The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 432, September 27,2025 (Sep 20-Sep 26)

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:

The DFW (Dallas/Fort Worth) Retrocomputing Show and Tell is happening
Saturday, October 18 at the Bingo Bingo in Grand Prairie, Texas:
https://www.meetup.com/dfw-retrocomputing/events/310440840/

This year’s Portland Retro Gaming Expo runs from October 17-19 in
2025 at the 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.
Native Portuguese site:
https://retrosc.org/
Google translate to english version:
https://retrosc-org.translate.goog/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

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/

Date for CocoFest 2026 – April 24-25, as mentioned in the Glenside
meeting this past week. And hotel rates are locked in now (see post
on Glenside website)
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

**** 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) As mentioned last week, the organizer for the annual Dragon Meetup
(Tony Jewell) is not able to do it this year in the normal Fall
timeframe, but it looks like the community is fine with changing it
to spring, and they are looking at mid-March sometime. We will keep
you posted as details get firmed up:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11308

2) Julian Brown posted an update to the Dragon Facebook group about
his configuration controller, including a quick video showing how
the interface works:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4167523113507326/

3) John Whitworth posted that he is installing ReCaptcha on his
dragonpluselectronics.com site checkout, to stop card fraudsters,
for testing:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4166025853657052/

4) For those interested in the Dragon MMC (like the CocoSDC, but it
also supports cassette image saving/loading as well as disk), a post
asking about it in the Dragon Facebook group by Richard Herbert got
a response from Phil Harvey-Smith:
“Just working on it’s replacement (as one of the used components
went EoL), no ETA yet.”:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/4164919110434393/

5) Dave’s 8-bit Basement on YouTube did a follow-up video about
his Dragon 32, and working on the some video and other issues:
https://youtu.be/gx69VgdsJeM?si=qU-w75hD_MxzZQ2B

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

0) A quick mention that last weeks episode, with our interview with
Glen Dahlgren, has already broken 600 views on YouTube alone!

1) Lee Perkins put up a blog post about how to detect a 1986 or 1987
GIME on a Coco 3:
https://leesmind.com/2025/09/21/detecting-86-87-gime-and-ntsc-pal/

2) Glen Hewlett posted another blog entry on 6809 assembly
optimizations. This time he talks about a smaller optimization that
he figured out for BASIC09 to 6809 Compiler, which is an optimized
way to copy 8 bytes of RAM between memory locations:
https://nowhereman999.wordpress.com/2025/09/20/a-little-more-6809-optimizing/

3) Allen Huffman has restored his old photos from CocoFest (Chicago &
Atlanta) and PennFests from years gone by:
https://subethasoftware.com/photos/ChicagoCoCoFest/

4) Coco Town has another Game Revolutions (episode 30) VLOG (doing
his Moon Patrol style game)… this time working on getting the player
shooting through the rotating shields on the big boss ship:
https://youtu.be/vJXwQjmiKxc?si=ULfwaZ6Bpa2rZFuR

5) Frederic released episode 2 of his VLOG building a 6309 based SBC,
where he first brings the 6309 up (and what hardware is required to
both implement this, and to test it):
https://youtu.be/TFMaml6vFnw?si=Zo1RZ-dyfY1C71Rs

6) FozzTex on YouTube has released a video showing his demo of using
FujiNet with an OSC (Open Sound Controller) keyboard from a tablet
with a Coco 2:
https://youtu.be/9AejfCXck6w?si=MuotWPAZ64UWIPtv
He also made a blog post to explain what he is doing and showing in
the video:
https://www.insentricity.com/a.cl/293/jamminate-your-8-bit

7) Brian Blake, who has been posting videos of working with Lyra (a
multi-voice music editing program, the first on the Coco to support a
mouse or joystick for placing notes, and could handle up to 4 voices
with the built in DAC and up to 8 with MIDI or the Symphony-12):
Motley Crue’s Home Sweet Home with VCC & the DAC:
https://youtu.be/SSAKJQMGnx4?si=hSIJAiv0XLC7YlGI
On a real Coco with a MIDI card on the Coco and a Casio keyboard
(8 voices):
https://youtube.com/shorts/pYkHNP4x1KE?si=Ul0CjDYZwBCxQQ2_

