The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 414, May 24, 2025
The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 414, May 24, 2025
Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
Interview schedule:
Alan of AC’s 8 bit Zone, and the creator/seller of the new GIME-Z,
will be on to talk about precisely that, on May 31.
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:
telnet ribbs.griswoldfx.com 6809
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, and some other guests that we have had on our show
(like some of the people from Pixel Addict magazine) will be there
as well. It is 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
The VCF-East people are having a vintage computer swap meet &
fundraiser on June 7 in Wall, New Jersey. Vendor setup starts at 7
am, and the swap meet is open to the public from 8 am until 2 pm. $5
admission per person (except children 12 and younger are free), and
food will be available on site. It is taking place in the parking
lot across from 800 Monmouth Boulevard:
https://vcfed.org/vcf-swap-meet/
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. NOTE: 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/
**** NEW NEWS ORDER TO HELP OUR LIVE EUROPEAN VIEWERS ****
Dragon 32/64
1) Julian Brown gave an update on his SRAM plugin board for a
regular iss.2 Dragon 32. Reading is working, but writing isn’t,
but it sounds like he has figured out the issue and it should be a
simple hardware fix:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4037991079793864/
He also gave an update on his PIA board – he doesn’t have quite enough
parts to finish it yet, and it’s a similar situation on the serial
board (needs a clock crystal, so he can’t use the RTC chip yet):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4035483830044589/
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
1) I missed this last week, but Eric Canales has a new version of
his 6dev09 development system; Build #20. This includes:
- Small bugfixes
- Added LWASM line error support, error lines get updated in any
opened source file! - Add bookmarks support, can place bookmarks all over. Bookmarks do
not get saved after closing. - Sped up find/replace, added a progress indicator, and created
undo/redo actions for bulk replace operations. - Added option to use spaces instead of tabs in source files.
- Updated to MAME 0.277b
He is also working on a few other bugs for another upcoming release:
https://gitlab.com/trs-eric/6dev09/-/tree/master/release?ref_type=heads
2) Glen Hewlett has posted a video showing some of his latest work on
his Coco BASIC compiler, showing sprites and scrolling backgrounds
on the Coco 3. The “Big” backgrounds requires a 2 MB or higher RAM
upgrade:
https://youtu.be/OOyDRD4dBjQ
He also released another couple of updates with some additions and
bugfixes ot his compiler, the latest of which is V4.37:
- Added CPUSPEED # command (1=.895, 2=1.78, 3=2.86, >=4 max speed
supported on hardware) - Added COPYBLOCKS command (stackblasts 8k blocks)
- Fixed a bug in deeply nested IF/THEN/ELSE
- Tweaked DIV16 and DIV16Rounding so that CC flags are set
appropriately on exit (based on result in D) - Fixed F11 key bug in IDE
- updated manual
- Added TRIM$, LTRIM$ & RTRIM$ for removing spaces
- fixed bug where IRQ not set properly when combining PLAY command
and Coco 3 GMODE command
3) CocoTown released part 2 of his experiments with the NSA open source
project Ghidra, and using it disassemble Coco/6809 code (using Donkey
King as a test case):
https://youtu.be/WLX3yiX_k2I?si=utYbbt2fBZ64qvWf
4) George Janssen has released both the DSK image for sourcecode
and video for Lesson 17 of his Coco 3 assembly language tutorial
series. The DSK image can be found on the Coco Discord, Programming
and Development -> assembly with George. The lesson contains 4 demo
programs showing how to do scrolling on the Coco 3 using the MMU:
https://youtu.be/INPqtaS2ycs?si=u5qV6ijePPs9ieNY
5) Another ugBASIC update – a hotfix for a couple of bugs that showed
up for 6809 systems (like the Coco). The MOD, TEXTADDRESS and HEX
commands needed patches, and the new BITMAPADDRESS variable was added:
https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/main
He also published a book/tutorial on programming games in ugBasic. The
book includes 3 different simple games. To quote his ad: “The purpose
of this book, therefore, is not just to illustrate a source code:
