The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 467, May 30, 2026 (May 16-29)

Collected and Presented by L. Curtis Boyle

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:

VCF-SW (Southwest) is on this weekend (May 29-31) 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/

Retro Fest in the UK is also this weekend, running May 30-31st at the
STEAM Museum of Great Western Railway in Swindon, 10 am to 5 pm both days,
and there is confirmation that a Dragon Fujinet rig will be shown at the show:
https://www.retrofest.uk/

Vancouver Retro Gaming Expo is a single day event on June 20th, 2026,
starting at noon. At The Anvil Center (777 Columbia Street) in New
Westminster, BC, Canada:
https://www.vancouvergamingexpo.com/

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 West is August 1-2, 2026 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain
View California, and there are a few local Coco people that may attend:
https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-west/

VCF-SE (combined with the Southern Fried Gaming Expo) is July 31-August
2 at The Marriott Renaissance Waverly in Atlanta, Georgia:
https://vcfed.org/events/otherevents/vintage-computer-festival-southeast/

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

The 2nd VCF Montreal dates have been announced, and they have moved a few
months ahead to avoid the dead of winter (it was in January earlier this
year; the next one is November 7-8 this year as well):
https://cvcfed.org/vcf-montreal-2-0/

NEWS:

Dragon 32/64

1) Wanted to clarify the spanish video about the Dragon that Rick mentioned
last week; it’s a history of the Dragon while ran by Eurohard in Spain, and
why it ultimately failed (it now allows closed caption with auto-translate):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9snO3bP_cpQ

2) Julian Brown got some sample boards in for his video decoder, and posted
a photo in the Dragon Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4419250338334601/
He also got some carrier boards for his VDG prototype:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4418176018442033/
He also posted a short video on the Dragon Facebook group showing his
160x200x16 color mode, but being able to pick from a palette of 256 colors:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4415754868684148/
He also released a 10 minute video update on where his VDG project is at now:
https://youtu.be/QJ4dTopCvDQ?si=0r9jhJgQCqFycb_y

3) Phil Harvey-Smith posted a list of the exact screw types the Dragon uses,
in case one needs to get replacements for them:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4419249848334650/

4) Richard Harding posted a photo of his Dragon 32 with a Farmfax sticker
and some cows, in preparation for his display at RetroFest this weekend:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4421481214778180/

5) Chris Poacher has posted some photos and video from RetroFest 2026,
currently going on in the UK:
https://www.facebook.com/chrispoacher/posts/pfbid0A9moLYfP8ZVKReTzmPeLSkmGc4AMSmrF635Fosi5X8WiD3X6Kd7kzdYniGnDHk6Rl

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

1) Version 5.28 of Glen Hewlett’s BASIC to 6809 compiler was released,
which fixes a bug with IF and 3 or more OR’s/AND’s, and adds support
for playing movie clips streaming from the CocoSDC using his MakeNTM
utility. He even shows how to call this from a BASIC program:
https://github.com/nowhereman999/BASIC-To-6809
He also released a video showing very early progress on what is hopefully
his next full transcode project, although he has warned in the Coco Discord
that the original arcade game used 3 Z80 CPU’s that have to be transcoded
and merged:
(show local file “glen hewlett – new transcode early preview
(Galaga).mov”
2nd video shows first shot at animated sprites.

2) During the TRS-80 Trash Talk show last Saturday, George Phillips announced
some upcoming updates to the TRS-GP emulator… including more features /
hardware support for the Coco:
https://www.youtube.com/live/gYqMpxKhZB0?si=TNSdqkgWbWPKFChi&t=2193

3) Color Forth 1.1 has been released on it’s github project page. This
is a cross compiled version:
https://github.com/ugufru/coco

4) CocoTown posted a video called “The Coco’s secret debugger hidden
in Rainbow Magazine”. This covers Rainbow Check and Rainbow Check Plus,
and how they worked, how they linked into BASIC, and more:
https://youtu.be/YRwQyLVAUqs?si=P6v1cMOzf5hZXfZp

5) Allen Huffman was rather busy the last few weeks with multiple Coco
entries on his Sub-Etha Software blog site:
How Extended BASIC assigns and locates graphics screens, especially the
differences between cassette and disk based systems:
https://subethasoftware.com/2026/05/19/where-does-cocos-pmode-graphics-memory-start/
Allen’s experiment with creating an ASCII Donkey Kong on the standard
32×16 screen:
https://subethasoftware.com/2026/05/12/creating-ascii-donkey-kong-on-a-32×16-coco-display/
“Stupid VARPTR tricks” – this covers tricks that can be done with
the VARPTR (variable pointer) command in Extended BASIC, which allows one
to directly PEEK and POKE BASIC variables:
https://subethasoftware.com/2026/05/26/stupid-varptr-tricks/
He also made torrents for the very high res scans of both the 1986 and
1987 GIME chips, done a few years back:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/?multi_permalinks=10164327395587641&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen

