[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 419, June 28 (21-27)), 2025
R. Allen Murphey
exile at weylan-yutani.com
Sun Jun 29 09:11:06 EDT 2025
The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 419, June 28 (21-27)), 2025
===============================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
Special NOTES:
--------------
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.
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 ****
Dragon 32/64
------------
1) EORetro, a German YouTube retro channel, posted a half hour
video overview of the Dragon 32 (turn on auto-translate & close
captioning). If the auto-translate is accurate, there are some mistakes
in his presentation (number of machines made, some of the graphics
mode descriptions, etc.):
https://youtu.be/G-_pVTAJNHY?si=0ESd-sNIIO1Lx7AG
2) SteDubya on YouTube released part 3 (final episode I believe)
of his video series about the Dragon 32. In the first 2 parts that
we covered, he has done some re-capping, and found that the serial #
on the motherboard does not match the one on the case):
https://youtu.be/DaXS7NUGAi0?si=w4BXMoVtpvsa_rAJ
3) KOJRO Retro Innovations channel on YouTube did a “long overdue
packages accumulated in my shed” unboxing style video. Amongst the
machines he gets down is a Dragon 32 (which replaces one he had sent
to Adrian Black earlier):
https://youtu.be/hyvXET8mswY?si=w6IL6NUGatRoEn13&t=593
4) Julian Brown posted a photo and update on his Dragon ATX VDG board:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4070738319852473/
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
1) VCF-SW has released all of the videos of presentations (and it
was posted that they had about 1800 attendees this year):
https://www.youtube.com/@VCFSW/videos
Special ones of note for our community (they all are really good,
from what I have seen for):
8-Bit Brain Surgery (Boisy Pitre) - transplanting a 6809, writing
new ROM’s and booting OS9 level 1 on an Atari XEGS:
https://youtu.be/VQXbhLv0wjQ?si=I_d3VLl8T1vkwRMs
Why Should Kids be Involved? (12 year old Zoe Smith):
https://youtu.be/PpHTmlnQ_Lw?si=m85PCBkPDuMVMOTE
The Brief History of Japanese PC’s () - covers the Fujitsu FM-8,
FM-7, FM-11 (6809 computers using OS9):
https://youtu.be/PGlL7Un-GiI?si=DY-LHNXVT50e3alB
Fujinet state of the union (Thomas Cherryhomes). This covers updates
about Fujinet – hardware, software updates, emulators, etc.:
https://youtu.be/SCPcEbMEbeo?si=VTyx4T3j9XM54ZVX
The Tandy Showcase page on Facebook also posted some photos from
the show:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/260663051145211/posts/1842936899584477/
2) Brian Cockburn posted a PDF version of the first review of the
FLEX operating system (the original one for the 6800) from Kilobaud
magazine, based on a link provided by Roger Arrick. This eventually
got ported to the 6809 and was the most popular OS for 6809 machines
for awhile in the early 1980’s, and even had 4 different ports to
the Coco:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/flexoperatingsystem/posts/1268654294624019/
3) Joel Ewy posted the BASIC09 source code to uncuts (a utility to
decode 6 bit text encoding used back in the 1980’s) in the MM/1
channel on Facebook (should work on OS9/NitrOS9 and OS9/68k):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/3194643584094250/posts/4895681483990443/
4) The Total Recall Show release their new episode - which is called
“I Got My Computer At Radio Shack: A Trip Back to the Dungeons of
Daggorath”. One of the hosts is a graphics novel author, too:
https://youtu.be/9lZLzkqUil4?si=aeAG69jJk6wgG0_a
5) The (in?)famous Coco 3 editor/assembler written at Diecom and then
later also used by Sundog Systems, nicknamed Phantasm, is now available
on the Color Computer Archive (mistakenly called “Phastasm” on
the archive currently). Directions are still needed:
https://colorcomputerarchive.com/search?q=Phastasm
6) Terry Trapp posted some updates about his RiBBs on the net, plus
numerous updates to his Coco Blender project that helps drive it,
on the Coco Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162808806792641/
7) Andrew Ayers has uploaded multiple things to the Coco Facebook
group this week:
DINFHTML.ZIP Version 1. This ZIP file contains 15 html pages with
