[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 412, May 10, 2025

Sun May 11 08:44:41 EDT 2025

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 412, May 10, 2025
===============================================================
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

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:
telnet ribbs.griswoldfx.com 6809

Special Guests today:
---------------------
Some CocoFest goes, perchance?
Bob Emery will be on to recap the Texas meetup he was at recently?

Interview schedule:
-------------------
Richard Lorbieski of BoysonTech will be on to talk about his returning
to the Coco hardware world & answering questions about his upcoming
products on May 17.

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
------------------------------------------------------------
Retrofest 2025, organized by Tony Jewell, is a retro computer festival
happening in Swindon, England May 31-June 1, 2025. Some Dragon people
(like Richard Harding and Chris Poacher) have already committed to
attending the show, being held at STEAM (the Great Western Railway
museum):
Retrofest website:
  https://retrofest.uk/
They even have a promo video:
  https://youtu.be/UCZ-BtFW9Ok?si=B441wLvpDI2iekLN

VCF-SW in Texas has been booked with dates: June 20-22, 2025 at the
Davidson Gundy Alumni Center, University of Texas, Dallas, Texas.
Tables & Tickets will go on sale January 2025. $20/adult ($25 if bought
at the door), $10/student ($15 at the door). 17 and under are free
(with accompanying adult). Tables are $50.
  https://www.vcfsw.org/

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

BoatFest (now International Retro Computer Expo) will be July 11-13
in Hurricane, WV. There is now a promo video for it:
  https://www.ticketsource.us/ircexpo2025/t-eanjyje

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:
  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/

Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
1) An announcement from Richard Lorbieski about the return of
BoysonTech. Richard will be on the show next week to talk about his
hardware that is coming back, and the schedule it will be on:
"this is what I posted on #boomerang channel and a portion to
#CoCoSDC....

BoysonTech, a retro computer company based in San Antonio, Texas,
is pleased to announce the reintroduction of the Boomerang 512K
Classic and 2 Meg memory boards. We will also resume production and
distribution of our Paragon Joystick adapters, SDC cards, and other
products.

The target release dates are as follows: Boomerang boards by
Thanksgiving 2025, Paragon Joystick adapters by July 2025, and SDC
cards (limited edition kit form) by the end of June 2025. Additional
product announcements will follow.

The Boomerang boards serve as memory upgrades for the Tandy Color
Computer 3, available in 512K and 2 Meg memory options. Due to
volatility and uncertainty with tariffs and supply chains, pricing
for the Boomerang boards has yet to be determined.

The Paragon Joystick adapters are the smallest commercially available
adapters facilitating the use of Atari or Sega Genesis joysticks on
Tandy Color Computers, Dragon (with additional adapter) or Tandy 100
computers. Pricing for the Paragon has yet to be determined.

The CoCo SDC is a widely popular disk drive emulator designed for the
Tandy Color Computer. In response to popular demand, BoysonTech plans
to distribute a limited number of SDC cards in the form of kits. These
kits will include a pre-built and tested SDC reader board, along
with pre-programmed CPLD, Atmel, and flash chips, while the remaining
components will require through-hole soldering experience. Our target
price for the CoCo SDC kits will be under $50 (USD).

On May 12, 2025, Boysontech.com will launch, providing users with the
opportunity to sign up via email for updates on Boomerang, Paragon,
CoCo SDC, and other products. Updates will also be available through
The CoCo Nation podcast, CoCo Discord (BoysonTech), and other social
media channels (to be announced).

You can reach us via CoCo Discord channel (BoysonTech), or email
– info at boysontech.com"

2) Coco Town returns for an episode showing using the Ghidra debugger
(created by the NSA, and an open source project on their github)
to reverse engineer Donkey King:
  https://youtu.be/q7SpWuSU7u8?si=x26Hbd_KGVDw8yEq

3) D. Bruce Moore posted a quick video of some of his highlights
of CocoFest:
  https://youtu.be/-Dn3Elj9rl8

4) Henry Reitveld posted a video showing how is using Fujinet a
SuperIDE on his Coco (the SuperIDE is a Cloud9 product that allowed
using IDE drives on the Coco, a sequel to the Glenside IDE board):
  https://youtu.be/6f14Q6fZPVU?si=OVHROO8APHC_5Pjs

5) D. Bruce Moore and David Kroeker posted a video update about their
MP3 player (that will have Bruce's new game Realm of Doom as it's
first killer app):
  https://coco.gracenote.ca/cocomp3-final-settings-achieved/

6) David Collins has new updates for his 3MHz 6309 Single Board
Computer, which includes "massive update to firmware and release
functional FLEX 9":
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/403922002342070/posts/563017076432561/
He also showed screenshots of Flex running on it:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3664107730549249/

7) Terry Trapp released a new video on the Coco Facebook group,
showing further progress with his Coco Blender board (note: he has
fixed some of the bugs mentioned already):
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162602416582641/
And he also posted that RiBBS was being served through his Coco
Blender board for 12 hours straight with no crashes:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162604494127641/
And he posted a link to his Coco Blender source code:
  https://griswoldfx.visualstudio.com/_git/CoCo%20Blender

8) Thomas Cherryhomes, creator of Fujinet, posted some screenshots
of the Coco, Apple 2 and Coco playing the multi-platform FujitZee
(Yahtzee) together in the Coco group on Facebook:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162594654682641/

