the Dragon 32
is currently at 4 reviews:
https://mastertronic.co.uk/mastertronic-collectors-archive-200-reviews-and-counting/
3) Kataja Kirjuri posted in the Dragon group on Facebook about an
article (in Finnish) about “1980’s Computer Gaming on Marginal
Machines”, and the article not only mentions the Dragons, but that
there was a Dragon specific computer club that ran in Finland until
at least 1986. (NOTE: There is a direct link to a Google Translate
version in English in the comments):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4081424175450554/
4) Julian Brown posted a photo of a bunch of the board designs he is
using for the card based Dragon ATX system he is working on:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4081365025456469/
Julian also showed off modular 6(8/3)09 based computer running at a
bit over 3MHz that is not meant to be a Dragon or Coco:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4081274115465560/
5) Sundby Kell posted in the Dragon Facebook group that he has a
cartridge & disk emulator hardware solution using SD cards that works
on Dragons and Coco’s. It allows using a menu or buttons to switch
between both cartrdiges and disk images. It also supports multiple
disk ROM’s (saved on the SD Card), and the exact same SD card can
work on both the Coco and the Dragon:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4079347135658258/
6) Malgorzata Bartosiewicz-Kucharuk posted a photo of of the
Dragon dust cover that she designed (both Dragon 32 and Dragon 64
versions). In the comments, she mentions that they are on sale:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4075758132683825/
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
1) Coco Town returns with another video showing how to use the
MAME debugger with the *original* source code (not just the raw
disassembly), including the newer feature of MMU-aware debugging:
https://youtu.be/QZawpC10UBg?si=aVvlS0juYoazbT_K
2) Allen Huffman posted an article on his Sub-Etha blog about BASIC
and how it generates random numbers, with sample code. In this case, he
is figuring out how evenly distributed each number in an RND range is:
https://subethasoftware.com/2025/07/01/a-basic-coin-flip/
3) Terry Trapp released a video showing the updates he has done
on his Coco Blender project – which is a SID sound chip, network
adaptor, RTC and more, on the Coco Facebook group. An shows off the
SID running a BASIC09 program. He then shows it slowing down as he
calls into his RiBBS BBS – at the same time:
https://www.facebook.com/terrytrapp/videos/1076714804342422?idorvanity=2359462640
He also posted an update to his RiBBS system, and Coco Blender fixes
that make the BBS a lot more stable:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162840345992641/
4) Michael Pittsley showed off his Tower of Power cartridge holder
(made by Antonio Caballero) , full populated with cartridges:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162856370322641/
5) Stevie Strowbridge did a video showing his Tandy Tower of Power
as well, and even shows some earlier projects by Antonio:
https://youtu.be/3zI3YTKU90o?si=29mPvmeOaJOybOJZ
6) A new version of Compute’s Gazette magazine is coming out, and
they are requesting Coco programmers to submit articles in the Coco
Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162828254207641/
7) Tony Licari showed some more photos of old Tandy Australia catalogs
of the Coco series on sale. It is strange seeing the Coco 3 listing
x25 text (not x24) and 200 lines high graphics modes (not 192):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162838268092641/
8) David Bernazzani posted some photos of his work on a Coco 1,2 and
Dragon 32,64 emulator to run on Nintendo DS/Dsi/XL/LL portable gaming
consoles. This is actually the 11th emulator project that he has done
for the Nintendo platform, but he mentions that he is really close
to a public beta:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162840114147641/
9) Dannielle posted a quick video on her YouTube page showing the
breadboard design and testing for her Coco 3 light chaser interface,
which will control her flux capacitor recreation:
https://youtu.be/AK8zU3WgofY?si=p7Mb4Tfwey8vvDZ5
10) TRS-80 Retro Programing on YouTube put up a video showing how
to load his binary graphics screens, and how to offset them to so he
can load images on the top or bottom of the viewable screen:
https://youtu.be/XJ7g6QFtkSA?si=TdF7t6bodyIK6nKL
11) Retro Dudes on Facebook (in the NitrOS9 group for some reason…
lol) put up a quick video showing what all he found in in a box in
his attic, including a Coco2B, acoustic coupler modem, and much more:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/755391073584137
12) XperTek did a non game video this week as well, where he
experiments with hooking up his Coco 2 via an HDMI adapter and a
video capture device. He does get it working with a good picture and
sound… but no artifact colors:
https://youtu.be/H6Hi29rw-jk?si=gcKlmAoSCE6ye0c7
MC-10
-----
1) Bob Emery, on his La Coco Strangiato page on YouTube, put up a
video about his very first MC-10 – which he just got – and some
hardware hacks and add ons he works with:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0IlEoFGZwo
2) Hackaday had a small article this past week on the MC-10,
titled “Behind Radioshack’s Cheapest Computer, written by Bryan
Cockfield. It links to Spriteworx’s video that we covered almost
a year back. (And he obviously doesn’t know about Jim Gerrie):
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/30/behind-radioshacks-cheapest-computer/
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) RetroGamingLoft on YouTube did a longplay video (almost 14
minutes) of the Coco 3 version of Shanghai… written by Rick Adams,
of course. He plays the game to completion:
https://youtu.be/c300pktls-s?si=S0AWAsgkSKCLm-6f
He also played the Coco version of Imagic’s Demon Attack:
https://youtu.be/m5RpBXTwzYI?si=xM9hm8Os9oXE_HGY
2) XperTek did one of his compilation videos, this time covering
his “Volume 6 disk” of playing games on his Coco 2 with amber
monitor. The 10 games from this disk is shown in the YouTube
description, and we have covered the individual game videos he
posted earlier:
https://youtu.be/ksma5HRjBic?si=H5k7nI-IlGtGsomZ
3) There are updates to the Download port being made for the Game Boy
Advanced. There is a new gameplay video that was uploaded to the Coco
Discord in the #general channel)
(show local file “Coco Nation News/downland_gba_011.mp4”)
And the author’s github for the project (he won’t build/sell
carts because of legal reasons):
https://github.com/pw32x/Downland_C/tree/main
==============================================================================
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--
R. Allen Murphey <exile at weylan-yutani.com>
Weylan-Yutani Corporation
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