[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 418, June 21 (14-20), 2025

Sun Jun 22 08:41:10 EDT 2025

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 418, June 21 (14-20), 2025
===============================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

Special Guests today:
---------------------
Hopefully get some live feed from VCF-SW in Texas

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:
------------------------------------------------------------
This weekend is both VCF-SW in Dallas (live feed from MarcB) & VCF-SE
in Atlanta, GA
  https://www.vcfsw.org/
  https://vcfed.org/events/otherevents/vintage-computer-festival-southeast/

The Southeast Michigan Vintage Computer Club is having their 8th public
meeting/display June 28, 2025 from 11 AM to 5 PM Eastern at Grace
Chapel's Gymnasium, 2515 N. Williams Lake Road, Waterford Township,
Michigan (near Pontiac). This covers all retro gaming consoles and
home computers.

https://semichiganvcc.blogspot.com/2025/04/se-michigan-vintage-computer-club-ver.html

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 ****

There is live feed for VCF-SW this weekend for those who want to
watch it:
  https://www.youtube.com/live/5Gm06qjXtqU?si=s_j0K1cxSNA2VxF5

Dragon 32/64
------------
1) Julian Brown posted an update to his Multi-pak board for his Dragon
ATX project, where he switched to a larger CPLD vs. the original
small GAL. He is "not sure I will ever build this variation":
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4064379303821708/

Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
1) databits on YouTube (Brad Tompkins) put up a YouTube short showing
using his iPod Touch to load games onto the Coco:
  https://youtube.com/shorts/zfpJikarytg?si=6kK-fHGBrY6qWNt-

2) Ken of Canadian Retro Things AND The Coco Nation, put up a video
about the Electronic Book for the Coco on his YouTube channel:
  https://youtu.be/4gwsVifJNP0?si=ed0cj3LV1c9zkpfm

3) Blog site Tandy TRS-80 put up a short post about looking for details
on how to do RAM upgrades for Coco's, posting some links and extracted
pages for some Rainbow articles on this subject:
  https://tandy-trs80.com/memories/

4) PortaCoco has added a page to their website that covers all of their
products in a nice small summary (they still have their individual
product pages as well):
New summary:
  https://portacoco.com/wirefree-coco-3/
General info:
  https://portacoco.com/

5) Ciaran Anscomb has released a small bugfix update to ASM6809,
version 2.17, including the source code. This fixed the use of '*'
as current PC in expressions:
  https://www.6809.org.uk/asm6809/

6) Jeffrey Worley posted in the Coco Facebook group some photos of
his Coco 2 running NitrOS9 level 1 (booted over Fujinet) and using
an RS-232 Pack to hook up to his Atari 130XE at 9600 baud. The Atari
is running a terminal program in 80 columns, and is logged into his
Coco 1... which is still running it's own shell on the 32 column
screen. He even has a homemade triple Y-cable, which has the Fujinet,
RS-232 Pack & floppy controller plugged into it (note: each photo
has it's own description):
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162786297507641/
He also posted about upgrading a Coco 1 by replacing the op/amp IC
with one like the Coco 2. This allows Fujinet (and Drivewire) to
run at 57,600 baud instead of 38,400 baud throught the bit-banger,
which he mentions is noticably faster:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162759685687641/

7) For those who have been wanting to try Simon Jonassen's "Wobble
mode" extra color SG24 display program that we have been showing some
samples of over the past few weeks, you can now download the DSK image
fom the Coco Facebook group. This version requires a Coco 1 or 2 with
64K RAM, and it currently has to be an NTSC machine (he is working
on a PAL version). It also has been tested on the Brazilian CP-400
and XRoar - it should be noted that it doesn't work right in MAME
(and a bug report has been filed):
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162774292347641/

8) Boysontech has officially announced that kit forms of the CocoSDC
(no case) are available as of yesterday (June 20). This includes all
of the chips preprogrammed and all parts need to build a complete
CocoSDC for only $48 + shipping & any taxes. If you have the soldering
skills (I sure as heck don't!), it's a great way to get a CocoSDC at
a reduced price. Boysontech has it's Facebook page up and it's store
open as well:
Facebook page:
  https://www.facebook.com/BoysonTech1
Store:
  https://store.boysontech.com/products/coco-sdc-kit

9) I don't know if any are left at this point in time, but Antonio
Caballero had some remaining spare cartridge towers for sale as of
June 17, as shown in his Coco group Facebook post. He also will be
publishing the model for anyone to use for free (as long as it is
not for commercial use):
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162770513777641/

10) Thomas Cherryhomes posted that people can stop by his Fujinet
booth at VCF-SW in Dallas this weekend, where he will show it running
multiple platforms including the Coco:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162769946552641/

11) ugBASIC released version 1.17.2, which fixed a few bugs on other
platforms, but it's main claim to fame for the Coco community is that
PUT IMAGE under the 6847 (VDG) command has been optimized:
  https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/main

MC-10
-----
1)

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Aquanaut 471 added more Dragon game video clips (some with original
cassette artwork), but I believe he is done his collection so far;
near the end of the week he was adding BBC Micro Games:
  https://www.youtube.com/@CuthbertintheJungle/videos

2) Attempts: A gaming channel (by LRU) record his submission score
for the Tandy cartrdige Spidercide, with a score of 1,780:
  https://youtu.be/gVR4Pvq8D_o?si=mxII6UWMlqn6IJnI

3) XperTek put up a video playing the Tandy cartridge Roman Checkers
(basically Othello):
  https://youtu.be/tPtzsMgNIqk?si=pBWezBCStPm59L0k
He also did a video for Color Math from Tandy, an educational title:
  https://youtu.be/X5Ac0sH2F58?si=GAb7G9iri66MJnuA

4) Jim Gerrie posted a video of gameplay from the game Alien Attack,
originally by Scott McCann & Peter Lear from the 1984 Canadian book
"Fantastic Games", which featured type in games for the Coco. This
one is kind of a Space Zap derivative in PMODE 4, and even has a high
score table:
  https://youtu.be/KjwCezDqDAU?si=Fqf-1GM8F6w0fH57
He also posted Red Alert 2, which is a game Jim himself has authored,
having started working on it last year. It is inspired by Red Alert
for the Vic-20 from the book "Space Adventures". It's a Scramble
style game with full scrolling in SG4:
Video of gameplay:
  https://youtu.be/_jAloLVsyVg?si=VjNP1-4-Oi46rZM0
You can play it online or download it from the Internet Archive
as well:
  https://archive.org/details/red-2_202506

5) Brent and Aaron over at the Amigos are recording the next The
Coco Show, featuring "Caves of the Unwashed Heathen", written by Paul
Shoemaker back in 1996. This is a low resolution graphical RPG, and
even features palette enhancements if you are playing on a Coco 3
(althoug it plays just fine on a Coco 1/2). Side note: Jim Gerrie
has ported it to the MC-10 as well:
To watch on Twitch:
  https://www.twitch.tv/amigosretrogaming
To watch on YouTube:
  https://www.youtube.com/@AmigosRetroGaming/streams

6) Richard Kelly (Retro Rick) has released version 1.02 of his "Beware
The K.B.B.!" game. This version speeds some things up and fixes some
sound issues when running on a Coco 3. You can download it both from
the Coco Facebook group and the Coco Discord:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162787120207641/

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

Speak your mind! Let us know what you think at:
    feedback at TheCoCoNation.com

If replying on a mailing list, please trim replies to the specific
items.

Get connected with more of the CoCo, Dragon and MC-10 community here:
    https://thecoconation.com/community/

-- 
R. Allen Murphey <exile at weylan-yutani.com>
Weylan-Yutani Corporation