9) Roger Taylor is offering a 5 disc DVD set for $49.00 of a variety
of Coco magazine scans. 35GB of data:
  https://www.cococommunity.net/product/coco-magazine-library-5-dvd-set/

10) For those that missed the seminars at CocoFest (and the auction),
they are all up for viewing on the Glenside Color Computer Club YouTube
page (although Henry Strickland's seems to cut off before 11 minutes):
  https://www.youtube.com/@glensideccc/streams

11) L.P.INDUSTRIES on YouTube posted a 5+ minute video entitled: So,
Bought a trs-80 color computer. I have no regrets. He is another
example of a young person getting excited about retro hardware,
which gives me hope for the future:
  https://youtu.be/1xmnuFjfk3c?si=N6EUj9brZZrVkBYK

12) Dim Cave Software on YouTube psoted a video of "Clube Color Brasil"
- a demo program he wrote as his very first 6809 assembly program,
running Disk EDTASM++ on the Prologica CP-400 Coco 2 clone (at the end,
the demo is exited and shows the authors name as "NELITON"):
  https://youtu.be/O-u-CMGv-rw?si=ydvFtuge1mXH_ZOG

MC-10
-----
1)

Dragon 32/64
------------
1) User Serenarian on the World of Dragon forums posted some pictures
of his Maplin I/O card, which he used to control a model railway and
radio controlled tank back in the 1980's. He had to modify it to a
different address (the original board used the same I/O space as the
disk controller):
  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=11286

2) Julian Brown has some more updates on his ATX Dragon remake,
including:
1st draft of the hardware serial port/Real Time Clock I/O board:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4024976824428623/
PIA / I/O board:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4024951187764520/
I/O board (real life - earlier version):
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4023793931213579/

3) John Whitworth of DragonPlus Electronics has finally gotten his
CE certification for his Dragon power supply replacement board,
which means he can sell them legally again in the EU (regulations
changed recently):
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4023272987932340/

4) Allen Mailer on YouTube put up a brief video of some retro stuff he
has for his TI-99/4A, but also some new hardware he got, which includes
a Dragon 64 (latter is 1:59 in) to add to his Dragon 32 & 64K Coco 1:
  https://youtu.be/izkSLB_8wdM?si=6dTNfmkTWDJUQkNH

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Jim Gerrie posted a video showing his MC-10 conversion of the TPUG
magazine game Sample Adventure, originally by Steven C. Darnold in
the June/July 1985 issue:
  https://youtu.be/0x-3Qo-1U8c?si=5obloxpnk0Tcgs9H
He also released Dotty the Kangaroo, originally by 14 year old Ian
McTavish in 1984 for the book "Sinclair Programs". This is actually
his second version released this week; this revised one will run on
a 4K MC-10 or Alice:
  https://youtu.be/Ytax66Gzo6g?si=VViT7h25PqUDU_nL

2) Pere Serrat & Kees van Oss have released MPAGD games pack #72 for
both regular Dragons and Coco's. This pack includes:
Mandarin II
Project Vaelius
Rollerball
S.O.L.O.
  http://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11285
They also released pack NP18 (SuperSprite FM+ board enhanced games
with the new palette), which has these 4 games:
Ice Slider
Remote Operated Vehicle
Robot 1 in the Ship of Doom
Zbylut Owrzodzien w Kamiennym (nonsense name because the real title
has swearing)
  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11287

3) The website Nerdly Pleasures released a long review of the Coco
and it is as a game machine, for those who don't know the systems and
what they were capable of. There are a few minor errors in the review,
but it is suprisingly thorough and fair. The sample screenshots they
used are just Tandy sold titles, though - I think it would have helped
to show some of the vast 3rd party games we have:

http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2025/05/is-original-tandy-color-computer-worth.html

4) Chronologically Gaming covered the Coco this past week in December
of 1982:
Cyborg Wars by Bumblebee Software:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TjCLQqOZ4E&t=589s

5) Nostalgia Vault on YouTube put up two videos showing the official
Tetris, sold by Tandy on cartrige, showing:
Coco 1/2 version:
  https://youtu.be/-PeI02QR0u8?si=nzAXns9-YRIyF8bx
Coco 3 version (although only black and white?)
  https://youtu.be/naeDYyIOeNg?si=QZy9mdsfWh1QJXmt

6) Z4RT4N on YouTube put up videos showing gameplay of the two
officially released Sierra graphic adventure games, running a real
Coco 3 with 512K with the CM-8 monitor and FD-502 disk drive.
Kings Quest III:
  https://youtu.be/dUi_wu-x10Y?si=yxGZ5Avee4lpZJhg
Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards:
  https://youtu.be/FEp8MCXqzm0?si=72MiptkYNMxDxdIS

7) XperTek posted another amber screen gameplay video on his real
Coco 2 hardware, this time playing Doodle Bug by David Crandall for
Computerware (although he ran Disk Utility 2.1 by Jeff Francis by
accident first):
  https://youtu.be/Tqu_h8h0aDY?si=rSSp04K5-AW2kt7r

8) ZXFrankie on YouTube posted another game play score recording to
enter one of the high score lists, this time playing Leggit on his
Dragon 32 and getting 1,540 points:
  https://youtu.be/kGhWVDE6KpU?si=8emVKGH4KzTROh4k

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

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Get connected with more of the CoCo, Dragon and MC-10 community here:
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-- 
R. Allen Murphey <exile at weylan-yutani.com>
Weylan-Yutani Corporation
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