8) Wormfood (active on the Coco Discord) posted a few things to his
github this past week:
Kantronics Hamsoft interface: photos, software, manual. This was a 3rd
party cartridge with a ROM & 6522 PIA that hooked up to an interface
that then allowed CW and RTTY HAM radio access
https://github.com/WormFood/Hamsoft-for-CoCo
He gave the same treatment to the Burke & Burke Coco XT-RTC with OS-9
boot ROM (one I owned myself):
https://github.com/WormFood/CoCo-XT-RTC

9) Keith Frechette posted an update to his SAL (Structured Assembly
Language) translator to the Coco Facebook group (description of SAL
in the post):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163234911202641/

10) Thomas Cherryhomes posted in the Coco Facebook group (and
elsewhere) about an upcoming article for the newly relaunched
COMPUTE! Magazine, which shows how to use Fujinet to move files
between it and your PC, using multiple methods:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163234735082641/
He also released a video on a re-organizing of programs for the Coco
to run through Fujinet to be much better organized and easier to
navigate through, especially using Fujinet’s filters and wildcards:
https://youtu.be/BdEWk1qIm2I?si=kNvaRK7raFL1a4R1

11) The Capixaba Computer Museum in Brazil posted to the Coco Facebook
group that September 23 was the 40th anniversary of the release of
the Prolgica CP-400 Color II – their 2nd version of their Coco 1&2
clone that featured an improved keyboard amongst other things:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163228854417641/

12) Joel Ewy posted an updated version of his 3D printer file to make
fixed door clips for the infamously brittle CM-8 monitor door. He
said it is not perfect, but it is working enough for him to have a
functioning door on his CM-8:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163222365437641/

13) John Papas gave an update on his Coco 3 laptop – including the
fact that he is planning to add a larger 14” color display. (NOTE:
This is a personal project for John and not planned to be a commercial
product:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163219369332641/

14) JaceFuse has a small update on his Dungeons of Daggorath port to
the Amiga:
https://youtube.com/shorts/Ug7upqtEUX4?si=HUea18wEknRIVJ5J

15) nsdigirolamo on YouTube released a short showing a Coco 1 loading
a small program from cassette … complete with sound:
https://youtube.com/shorts/BlGhIkGRUrk?si=u2SLukhRKLwbvB8v

16) Z4RT4N on YouTube put up a 3&1/2 minute video showing loading
Time Quest on a Coco 3 via the CocoSDC.
https://youtu.be/qwsocKDXstc?si=pKmI0UykPHEvC5yM

17) Dennis Bathory-Kitz, the person who created and hosts the Coco
listserve mailing list (and also created the Lowerkit hardware,
Color Quaver multi-voice music software and Undercolor magazine back
in the 1980’s) has announced that his host for the Coco list that
they will be discontinuing the service as of January 2026. Dennis is
taking suggestions on the list as to what options might be available
to keep the list going in some form:
“ After all these years, this message came an hour ago from Pair
Networks, where I lease my server:

Several years ago we began phasing out the PairList service by
disabling new list creation. Today we are announcing its final
End-of-Life date: January 1, 2026.
You are receiving this notice because your Pair Networks hosting
account still has an active PairList.
Over time, the free PairList mailing list program (based on GNU
Mailman) has become unreliable as most mail hosts now require strict
email validation standards (SPF, DKIM, DMARC). PairList cannot
support these features, causing messages to be delayed, marked as
spam, or rejected. Because of this declining reliability, we believe
the service no longer meets our standards and will be discontinued.
PairList has served our users well for many years. While we are sad
to retire it, we are exploring a more reliable replacement service
for the future.

I will download all the content and make it available on a
password-protected page — at some point when I have the time, that is.

If you like, you can sign into the list with your credentials and
download the GZip’d archives yourselves, about 270 files monthly from
October 2003 to the present.

In the meantime, and while I wait to hear from Pair about their
suggestions for migration, CoCo group suggestions for migration
are welcome.”

