The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 449, January 24, 2025 (Jan 17-23)
The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 449, January 24, 2025 (Jan 17-23)
Collected and Presented by L. Curtis Boyle
Interview schedule:
Not scheduled yet, but Logan Ward has agreed to come on the show.
Special NOTES:
NOTE: We are planning to do a special “Coco 4” episode for January as
part of the virtual Tandy Retro Show (this hopefully gives enough time
for some of us to get our old machines up and running enough to fully
demo). These are the computers 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@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:
Canada has it’s own official VCF – Montreal, today and tomorrow. We are
hoping to get some live streaming of it on the show today.
https://vcfed.org/vcf-montreal/
VCF SoCal is February 14-15 this year at the Hotel Fera Event Center in
Orange, California:
https://www.vcfsocal.com/
The Indy Classic retro show will be happening March 21-22, 2026 at a
new location – the Wyndham Indianapolis Airport Hotel in Indianapolis,
Indiana. This show includes Randy Kindig of the Floppy Days Podcast as
one of it’s hosts:
https://indyclassic.org/
CocoFest 2026 is April 24-25, as mentioned in the Glenside meeting this past
week. And hotel rates are locked in now (see post on Glenside website). Feb
15 3 pm Central is the date the tables open up for reservation:
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
VCF-PNW (Pacific North West) is returning after multiple years in hiatus,
and is happening May 2-3 2026 in the Tukwila Community Center in Tukwila,
Washington:
https://www.vcfpnw.net/
The International Retro Computer Expo 2026 now has tickets available (this
was formerly BoatFest, ran by the Amigos – John, Aaron and Brent) for
their retro show happening July 10-11 (Friday/Satruday) (July 9/Thursday
vendors can set up in the evening). This is a general retro show for old
home computers, consoles and more, with gaming highlighted:
https://www.ticketsource.com/ircexpo2025/international-retro-computer-expo-2026/2026-07-10/09:00/t-qmjplra
NEWS:
Dragon 32/64
1) bluearcus (Mike) on the World of Dragon forums has posted a link to
his XRoar tracing profiling tool:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11329
2) Julian Brown posted an update to his CPLD VDG board:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4288905531369083/
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
1) An update from Glen Hewlett on his BASIC to 6809 compiler from the
Coco Discord:
“Update: I’ve gotten IF, FOR/NEXT, DO/WHILE/WEND, CASE all working with
the different numeric format types and many commands are now working. I’m
currently fighting with B=VARPTR(NumArray(5,5)) command. As the compiler
is built to calc the location in RAM of the array and give the value of
the contents of that memory location not the memory location itself. I’m
working on it… I’m hoping this will be the last hard command to convert
to handle the various numeric format types. If so I hope to have Version
5 of the compiler out within a month, maybe sooner if things go well.”
2) A new version of the emulator TRS80GP (2.5.6) has been released. It now
even emulates Project Green Thumb (pre-cursor to the Coco and Videotex)
amongst other updates:
Main page:
http://48k.ca/trs80gp.html
Release notes:
http://48k.ca/trs80gp-release-notes.html
3) Jeff Gubash posted a short BASIC listing in the Coco Facebook group that
changes the Coco cursor from flashing colors to a “twirling like gear”,
by POKEing in a small machine language routine:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163753536742641/
4) Rich Stephens posted a video showing improvements to the NETCAT program
(a program to connect to Telnet sites on the web (including BBS’s). It
now supports 42 columm graphical text on all Coco’s, and VT-52 terminal
emulation (Mono only on the 42 column screen). On a Coco 3 it also supports
the hardware 40 and 80 column modes:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/?multi_permalinks=10163765236317641&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen
5) Steve Norton posted a photo and description of a project he has been
working on. It is a keyboard that is layed out the same as a Coco 1 or
2 keyboard (with a few extra keys) that plugs into the USB port on your
modern PC, and lets you use it in VCC (and connect a Coco joystick as
well, I am guessing similar to Paul Fiscarelli’s adaptor). The 3 extra
keys are RESET, PAUSE and DISK 0 (the latter opens up the VCC drive image
dialog automatically):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163762309602641/
6) The live Trash Talk podcast happened last week just hours after our
own show, and it is up on their YouTube channel to watch. Several panel
guests mentioned their Coco’s, and Mark Overholser comes in near the
end to talk about today’s Tandy Retro Show talks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRY_ZTx2eI4
7) TRS-80 Retro Programing released another update video update to his
Extended BASIC Ulysses game, adding graphics touch ups, a life system,
and some scoring:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UveztoKaiCw
8) Ron Klein posted an update to the Coco-Pi project – the next release
will likely be in February rather than the end of this month. However,
that is because he is re-doing menus etc. to make them easier to navigate
and add things to them:
https://coco-pi.com/coco-pi-project-update-2026-01-23/
MC-10
1) Indah Gavriani posted that he is planning on releasing the first public
beta of his Nintendo DS/DSi MC-10 emulator. He is wondering what add ons
he should support (other than the 16K RAM upgrade, which already is working):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/25391907843842698/
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
1) The Coco 1&2 version of Quarx (from the 8-Bit Guy, ported by Paul
Shoemaker) is available for download:
https://www.the8bitguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Quarx-CC2.zip
Video of it running:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTgh5NZz4EE
Video of Dragon 32/64 PAL version (no artifacting, uses PMODE 3):
https://youtu.be/-24h-aaCM6g?si=ZtxgmsoXGvthxPgb
2) Rich Stephens posted that an update to the Coco/Fujinet game Battleship
is now available, that adds joystick support, and also allows pressing
the primary joystick button to both turn on joystick support and to switch
which joystick is being used:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163751604977641/
3) Ellimist on YouTube posted some more Coco adventure speed runs, with
his newest ones both from the first Rainbow Book of Adventures (the winners
of the 1st Adventure programming contest).
One Room by Jorge Mir (who also wrote ADVMAKER in August 1982 Rainbow):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3ZnA2KdNDQ
The Ruby Chalice by Justin Paola:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkyuAhlwygM
4) Jim Gerrie released an update to his MC-10 port of Star Trek, an enhanced
version of the original 1974 Mike Mayfield version. Jim fixed some issues,
added title, win and high score rating screens, and some music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnaHSfy47qI
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