The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 425, August 9,2025 (Jul 26-Aug 8)

Collected by L. Curtis Boyle

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:

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/

A sad announcement, but the WoRC (World of Retro Computing) show that
was supposed to run September 13-14 in Kitchener, Ontario will not
be happening this year. But it will be back next year.
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/

This year’s RetroSC (a general retro show in Brazil, with a lot of
Coco and Coco clones present) is November 15, 2025 in Florianopolis,
SC, Brazil:
https://retrosc.org/

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.

**** NEW NEWS ORDER TO HELP OUR LIVE EUROPEAN VIEWERS ****

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, 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.

Dragon 32/64

1) Julian Brown posted numerous updates the past two weeks for his
cards for his Dragon ATX system, as well as regular Dragon board &
case replacements.
Regular Dragon – in a 4 part 3D printed case, new motherboard and
power supply boards, and keyboard:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4117085125217792/
More about the case:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4113175798942058/
More about the various boards, etc. in the case:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4109804129279225/
SAMx8 update (and speculation of adding an optional serial port)
with 64, 256 or 512K of RAM:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4116926451900326/
Updates on the FPGA 6847 (VDG) board:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4108726926053612/

2) John Whitworth made an announcement on the Dragon Facebook group
that since DragonPlus Electronics can now both produce CE-certified
products or declare as CE-Exempt vintage components, he has re-opened
sales to EU countries from his website. He has also restocked
Oojamaflips (both 2020 and 2021 versions), and 6×09 Pullup adaptors:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4110848089174829/
https://dragonpluselectronics.com/product-category/hardware/

3) Tom Erik Gundersen has made another small batch of Dragon games
converted to DSK format (so things like the MiSTer can run them, since
they don’t support the default extended Dragon .VDK format). 20 more
games are included with this image, available in the files section
of the Dragon Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4105984126327892/

Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)

1) As Mark Overholser announced earlier this week, the next CocoTECH
episode will be recorded live on Tuesday, August 12, where Ken Wilmott
(aka CaptainKirchoff in the Coco Discord) will do a deep dive into
his 32K RAM expansion and MMU project for the MC-10, that was talking
about on last week’s episode of The Coco Nation.

2) Coco Town returns with his promised explanation of how the RND
function in Microsoft BASIC works, vs. the AI generated version he
showed on his previous episode, and how it more truly random:
https://youtu.be/XzXvcamBzOk?si=Ih1R_vHxeKVQ3SWW
He also released an episode called “There is no bug. My code is
beautiful”. This covers a bug from the previous episode:
https://youtu.be/MkcJ1tOA7Mo?si=klHVNYg5-4nsfpWP

3) Tim Lindner pointed out a project on github to create a 6309
interposed board for the C-64:
https://github.com/0x444454/Commodore-6309

4) JustinZ in the Coco Discord posted a link to his github that
contains his Coco Desktop program that was published in the March
1989 issue of Rainbow magazine. This was some BASIC subroutines for a
Coco 3 the supported a point and click interface for BASIC programs,
including pull down menus, buttons and pop-up windows. A Tic-Tac-Toe
program demo using these features is also included. Both the BASIC
source code and a disk image are provided:
https://github.com/zamora/coco-desktop

5) 780Tech.com (Antoinio Caballero) put up a video showing another
cartridge holder for the Coco 3, called the Pentagon of Power. This
is a 5 sided spinning design, increasing the amount of carts you can
fit from his 4 sided Tower of Power design. He even shows how it is
put together:
https://youtu.be/C5V1youuw40?si=kQgiMKqW4EWd8Ddy

6) Steve Strowbridge has started CocoTalk back up (to be published
irregularily at this point), this time interviewing “The 3
Pauls”… Paul Thayer, Paul Fiscarelli and Paul Shoemaker (with
bonus guest Simon Jonassen). I haven’t time to watch the full show,
but it looks great from what I saw so far:
https://youtu.be/pYtjivpOpek?si=isxV_JwsvlR0Tqb-

7) Jim Brain/Retro Innovations posted onto the Facebook photos from
his in progress switching a Coco 1 to using static RAM rather than
dynamic RAM:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1929079184021683/posts/4024052867857627/
He also posted about his Banker+ project as well:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1929079184021683/posts/4018835805046000/
Jim also posted an article on the Glenside Coco Club website about
“The Multi-Sensory Sound Laboratory, Part 1”. This goes into how
sound and music can be represented visually for deaf people, and also
shows how the Audio Spectrum Analyzer software by Stever Bjork for
Tandy can be used for this purpose, as it was actually done in the
1980’s by Norman of Oval Window Audio (including pictures):
https://www.glensideccc.com/the-multisensory-sound-laboratory-part-1/

