Interview schedule:

Not scheduled yet, but Logan Ward has agreed to come on the show.

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 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/

The next Dragon Meetup is March 28-29 at The Centre for Computing History
in Cambridge, England:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4295687980690838/

VCF-East is April 17-19 at the InfoAge Science and History Museums in Wall,
New Jersey. Peter Cetinski is going to be on the Podcaster’s RoundTable
panel (for the TRS-80 Trash Talk show, that does cover Coco’s in addition
to the other TRS-80 and Tandy machines):
https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-east/

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). Table
reservations are open now too. Holiday Inn & Suites Carol Stream, IL:
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/

That same weekend is the next online live International Computer Club show on
the Twitch and YouTube channels for the Amigos. There has been Coco content
on there before; will there be this year? It starts at 4:30 pm EST on May 2:
https://www.youtube.com/@AmigosRetroGaming

VCF-SW (Southwest) is at a slightly different date this year (May 29-31)
because of the Soccer championships, and is happening at the Westin
Dallas Forth Worth Airport. This is of course where Tandy/Radio Shack was
headquartered, so expect some alumni to be popping by!
https://www.vcfsw.org/

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/Saturday) (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

VCF-MW (Midwest) is September 12-13 at the Schaumburg Convention Center
in Schaumburg, Illinois (west of Chicago proper):
https://vcfmw.org/

Tandy Assembly dates and new venue have been announced on Facebook. Oct
2-Oct 4 at the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel at the Cincinnati Airport:
https://www.facebook.com/events/896272716427805/?acontext=%7B%22event_action_history%22%3A[%7B%22mechanism%22%3A%22attachment%22%2C%22surface%22%3A%22newsfeed%22%7D]%2C%22ref_notif_type%22%3Anull%7D

NEWS:

Dragon 32/64

1) A ZIP of the Dragon Data Forth manual has been uploaded to the World
of Dragon forums, along with a scan of an alternate cassette label for
the Forth software:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11339
The same poster also uploaded a ZIP of “The Dragon Programmer” by
S.M. Gee from Granada Publishing:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11340

2) John Whitworth posted that all PCB’s and components have been ordered
for his new SuperSprite FM+ HDMI boards, and that he plans to have some
available at the Dragon meetup next month:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4320856054840697/

3) Chris Poacher posted a question in the Microdeal Facebook page – the
address that the place that manufactured the Microdeal games for Tandy
(which was allowed to sell 3rd party in the UK, unlike Canada and the USA)
appears to just be a large house, and not a vast warehouse that he pictured
as a kid. He is wondering if that was the original building on the site
from the 1980’s:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/204334613785733/posts/1909832979902546/

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

1) Grant Leighty posted on the Glenside website that this years CocoFest
T-shirts (logo designed by Ron Delvaux) are available for order, with a link:
https://www.glensideccc.com/the-34th-last-annual-chicago-cocofest-official-t-shirts-and-other-items/

2) pw32x has released the final (I think?) article on the inner workings
of the Coco classic game Downland, where this time he covers his ports of
the game to other platforms:
https://www.puffweet.com/2026/02/22/downland-unearthed-final-porting-the-game-to-over-a-dozen-platforms/

3) Portuguese voice only podcast Retropolis talks about one of our favourite
YouTube channels, CocoTown. In specific, his two part series on how the
PAINT command works. (turn sound down, auto-translate to english):
https://youtu.be/TswWoaSNWiI?si=Na9HGFuVWuuvvcip&t=5055
Also they mention Coco Nation and a demo they presented on our show a
little while ago:
https://youtu.be/TswWoaSNWiI?si=1rNA5z4y3Z8Sl3vh&t=5772

4) Ben Shicman posted on the Coco Facebook group that he has posted his
Color Computer emulator to his github account. It is written in Javascript:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163863367017641/

5) Michael Pittsley posted a link to a TNFS server for Fujinet that he
has created, which has an SDC folder with the “exact file structure as
the SDC image found on the archive”. Bonus – he has made a “Game
On Challenge” folder that will always contain the current games for the
weekly Game On Challenge:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163894332867641/

6) In honour of the passing of Robert Carradine (the lead in the Revenge
of the Nerds movies), Mason Pringle posted a screenshot from the movie
where the actor is playing music on an early Coco 2 (with the name badge
strategically removed):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163915355712641/