instead it offers ideas for actively developing the three easy
pieces.” The book is over 160 pages and costs $3.99 USD from his
itch.ip page:
https://spotlessmind1975.itch.io/3-easy-pieces/devlog/950874/learn-to-write-retrovideogames
6) TRS-80 Retro Programming has a couple of updates – one from
two weeks ago that I somehow missed is about his learning to load
.BIN files to for graphics, including using saved screens to load
in afterwards to GET shapes from, without needing all the drawing
code that drew the graphics in the first place (saving more RAM for
your program):
https://youtu.be/e9XU759aQa8?si=lDLICEZUMq8xJcmK
He also released a video update to his Cosmic Ark project, “asteroid
attack”. Although he had some audio issues (switching inputs) with
this video:
https://youtu.be/H-1S4GZGV74?si=rplhyFIQOn6ec5zn
7) D. Bruce Moore posted a video showing his son Jacob receiving his
prize for getting the highest score in Spy Hunter (by Richard Natali)
from CocoFest a few weeks back:
(Show local file “Jacob Moore wins Spy Hunter score.mov” from Coco
Nation News folder)
8) I missed this earlier, but Paul Shoemaker posted a video a few
weeks ago showing his Ninja Warrior version of Dino Run game under
development:
(Show local file “Paul Shoemaker – Ninja Warrior – Dino Run.mp4”
from Coco Nation News folder)
9) Stevie Strowbridge has uploaded a ton of older CocoTalk episodes
(and even some interviews done previous to CocoTalk’s launch) with
more to come, working on getting all of his Coco content onto the
new YouTube channel. I will mention that he has requested that I only
show the thumbnail screenshots and not play any video clips:
https://www.youtube.com/@cocotalkforever/videos
10) “Old Fart Playing Old Games” on YouTube (isn’t that almost all
of us?) released a 2+ minute video of Coco commercials from the 1980’s:
https://youtu.be/6vh5KRI1R1w?si=uXT6se6O-8VBVzp4
11) BoysonTech posted the Gerber fiels for the Coco 3 PCB (by Pedro
Pena, I believe), for those who want to use it to order boards from
a board manufacturer:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162653886902641/
12) Paul Thayer posted some photos of his 2 button/self centering
gaming pads, and he is about to do his first 7 protoypes. He is asking
who is into getting one of these first ones on the Coco Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162652906047641/
13) A question on the Coco Facebook group was posted by Jim Mullis
(who is doing the Super Powers Coco 3 game) that has generated a
lot of responses. I am wondering what people on our panel and in the
chat think:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162652719662641/
14) Antonio Caballero posted an update video showing some changes he
has done to his Tandy Rompak holder, “Tower of Power”:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162649279642641/
15) David Graham posted the MM/1 Prototype Video Memory Schematic to
the MM/1 Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/3194643584094250/posts/4848617362030189/
16) Thanks to Brian Wieseler, who points out that Retro Hack Shack
(Aaron Newcomb, who has been a guest on our show), released a video
on how to merge sound output with the RGBtoHDMI that he sells:
https://youtu.be/lFoC4pvuNdc?si=UZPxBeszl7t4HRuG
17) Paul Fiacarelli posted a video demo showing what a Coco 3 is
capable of, with multi-plane stanfield scrolling, animated sprites,
digitized sound and multi-voice music, all running at once with no
additional hardware:
(Show local file “shmup4 (Paul Fiscarelli).mp4” from Coco Nation
News folder)
MC-10
1) Although not an MC-10 story per se, David Collins posted a link to
a blog (“Daniel’s bits,bytes & pieces”) to a DIY HD6303 based computer
project. The HD6303 is an enhanced version of the Motorola 6803, the
processor used in the MC-10 (so their equivalent of the HD6309 that
Coco’s/Dragon’s can use). This is an old project from 2013 including
the hardware and monitor software, but the original author later
added a posix style OS/file system which allowed sub-directories,
long filenames and could access 8 bit ISA cards (like Compact Flash):
Original Facebook post:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3678689575757731/
Blog entry with photos:
https://www.waveguide.se/?article=mc3-a-diy-8-bit-computer
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
1) Chronologically Gaming covered the Microdeal/Dragon version of
Defense (sold by Spectral Associates in North America), which adds