8) James Jones posted in the NitrOS9 Facebook group about some
ideas he has for BASIC09 and discusses that BASIC09 (the program)
is actually a primitive IDE (which I agree with), and that he plans
on writing a “language server” for it:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1929079184021683/posts/4017742021822045/

9) Jeffrey Worley posted that Fujinets are in stock (this is the
original bit-banger required version; a new version is being worked
on):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1929079184021683/posts/4005939233002324/

10) Speaking of Fujinet, Rich Stephens posted a DSK image in the Coco
Facebook group that his 3 small utility programs for Fujinet:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163045495572641/

11) Erico Monteiro posted another animated GIF showing his progress
on more enemies for his PMODE 4 artifacting game in progress:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163037358002641/
And another one:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163033573492641/

12) Allen Huffman posted a teaser of him working on recovering some
old videos from CocoFests in the 1990’s – with I believe Dave
Wordell from one of the 1994 Fests:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163019193702641/
Allen Huffman wrote a blog post about a small snippet of BASIC code
that allows performing a PCLEAR 0 without having to patch the actual
BASIC ROM’s, that was originally written by Ciaran Anscomb, author
of XRoar, Dunjunz and many other Coco and Dragon projects. This allows
Extended (Disk) BASIC to return the last 1.5K of RAM that is reserved
for graphics screens to BASIC, which is excellent if you only need
text or low res semi-graphics and you need as much RAM as possible:
https://subethasoftware.com/2025/08/04/ciaran-xroar-anscombs-pclear-0-without-assembly/
Allen also posted multiple blog posts about a programming challenge
from UnderColor magazine in 1984 (this magazine was from Dennis Kitz,
famous for writing operas, the LowerKit and Color Quaver for the
Coco, amongst many, many other things). The challenge was to write
the fastest Extended BASIC program to draw a spiral patter in PMODE 4:
Part 1:
https://subethasoftware.com/2025/08/07/undercolors-spiral-challenge-from-1984-part-1/
Part 2:
https://subethasoftware.com/2025/08/08/undercolors-spiral-challenge-from-1984-part-2/

13) Danniielle posted a video on the Coco Facebook group showing her
Coco D project 99% finished:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163027580872641/

14) Keith Frechette posted on the Coco Facebook group that he has
gotten “last modified” timestamps” working as an extension to
DECB disks, and includes screenshots:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163025824622641/

15) Davy Mitchell posted a link to a YouTube short by JohnRiggs
showing a still open Radio Shack in Layton, Utah:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wsjSKx3eSAA

16) Brian Blake posted photos of a custom 3D case (multi-color
even!) for Jim Brain/Retro Innovations Philharmonic 12 card (itself a
remake of the Symphony 12 card from back in the day). He does mention
that he will need to change the font he used for “Philharmonic”
as it isn’t printing cleanly, but it looks great even in it’s
current state:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/colorcomputer/posts/1275408354074894/
And he posted a ton of videos showing various songs running through the
Philharmonic 12, including one with a graphic demo (with sound effects
in addition to music), and another comparing the Coco’s built in 6
bit DAC output vs. the Symphony/Philharmonic 12 (for music samples,
only play a short clip so we don’t get copyright tagged):
https://www.youtube.com/@BrianBlake1968

17) Craig Iannello posted a Facebook short video showing his SBC
project running on real hardware with almost everything he wants it
to be able to do in text mode – including colored fonts, etc. The
two things he still wants to add are horizontal scrolling and 40
column support:
NOTE: Mute sound – it’s just background noise and key presses.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/615867544520722

18) A new 63C09E SBC was also shown by it’s creator Tadeusz Pycio,
that will run on the RCBus standard (RC2014):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3744028312557190/

19) Craig Jones also posted about his 6809 based SBC, which he is
calling an MP-09:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3743194862640535/
github link:
https://github.com/crsjones/68Retro