documentation for multiple Dragon and Coco things, like disk format
structures, BASIC token lists (for both machines):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162807844907641/
(Show local file FINFHMTL/INDEX.HTM for list)
He also uploaded Space Trek (a really good low res version of the
classic Star Trek games, with added sound effects. Originally written
by Jake Commander for Color Computer Magazine issue #3, May 1983
(which I still own). Seems to be in a weird, older format though:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162807826627641/
And CUTS-PACKAGES – This is the full original Coco CUTS package,
which allows sending binary files as encoded ASCII with line lengths
of 80 characters to send through electronic mail systems:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162802260227641/
Andrew also uploaded a CUTS encoded version of a Bill the Cat (of
Bloom County fame) MacPaint file (which prompted the other CUTS news)
to the Coco Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162797950142641/
8) Antonio Caballero showed the results of his latest 3D printed Coco
related project:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162805850982641/
And has released the files to make them to Thingiverse:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162819022272641/
And, he has released the files for his Tower of Power Coco cartridge
holders, which we have shown on the show before:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162815183567641/
9) Alex Oliva has found a bunch of old 3rd party hardware cartridges
for the Coco, and has been uploading photos of them (along with disks,
and sometimes the insides) to the Coco group on Facebook:
Micro Works DS-69 Digisector video digitizer. With version 1 software
which I don’t think even Ron Delvaux has (his are later versions
I am pretty sure):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162805469137641/
Rulaford Research / Speech Systems Coco-MIDI card. This is the full
MIDI card that has Midi In, Out, and Through ports, and I think is
the basis of the modern recreation that Jim Brain now sells as the
MIDI Maestro card. This works with a variety of Coco 1/2/3 software,
including both DECB and OS9:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162805445612641
Jim’s modern, shrunk down version:
https://www.go4retro.com/products/midi-maestro/
The original Speech Systems Coco-MIDI card:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162805439337641/
Speech Systems EARS version 2. This was the microphone system that
one talk to the computer, and react to spoken commands:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162805424212641/
Speech Systems Symphony 12 version 2:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162805403312641/
Jim Brain also sells a modern reproduction of this (which features
four AY-8910 sound chips) as the Philharmonic-12:
https://store.go4retro.com/tandy/philharmonic-12/
Speech Systems Stereo Pak. This predates the Orchestra-90 by a couple
of years, and allowed stereo 8 bit sound. This particular one has
been modded to use ribbon cable for output rather than 2 RCA jacks:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162805383202641/
BASIC Technologies BT-1030 card. BASIC Technologies did one of he
original multi-slot solutions for the Coco (like a Multipak) but long
before Tandy’s came out. They also produced multiple hardware cards
for it, including this one, which is 2 8 bit parallel ports (not sure
if input and output or just output), two 16 bit timer/counters and
a serial shift register:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162802463492641/
10) Mike Brant (Quigon on the Coco Discord) posted a photo of some
hardware for his Coco that he couldn’t remember what it was. Pretty
sure it’s Nick Marentes DigiScan, the later and much smaller version
of his Rascan (I had a Rascan myself back in the day, it’s much
bigger than this):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162801358607641/
11) Todd Wallace (Lord Dragon in the Coco Discord) built his own Coco
GMC cartridge (Games Master Cartridge, designed by John Linville and
originally sold by Neil Blanchard) and tested them with his Chiptune
player – the first time he has used real hardware to test versus