instructions screens and alternate color sets to play:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRORFWmfNUY&t=34s
2) Jim Gerrie decided to be different this week and released The Moons
of Jupiter, originally by Dean Mackie & Peter J. Lear from the book
“Exploring the TRS-80” published by Hayes Publishing in 1985. This
Canadian book had this source listing in it, and it is for the Coco,
not the MC-10. It seems to not have the greatest hit detection:
https://youtu.be/bq76gaCcMeg?si=66H20WGLURktMwUp
He also did the Coco Extended BASIC game “Space Duel” originally
by Scott McCann in 1984 from the “Space Adventures” book by Hayes
Publishing (not to be confused with Space Duel from the original Coco
1 Color BASIC manual). Looks to be based on Gunfight/Boot Hill arcade
games from the late 1970’s:
https://youtu.be/S5ya8ybFZ9E?si=RShlnhrA7rDLJdpM
3) Renga in Blue covered another Coco adventure game, this time
covering SS. Poseidon from Jarb Software:
https://bluerenga.blog/2025/05/21/s-s-poseidon-1982-1983/
He also covered The Final Countdown, written by the same authors for
Jarb Software. They also review that it later had a Spectrum Voice
Pak version that talked:
https://bluerenga.blog/2025/05/22/the-final-countdown-1982-1983/
4) Fred Provoncha has uploaded his graphical text adventure game
Aandark II as a separate download to the Color Computer Archive:
https://colorcomputerarchive.com/search?q=aandark
(Show demo)
5) Stephen Barry released a Coco 3 only text adventure game that uses
the full 32K that BASIC allows. It’s set up in an Infocom style,
which looks really good, including the top info/status line that
Infocom used:
https://colorcomputerarchive.com/search?q=life+everyday
(Show demo)
6) Jamie Cho has released an updated version of his Coco 3 Space
Bandits game (V0.16), which uses Richard Goedekin’s sprite library
from some years back. I am not sure what has been updated, but it
includes both 6809 and 6309 versions. (I think that the explosion
of the player has changed to shake the screen?):
https://colorcomputerarchive.com/search?q=space+bandits
(Show demo)
7) Earthbites on YouTube showed a quick gameplay video of Butterflies
for the MC-10 – a text based game. I think he has some effects on
the screen capture; it doesn’t look normal:
https://youtu.be/3o92YhFEQKg?si=8EAK3SvM4ZiU4Fl1
8) ZXFrankie on YouTube made a video playing Tom Mix’s Katerpillar
Attack for a score submission of 6,229, played on his Dragon 32:
https://youtu.be/FUbe4cvoN14?si=dZaQm8I40RCdytA5
9) Aquanat471 released a flurry of Dragon 32 gameplay videos this
week, including Back Track, Flagon Bird, Syzygy, Black Sanctum,
River of Fire, Speed Racer and Pit Fiend:
https://www.youtube.com/@CuthbertintheJungle/videos?view=0&sort=dd&shelf_id=1
10) Ultra Gamer81 put up a gameplay video of Canyon Climber on
the Coco:
https://youtu.be/3nDvXn5nFko?si=NkEQGScCxDqV6CDW
11) The Laird’s Lair put up a video “10 Amazing Dragon 32 Exclusives”,
covering 10 games exclusive for the Dragon 32 platform (well, and
Coco 1/2)… and a promise to do more:
https://youtu.be/Pd1hSlCvbGU?si=0Qbo6ledQLh0AhfN
12) Sheldon MacDonald released an update to his Strider game on the
Coco Facebook group, fixing some bugs (checking for an MPI, working
on all Coco’s with a minimum of 32k RAM. It is a side scroller
where one uses joystick Asteroid style controls (rotate left/right,
button to accelerate) where one has to dodge the parasites (longer
squiggly creatures) and the walls, while collecting the small squiggly
creatures:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162644609047641/
(Show demo)
13) Darren Ottery posetd a short gameplay video of a Defender clone
that I don’t have on my games site yet (although I do remember the ads)
called Flying Tigers (from Sugar Software):
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1531311308254339
14) Inufuto has released the Coco 1/2 and Coco 3 versions of their new
game Mazy2 this week, after releasing the MC-10 version last week. I
have also created a DSK version that is on the Coco Discord in the
“general-game-posts” channel, and those versions should be on the
Color Computer Archive soon:
Coco 1/2 version:
https://youtu.be/C5b-Ip_3jr8?si=4eKUAUuTOMehKp4x
Coco 3 version:
https://youtu.be/WZjxJZfbcWo?si=2gSFRVRf8LXXbGCA
15) 8bit’s basement gaming base released a video review of Nick’s
6309 masterpiece, Gunstar:
https://youtu.be/Y1b11-LY7lQ?si=m8ouxY3cuFPk-FNE
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