20) Mike Moore posted a video showing ColorWare’s TalkHead
software (which ran with their Real Talker hardware voice synthesizer
card). This allowed an animated digitized head to talk in sync with
the speech coming from the card. Unfortunately Mike doesn’t have the
card itself so no speech comes out, but it does show the program’s
fancy intro and the head animation. And that was programmed by none
other than Tim Jenison, who later became famous for creating the
Video Toaster on the Amiga, and his documentary on how hyper realistic
painting were made hundreds of years ago called “Tim’s Vermeer”:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163010782197641/

21) Alex Gayer uploaded the Coco 3 BASIC source code to show a 3D
cube demo with rotation and wobble. Since it’s in BASIC it is
quite slow (even with the double speed up POKE – it would be a bit
better with a GIME-X/Z in triple speed mode) and recommends trying
it in an overclocked emulator. I wonder how fast BASIC09 would do
it, since it’s match and drawing functions are faster than Super
Extended BASIC?
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163008695492641/

22) Some video from the official VCF event in Canberra, Australia was
sent to me by Amigos Discord member Mark, which included having Ian
Mavric of Tandy Assembly fame (and also manufacturer of Coco hardware
including a modern implementation of the RS-232 Pack), including show
his Coco 3, a deluxe joystick and a Coco SDC.
(This jumps straight to the Coco related section, but the video covers
the whole show and is almost 23 minutes long):
https://youtu.be/CKDZi9BqwQI?feature=shared&t=408

23) G.B. Janssen silently released Lesson 18 (in 3 parts) of his
Coco 3 assembly language series, this time covering how to do text
in graphics modes, including 90 degree rotations, different spacing
between characters, etc.:
Part 1 (shows some examples, and then goes into the history of ASCII,
etc.:
https://youtu.be/SRlPkfvqWHE?si=6LVGJPNff90oGyOh
Part 1A (this covers some of Super Extended BASIC’s commands for
graphic text):
https://youtu.be/r1bXESDxUMA?si=MRsABmNf7GWZxvyh
Part 2 (This covers extending the character set to use control
characters for special graphics characters, how variable spacing
works). A part 3 is forthcoming:
https://youtu.be/TwAi_bqiNGY?si=ZXEmBcImdgEQPifF

24) NHB Retro on YouTube released a 25 minute video about fixing and
adding a Mark Data Products style composite adaptor to a Coco 1 he
received – damaged in transit with UPS:
https://youtu.be/qFNhQ8IxI0o?si=Kq59uuw0lLoRAIsW

25) Retro Islander posted a video tutorial (almost an hour long)
on how to use LLM’s to generate BASIC09 code. Work in progress
(as has been discussed in the BASIC09 channel on the Coco Discord)
as the LLM gets better at it:
https://youtu.be/7ehy7DLp9N4?si=LvCrdkWyPn1xWWrI

26) Marlin Lee released a video that is a bit off of his normal
beaten path of gaming videos, where he discusses using the Coco for
more serious applications:
https://youtu.be/SsRG-IaEiqU?si=AuCAnmf2webLn82a

27) Retrocity Greece on YouTube posted an interesting video called
“Home Computer Wars: UK vs. USA” which includes the Coco as well
as many other machines (in Greek, so translate):
https://youtu.be/pBFqHvNu4Mw?si=R7iwwpH6gZ_3Jvqz
They also released a YouTube short video about the Coco – but the
graphics they show behind the Coco 1 have nothing to do with the Coco:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/h9D9ZD0Z8zA

MC-10

1) Fresh off of making Coco 1 and 2, as well as Dragon 32/64 emulators
for the Nintendo DS, Dave Bernazzani has shown some screenshots of his
next work in progress for emulators for the DS – an MC-10 emulator:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/24037942592572570/

2) Jim Gerrie posted a link in the MC-10 Facebook group about an
Alice/MC-10 Arduino project on sourceforge.net. The project started
a 7 months ago, but has received continuous updates, including just
last week:
Facebook post:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/23934893869544110/
Sourceforge direct link:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/mc10duino/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

1) Paul Shoemaker has released Ms. PAKU – A Coco 3 only Ms. PacMan
version of his Paku Paku game. You can get it on his itch.io page
for free, and he has also released a video for it:
Video:
https://youtu.be/ibzPsCFludo?si=DQsFUjasNB2373-3
Download:
https://pshoemaker70.itch.io/ms-paku