emulation in things like MAME:
Facebook post:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162791726642641/
YouTube demo video (running under NitrOS9, of course! lol):
https://youtu.be/zTTSgRONQ0c?si=AwUyB7zcX8SVspdh
12) Jeffrey Worley has also been busy with hardware on the Coco in the
Coco Facebook group. He made a Composite mod and showed he made his
(including some screenshots):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1929079184021683/posts/3984612081801706/
He showed some screenshots and photos of the board (I noted that
his monitor seems to be changing artifact PMODE 4 colors from the
blue/orange we are used to to green/magenta, but that could the
monitor he is using or the tint control:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162814442842641/
As a side note, Andrew Ayers uploaded a PDF of the Mark Data
composite board that Jeffrey used as a basis for his board, to the
Coco Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162815810702641/
13) Glen Dahlgren (previously the owner of Sundog Systems) posed an
update to his mysterium blog about his Chaos fantasy adventure novel
series, which we have shown on the show before when interviewing
him. Apparently there is some consideration in Hollywood of doing a
movie or TV series based on Glen’s books. This by no means guaranteed
to happen, but this is a positive development in that Hollywood is
now researching it:
https://mysteriumstoryworks.substack.com/p/are-the-chronicles-headed-for-the?r=2hpgl3&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
MC-10
-----
1)
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) YouTube channel “Attempts: A gaming channel (by LRU)” recorded
a video of his hi-score attempt for Spectral Associates Storm Arrows
(34,050 points):
https://youtu.be/YP8oZoZUJjk?si=JDCQg2Sf1jf6NusI
And for the Dragon version of Shock Trooper:
https://youtu.be/Qe-c1dWtDN0?si=b0SfC_g36RVziEXj
2) Jim Gerrie ported Arctic Adventure, originally written by computer
columnist (and occasional guest on TWiT shows as well) Harry McCracken
back in 1981 as in The Caption 80 Book of BASIC Adventures, which
he originally wrote for the TRS-80 black and white machines as a
teenager. Original author Harry actually came back to the game 2021
to fix a long standing bug that made it unwinnable. NOTE: This video
is a complete walkthru, so spoiler alert:
https://youtu.be/U8rqgYidjxE?si=Jb5msYOFXlfHVhxj
Article by Harry McCracken about the game & the fix update:
https://www.arctic81.com/
3) YouTube gaming channel “Retro Game c_Li” did a whole bunch of
Dragon (and a Coco 3) game play videos:
Dragon 32:
https://www.youtube.com/@RetroGamec_Li/search?query=dragon%2032
Coco 3 (GFL Championship Football II) (I think with the wrong monitor
setting):
https://youtu.be/N5KZr_mGXvA?si=RCy8pnnyVyixp85W
4) XperTek on YouTube covered “Talk Wizz” this week, a talking (via
software) educational game, written by Steve Blyn for Computer Island,
and using Classical Computing’s Speak Up for the software speech:
https://youtu.be/qmfD3HamocQ?si=v_Ule0qxAq_JFJbi
5) Jim Jewett has released updated versions of Spacewar and Spoofwar
with additional sounds and “music” to the Coco Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162816976427641/
6) Richard Kelly (Retro Rick on the Coco Discord) also released a
software update - “Beware the K.B.B.!” version 1.10. This includes
the speedups he released earlier, but fixes some bugs that crept in
while the optimizations were happening:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162815931112641/
7) The Coco Show by Aaron and Brent of the Amigos has episode 58 out
now on their YouTube channel. This covers Paul Shoemaker’s early
RPG classic “Caves of The Unwashed Heathen”. This game features
some palette enhancements on the Coco 3, and was also ported to the
MC-10 by Jim Gerrie sometime later.
https://youtu.be/EZfnHgZ9J-k?si=uXdtTpz9kAsH_-Bq
They also announced that the next Coco Show will be covering a Coco
1&2 game that a lot of people have never seen: East World Karate.
==============================================================================
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--
R. Allen Murphey <exile at weylan-yutani.com>
Weylan-Yutani Corporation
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