7) Rich Stephens posted details and a download link for more utilities
that he has done for FujiNet, including enhanced Clock, BASGUID and BASTIME:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163912202757641/

8) Vincent Tran posted some screenshots of his success (after multiple
tries) of getting onto a modern ANSI BBS, using Roger Taylor’s Netmate
terminal program (one of two that fully supports ANSI graphics and color):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163911500867641/

9) CryptoBadEntry on YouTube released the first video taken from his
ESP32-s3 based Coco emulator, showing some artifact color games (like
Cuber and Bagitman) from his first release:
https://youtu.be/k26x5hwOrqU?si=DDVgdfreDpn59C1u

10) George B Janssen has returned to his Coco 3 assembly language tutorial,
with 3 new videos dealing with colors. He mentions that a 4th part is
forthcoming. It should be mentioned that the DSK image for this set of
lessons is also in the Coco Discord under the “assembly-with-georgej”
channel (Programming and Development section):
Part A (covers RGB colors, palettes, and a Coco 3 screen loader):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdYH2qkw5ms
Part B (Using GIMP with a Coco 3, and CocoSC):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTRn4LPmW0Q
Part C:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2NNEYT0liY

11) TRS-80 Retro Programing posted a video showing his Ulysses game with
Coco 3 double speed, and talks about getting VCC to run:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ0X_kqWXQY

12) Luc Dion has started a BASIC programming contest (Microsoft BASIC only,
so no BASIC09, etc.) to calculate the first 1,000 digits of PI:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163922320317641/

MC-10

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

1) Renga in Blue, which covers adventure games for all platforms, published
their review of Death Star (from 1983) for the Vic20. Why I am mentioning
that there? The Australian author of the game (Darryl D. Reynolds) originally
did this and two other games for both the TRS-80 Model III and the Coco,
from his company Gameworx Software. None of these are in the archive;
has anyone out there in the Coco Nation got any of these games? They sound
interesting – compiled BASIC and split screen displays:
https://bluerenga.blog/2026/02/25/death-star-1983/

2) Nostalgiavault on YouTube did one of his “TheMediaList” episodes,
where he has a multitude of games chosen at random from all kinds of
computers and consoles. One he covered is Inufuto’s Ascend, although he
labelled it as Coco 3 but played the Coco 1 and 2 version (likely with a
Coco 3 emulator):
https://youtu.be/u1y-N7MamWQ?si=f72ZTzALYG7AoClh&t=5181

3) In response to a question about a cheat POKE for a specific game on the
Coco Facebook group, Steven Wallis posted a compilation of a bunch of Coco
games and how to get extra lives – and some hidden keys, etc. as well:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163890431607641/

4) For those who have pre-ordered the cartridge version of the Coco 3
Quarx game from the 8-bit Guy, he has posted that he has been waiting
several weeks for the prototype PCB’s to come in from China. Once he
gets them and makes sure it works, he will be ordering the main run. So
he announced that he may still be a month away from shipping:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163919891107641/

5) Alex Gayer posted updates to his Soduku game in the Coco Facebook group,
including fixing it to work with disk based Coco’s:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163914682647641/

6) Attempts: A gaming channel (by LRU) on YouTube did a high score play
video of Jet Boot Colin on the Dragon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoqmCXuJnmc

7) Jim Gerrie did multiple MC-10 ports and updates this past week.
Nellan is Thirsty by Dr. Furman H. Smith from the July/August 1980 issue
of Recreational Computing magazine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VCGA7WvOr8
He also ported Milles Bornes V2C, original by HLO in the 1980’s. This
was earlier ported to the Coco using a 51×24 font, and Jim has shrunk it
down to 32×16 (and added a title screen):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obWQ1Lom8hI
He also did more updates to his port of the original Color Trek by Mike
Mayfield in 1971. He has improved the graphics and sound a bit, and added
a high score:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GADdBfxfF94

8) The Ellimist on YouTube speed runs the adventure game Ghost Town from
the 3rd Rainbow book of Adventures:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-L6S4Pdo3w

9) The Wargaming Scribe released his detailed review of “Feuer and
Gasse” from 1985 by Strategic Simulation (sold by Picosoft), written by
C. Edwared Hetzler:
https://zeitgame.net/archives/20280

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