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:

As Mark Overholser mentioned on our show, the next Tandy Retro Show will
be happening January 24 and 25th, which will be a series of live YouTube
streaming presentations. He is currently taking bookings of people &
topics. Send an email to: registration@tandyretroshow.com
https://tandyretroshow.com/

Canada is getting it’s own official VCF – Montreal, January 24-25 of 2026. It
will be held at the Royal Military College outside of Montreal. At least
2 Coco speakers have been confirmed so far, and at least 4 Coco people
are attending:
https://vcfed.org/vcf-montreal/

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/

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). 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/

NEWS:

Dragon 32/64

1) Julian Brown posted a photo of 3 generations of his CPLD VDG board:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4281304698795833/

2) John Whitworth added a page to his DragonPlus Electronics website,
containing spare parts that he has available for Dragons:
https://dragonpluselectronics.com/product-category/spares/?orderby=date
And he also posted that his new lowercase boards are ready for purchase…
including a video that shows the 15 included fonts, selectable by a rotary
X switch:
Announcment:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4279592112300425/
Fonts Video:
https://youtu.be/OGkFcTJr7Qo?si=E7BpO9NSupXrjtPK
Sale page:
https://dragonpluselectronics.com/product/lower-case-text-upgrade-for-dragon-32-64-200-2026-version/

3) YouTube channel Pieces of 8-Bit did a nostalgia episode about the
first video games, home consoles and home computers he ever used… and
the Dragon 32 was the first computer he had:
https://youtu.be/Auw80LbB2U8?si=GyzgkaAmmNJF_CtN&t=872

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

1) The next live TRS-80 Trash Talk show will be streamed and recorded
tonight at 9 pm Eastern:
https://www.youtube.com/@TRS80TrashTalk

2) Oldplayers on YouTube did an interview with Luiz Pacheco & Mauricio Matte,
which is a multi-platform drive replacement where they try to make the drives
look like the originals. They start with the Apple II, and then show the
(CP-400 demo starts at:)
(turn on closed captioning & auto-translate from Portuguese to English)
https://youtu.be/NQB4jBSvAxE?si=fq8Ul2PsiriPdWqq&t=700
Also showing the controller for the CP-400 at:
https://youtu.be/NQB4jBSvAxE?si=zHTdFiLFYUIcm9R8
Luciano Scharfe joins in as one of the users reviewing it, with the CP-400
version in mind:
https://youtu.be/NQB4jBSvAxE?si=aFBLzTybdcwJQWJj&t=2102

3) Clube Color Brasil’s group on Facebook posted a photo of the new
multi-pak circuit board and 3D printed case for it, which he is selling
(I think it was designed and/or manufactured by Victor Trucco?). I am not
sure if he is planning to sell any more:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ClubeColor/posts/25174830058884704/

4) Jim Bob on the Coco Facebook group posted a short video showing the
result of his typing in a sample program from the Don & Kurt Inman book,
“Assembly Language Graphics for the TRS-80 Color Computer”, doing some
machine language sound effects:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163718191067641/

5) Pedro Pena (on his YouTube Rocky Hill channel) posted two DriveWire
4 videos – one showing it running on Apple Silicon (M3 in this case)
MacOS aarch64:
https://youtu.be/EXVKzwsmH5Q?si=LlCHtzZn1KuDChnA
The other shows DriveWire 4 version 4.3.5p update (which includes upgraded
SWT library for modern web/browser support, enhance disk and archive
management, refreshed bookmark menu, audio playback for HDB-DOS WAV files,
Pre-packaged released for Windows and Linux, and bug fixes with improved
UI performance):
https://youtu.be/7JlqfUJELuw?si=oGocRy1Z0Uoc76NN

6) TRS-80 Retro Programing did another entry in his Ulysses game project
for the Coco 1 & 2, this time covering disk directory and coding structure:
https://youtu.be/UYMx_VdHiJ4?si=c4rf6HgWrsqf-PVM

7) Little Car on YouTube posted a video about the TRS-80 Color Computer
and it’s history:
https://youtu.be/4-O-ze_ezy0?si=wH9gVELfpA689I_-

MC-10

1) Jay Mundy of Spriteworx has started his 3rd MC-10 game, and posted a
YouTube video showing his sneak peek and some of the new techniques (like
preserving variables across program loads, using a main game loop within
multi-loads, etc.) he is using:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5Of9P-x_Ak

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

1) Paul Shoemaker released the Coco 3 official Shareware version with the
8-bit Guy, and posted a video showing it (the opening screen shows the
differences to the full retail version):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEdP7cKyi4w
Purchase page (multiple options, including download, cartridge (signed or
unsigned, but you also get the digital download immediately), etc.):
https://www.the8bitguy.com/product/quarx-for-color-computer-3/
He also put the first screenshots of a possible couple of ways that the
Coco 1&2 version can go (PMODE 4 artifacting or PMODE 3 “pure” colors):
(Show 2 images from my Coco Nation News folder)

2) Yesterday the 8-Bit Guy also announced the availability of the Quarx
for the Coco 3 with some features limited as a shareware download Several
people in the Coco group on Facebook have already boughten it:
https://www.the8bitguy.com/product-category/games/
Shareware download (scroll to bottom):
https://www.the8bitguy.com/25753/petscii-robot-shareware-available/

3) Jim Gerrie released an updated version of Python, and program originally
by Andrew Siddely in 1982 for the Coco. Jim added key sensitivity (for
detecting keypresses when reaching a corner), some speed optimizations,
fixing up the sound to more closely match the Coco original, adding a high
score, and added scoring bonuses on higher levels:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFRIL4utTBE

4) The Ellimist channel on YouTube released another graphical adventure
game speed-run, this time of Treasure of the Aztecs written by Scott Cabit:
https://youtu.be/54KZtomAkpM?si=t6OmUFdB-muWJ7JM

5) ZXFrankie posted a video of his high score attempt of the Dragon 32
version of Android Attack (originally by Spectral Associates):
https://youtu.be/7uDuMLqOGx8?si=v5boDGTRnHFe8uOl

6) Inufuto has started releasing their next compile cross-platform game,
called AWASS. The MC-10 & Coco versions are out as of this morning. It’s
another platformer with flags to pick up – but adds that a single platform
can slide over:
http://inufuto.web.fc2.com/8bit/awass/
MC-10:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5KUcUgYowU
Coco 1&2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p_Z0M48UBA
Coco 3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duoDsvK7DGs

7) The World of Dragon forums, in their Uploads section, has released
the never previously released Dragon 32/Dragon Data version of Megapede,
sold in North America by Computerware. I think the game is the same, but
I believe that there are separate loading screens and screen display options:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11327

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﻿The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 448, January 17,2025 (Jan 10-16)