2) Jeff Noyle has released a new blog post update to his Mythfarer
512K Coco 3 RPG game in progress, and included a video showing his
new Fireball Spell effect, which looks quite impressive:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3577880?updates=true&emclan=103582791475080032&emgid=503958056943487349

3) YouTube channel Legacy Archive Collection put up a 3 minute video
about “Item 104: Thexder” for the Coco 3:
https://youtu.be/YoLJmkvNL8k?si=ear5ufDJI1JiW0yB

4) The Laird’s Lair did a 4 way game compare of Time Bandit on 4
platforms: Dragon 32, Amiga, Coco and Atari ST (skipping the TRS-80
Model 1/3 original and later DOS VGA versions). For some reason,
the Coco version is running much slower than normal (both in sound
and graphics):
https://youtu.be/FeoPq0-J518?si=MbA4VYReelyfDuK-

5) Paul Volker put up some pics and a video overview of Spectral
Associates Space Wrek, a clone of the arcade Star Trek Simulator
arcade game:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163031316937641/

6) Roger Taylor has a Patreon page set up for his modern remake of
The Interbank Incident (written by Spectral Associates for Tandy),
which he is making for Android & Google Tv’s, tablets and phones:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/interbank-2025-135101594?utm_campaign=patron_engagement&utm_source=post_link&post_id=135101594&utm_id=8fe6bb7d-8d13-4bd5-b44f-2f8e23d39737&utm_medium=email

7) Jay Mundy of Spriteworx (who made the excellent recent high res
BASIC game for the MC-10 with professional packaging, called T.H.E.M.),
has made a cryptic announcement about a new game in development for
the MC-10, called Recon Pack:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/23956771347356362/
And a dramatic video to go with it – with a secret package being
sent to one of our panel:
https://youtu.be/3VfXerwB1OQ?si=Nt_BDtd8ILxmjocy

8) FRGCB TV on YouTube did a comparison video between various platforms
of the Epyx racing games Pitstop and Pitstop II. This included the
Coco 1 and 2 version of Pitstop II that Tandy sold:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8CiKNFWEeU&t=683s

9) VCF SoCal on YouTube has published the video for the William Volk
presentation from this years event, which is titled “The Accidental
Gamer – How I stumbled into the Game Industry during the TRS-80/Apple
II/Atari 800 era”. He mentions the Coco and how fast it’s BASIC
was for his game Voyager, sold by Avalon Hill for multiple machine
including the Coco.
https://youtu.be/T9dIJpLtgL8?si=iNe-JIFuOJK1EWLj&t=366

10) XperTek released some new Coco 2 game play videos, including
Time Bandit:
https://youtu.be/8loy7lNhRG8?si=RUv5nekOoyDEyUNh
Space Assault:
https://youtu.be/9vyg0DwRaAk?si=7uWD2Hvdw_qrOOzu

11) Marlin Lee has kept his frenetic pace with returning to creating
videos, with even more Coco gameplay goodness:
Zonx (the Rainbow type in game from 1985 with some of the better
sound effects of any Coco 1 and 2 game:):
https://youtu.be/sfAgYhK44mo?si=QCGTVoj1o9K3KDZj
Balldozer – an Arkanoid style game originally for the Dragon:
https://youtu.be/i8bN_F1F-Kw?si=H0EUFopGlWdRvdVP
Super Pitfall for the Coco 3:
https://youtu.be/SHri5U2S0QU?si=ulI3w7w3Fn6ZtVny
Advanced Star Trench Warefare – An Extended BASIC 3D game from
Illustrated Memory Banks. A simpler version of the game appeared in
Rainbow magazine, but it was also commercially sold:
https://youtu.be/cTg221GZTVE?si=alBQUpYFUNfzBtto
Arex from Adventure International – but also some other things at
the end of the video:
https://youtu.be/uR24jmEWD3I?si=hWsYsWdpj3a_LR0Z

12) RetroGamerDiaries on YouTube put up a video going through 20
different ports of the classic UK game Chuckie Egg, including the
Dragon 32/64:
https://youtu.be/USayZUg_uOU?si=S7cT0DTUUWRT24Ds

13) Polish YouTube channel gregok1973 released a video showing a 1983
game called Abecedarian, where the player’s task is to arrange all
the letters in alphabetical order starting the upper left corner:
https://youtu.be/WE8ZQVe-UXQ?si=-Oz7TxzWW7wAl0UN

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