Interview schedule:

Not scheduled yet, but Logan Ward and Britt Monk have agreed to come on
the show.

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:

The Indy Classic retro show is going on his weekend. Maybe some photos of
live feed?

Tonight (Saturday March 21) at 9 pm Eastern is the next live TRS-80 Trash
Talk (episode #48), which can be viewed live and after the fact on their
YouTube page:
https://www.youtube.com/@TRS80TrashTalk

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/

The Brazil Color Computer Club has announced that their 10th meeting is
on May 2:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ClubeColor/posts/25741764422191262/

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? 7 guests have already
been booked as of this week. 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) The World of Dragon forums have had a person diagnosing problems
with a Dragon 64 they acquired… and going through with other members
(and finding out about a satellite board that was in it originally) it
was determined that it was one of Bob Halls specially modified Dragon’s
with 128K RAM and an MMU, meant to run OS9 Level II. The bottom of this
page of the posts shows the satellite board:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=11341&start=20
An explanation of the history of the original mods (which had 128K and
256K versions) are on page 5:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=11341&start=40

2) Tony Jewell posted some photos from previous Dragon Meetups to show
what the gathering next weekend will be like:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4347759992150303/

3) Julian Brown provided an update to his expanding on Ciaran Anscomb’s
SAMx8 upgrade, now merging SAM and VDG functions, adding support for up to
2 MB RAM (with some MMU changes), extra colors, reprogrammable fonts and more:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4346650808927888/

4) Steven Goodwin posted about a ZX81 emulator he is writing for the Dragon

He even showed a screenshot of it running 1K Chess, originally written
by David Home:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4343359772590325/

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

1) Jason Ross on the Modern Democracy channel released a new video showing
more things he has figured out using Claude Sonnet 4.6 AI to program on
the Coco, particularly into how to set up projects themselves:
https://youtu.be/A-u-idVT1WA?si=a_L02x-_6C7Gw9Ra

2) Cedric Beaudoin has another update on his ESP32 Coco project – and
he now has OS9/NitrOS9 working, and put some screenshots up on the Coco
Facebook group showing it running. He also mentioned that it now supports
2 MB RAM for the Coco 3 as well:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164024765302641/
In another update he mentions that the physical RS232 port working on
it as well. He has tested it thus far with Ultimatum up to 2400 baud
(it emulates the bit banger serial port):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164031800202641/

3) Mike Horgan posted links to his webpage and GitHub showing some old C
code that would convert .cas files into .wav files so one could load them
on a real Coco with only the cassette cable:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163997584642641/
Webpage:
https://gigajunky.github.io/coco/

4) Mike Hotte has been manufacturing an open source 4 port multi-pack
clone, and answered some questions about it on the Coco Facebook group
(the original post was someone asking about it:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164003598727641/

5) YouTube channel FFF Archive Emporium made an hour long video showing
some TRS-80 machines
That they have, including a Coco 1, MC-10, and Tandy cassettes. He discovers
and learns as he goes, but he has some problems with the keyboard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRH8bdYARso

6) CocoTown returns with a new Game Revolutions episode, this time covering
3 steps in 1980’s game animation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01ERGfZv4xk

7) Thomas Cherryhomes pointed to his “State of the Union” speech about
updates to Fujinet that is now available on the VCF-SoCal YouTube page. This
includes multiple Coco updates – hardware and software:
https://youtu.be/XTjV-xR64O8?si=ydTH76Klck7JOHN5

MC-10

1) Captain Kirchoff posted a screenshot of his mixed text/graphic mode game
currently in development in the Coco Discord, using the 6803’s internal
timer. This allows fitting a partial PMODE 3 or 4 screen at the same time
as some lower res graphics or even text modes at the same time.
(Show screenshot from Coco Discord mc-10-and-alice channel from Captain
Kirchhoff)

2) Jim Gerrie ported a Coco program from Hot Coco January 1985 called
Homespread (originally by Adrian Rose), which is a simple spreadsheet with
cassette load/store features:
https://youtu.be/echAHf5xqiM?si=_sL-x3GKXDwBkiNZ

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

1) Chronologically Gaming returns to the Coco in December of 1982 with
two games:
Revolution, Solo Pool (he had problems playing this one):
https://youtu.be/0yCFitzsvvs?si=RtjbPc-9EmkMHKMY&t=1528

2) Brent and Aaron over at the Amigos released their latest The Coco Show,
covering Warp-Fighter 3D by Steve Bjork:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTxiqGZLvSs&pp=ygULdGFuZHkgY29sb3LSBwkJxQoBhyohjO8%3D

3) Attempts: A gaming channel (by LRU) posted a high score attempt of the
Slay the Nereis game from Tandy (a Centipede clone):
https://youtu.be/bJi1UWcdtd4?si=bJNd77TaBsdhklHQ

4) Ellimist on YouTube released another speed run text adventure game from
the First Rainbow Book of Adventures, this time with Lighthouse Adventure:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfNagM_3ms0

5) RetroTrailer-2 released a game play video of Zone 6 – a recent Game On
Challenge 3D game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQAkX13bsyM

6) Jim Gerrie released an updated port of Darren Ottery’s Dropship game. His
original “port” was to port it to a 20K MC-10 rather than requiring an
MCX upgrade. This time he upgraded the keyboard polling and added an ML
inverse subroutine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImL5SD6NEPg

==============================================================================

Speak your mind! Let us know what you think at:
feedback@TheCoCoNation.com

If replying on a mailing list, please trim replies to the specific items.

Get connected with more of the CoCo, Dragon and MC-10 community here:
https://thecoconation.com/community/