18) 8bitsinthebasement (Hi Peter!) posted VLOG episode 4 of his
developing the arcade shoot-em-up for the Coco and Dragon machines
called Super Shooty Aliens. This episode he covers alien movement &
collision detection:
https://youtu.be/Kin_4YLwLQg?si=Qoy2UHNHYH-GXJUE

19) Tandy Assembly is going on this weekend, and they are already
posting some videos of the presenations. One example is Jim Brain’s
presentation on expanding the Coco 3’s MMU to handle more than 512k
(note audio kicks in a little later):
https://www.youtube.com/live/hs-KwBHof4Q?si=3E6J8sg3aMLSTG3_

MC-10

1) Spriteworx has another teaser video for their upcoming MC-10 game:
https://youtu.be/6ZgVP-2OeX8?si=WGYAt2pJ3N5t9ZFg

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

1) BASIC Pac-Man from Coco-Synthesis has had version 2.0 released,
including a video, source code and DSK download. Version 2 is a
little faster, but also adds the ability to make your own mazes
(up to 15 on the main disk):
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljq05H_tg8k
DSK image & source code:
https://github.com/CoCo-Synthesis/BASIC-Pac-Man/releases/tag/v2.0.0

2) Davy’s Retro Corner (Davy Mitchell) has released his latest game
for the Dragon 32 (since it is in BASIC, it should run on Coco’s,
etc. fine as well) – Glutton (based on another game called Greed). It
includes a YouTube video of the game in action as well:
Blog post:
https://davysretrocorner.blogspot.com/2025/09/glutton-eat-matrix.html?m=1
Video:
https://youtu.be/IDK7S6VAeIs?si=JvFqb3P20kRuX-p1

3) Sheldon MacDonald has posted an updated version of his Bike Racer
game, fixing a bug from his earlier release. It is available right
now in the Coco Facebook group, and should be on the archive soon,
I would presume:
Download link (note that there are two versions included – One for an
MPI & CocoSID equipped Coco, and one for a Coco with default hardware
(CocoSDC or real floppy drive):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163243174452641/

4) Paul Slocum on the Coco Facebook group posted how he used the
sound editing program Audacity on his PC to record the Coco cassette
port in order to be able to save and load Dungeons of Daggorath games
in progress:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163223597322641/

5) XperTek continues on disk 8 of his “backups” for his Coco 2 –
this time playing Tandy/Robert Kilgus’ excellent Skiing from 1980
(irregardless of what the hacked title screen says):
https://youtu.be/D9UDxAKjrx0?si=CwYCxOP6TrtCT5pN

6) RetroGamingLoft posted a video longplay of Tandy/Image Producer’s
Space Assault, their Space Invaders clone:
https://youtu.be/4GLP7IfRjBs?si=_ikaJKJPtps48vU3
He also did one for Crazy Painter – the Dragon/Microdeal version
(that uses PMODE 3 graphics rather than artifacted PMODE 4 like the
Coco original from The Cornsoft Group). He gets pretty far along,
even getting to the Challenge Stage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOnE-1syBuQ

7) Amigo Aaron as his SepTandy video did a 2 & ½ hour tribute and
playing the games of Steve Bjork, through his days at Datasoft and
then SRB software directly through Tandy and on his own or through
other companies. :
https://www.youtube.com/live/I3rkdq9PIEM?si=ZEJZRyrt8sNdiIug

8) David Kroeker as part of his contribution to SepTandy posted a
video showing Eliza on the Coco, with the Speech Sound cartridge:
https://youtu.be/fKkOVr2fIp0?si=PV6tyAt4UNy0B4gN

9) WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot on YouTube posted some more gameplay videos
featuring the Coco as part of SepTandy:
Coco Zone graphic adventure game part 2:
https://youtu.be/ISV1AHMdnzE?si=5ps2Me823IG586S-
He also did a one hour show about Oddball games – where he shows
Return of the Jet-I, Outhouse and Mega-Bug:
https://youtu.be/-CYP0JkO-XE?si=3fn-5psLCSItGn2D

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