6) Justin Thomas extended his DE1 FPGA build to include the expanded 6309
instruction set, and used Claude code to help build it – and it works
after a few days work, including running NitrOS9/6309:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164326543082641/
He also released a new implementation of DriveWire, this one build in Rust:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164314128497641/
Github:
https://github.com/justindthomas/drivewire-rs
He also posted a screenshot of him Telnetting into his Coco3FPGA through
a ESP8266 based connection into NitrOS9:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164311445767641/

7) Richard Stephens announced Fujinet VT100 support for the Coco 3. This
is using the GIME hardware 80 column character set, so no ANSI graphics
symbols, but it does support color and European characters:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164318369597641/

8) Carlos Camacho posted on the Coco Facebook group about his using some
pixel editors for PMODE 3 and PMODE 4 graphics that one can do from a
browser, including an online interpretation of CocoMax and another called
Color SpriteX (with a more modern interface along the lines of Deluxe Paint):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164315719567641/
And 2 followups:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/?multi_permalinks=10164334800902641&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164334890197641/

9) Kamil Gorgh Trzaska posted a video showing a spinning 3D cube (using
polygons) video that he made with help from Simon Jonassen 3 years back. This
runs ona 64K Coco 1 or 2:
Post with link to raw .BIN file:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164307749832641/
Video:
https://youtu.be/hi9R_fpHCv8?si=jLjbi-fTvSGIEE6T

10) Brian Palmer posted a DSK image containing a Coco 3 BASIC graphics
program that draws Elvis Presley, originally by Bill Baldacchino from
Coco-Link magazine to the Coco Facebook group (it even lets one play an
Elvis cassette in the background via the cassette port):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164302837697641/

11) Paul Cunningham posted a video showing his running a Coco 2 emulator
on a 1.8” OLED touchscreen:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164300104452641/

12) Peter (8bitsinthebasement) posted a video about his trying out Cedric
Beaudoin’s ESP32-Coco:
https://youtu.be/rSIgg4Kzkj8?si=GQzNVPLNKwfZIe0f

13) The Laird’s Lair on YouTube did a 5 Unreleased American Home Computers
episode, and the Coco 4 is one of the 5. Unfortunately, he mixed the
Deluxe Coco and the Coco 4 together, but it was cool to see unreleased
Coco’s mentioned.
https://youtu.be/LPRzlE17Xh4?si=WG7eQ00AUDKImlGz&t=530

14) Cedric Beaudoin posted that his second batch of ESP32-Coco’s is
about to enter manufacturing, and will cost $5 more than the previous
batch. But this is because there are new features on the new revision of
the board. Namely, an option port that can get an add on to use real Coco
joysticks, HDMI output (although he mentions it’s only be tested on one
TV so far, although a DVI adaptor should work fine), and a real cassette
port (an experimental feature):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/4262638377332924/?multi_permalinks=4342870872643007&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen

15) Don Sorensen posted some photos of repainted floppy drive and MPI
enclosures, taking advantage of his job being a collision car painter –
he can perfectly match just about anything:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/?multi_permalinks=10164328418802641&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen

16) Paul Cunningham posted a 5 minute video on the Coco Facebook group
showing his Waveshare RP2350 PiZero running Coco 2 emulation. It’s still
a work in progress, but seems to be working well so far:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164328903047641/

17) TRS-80 Retro Programing released an episode showing how to use PDF
Draw to create Coco 3 Character sprites on virtual 320×192 graph paper,
and he also gives an update on a couple of other projects:
https://youtu.be/7WhqLkVp980?si=RnWZI2h1T8cQOkoR

18) Jim Mullis put up a video showing 256x225x16 2 pixel scrolling using
Sundog’s GrafExpress 16 and some ASM routines (go in two minutes to show
the actual scrolling):
https://youtu.be/Fs0CV9RhqyU?si=WlpPBLgReLFemg-m
And 4 pixel scrolling:
https://youtu.be/x4Y8tWsBur0?si=gY8DtPPoaFOoJhBK

19) Marco Spedaletti has announced that version 1.18.1 of ugBASIC has been
released. This includes support for SG4 graphics (including loading/saving
images) on the Coco, dynamic strings, and more:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164334423162641/

20) Jim Brain has posted some photos from VCF Southwest (going on now)
to his Retro Innovations page, including photos of Boisy Pitre’s &
Brendan Donahe’s booths:
https://www.facebook.com/go4retro/posts/pfbid02xSV3MWQsordWVca7Gb7S2f8H1sPwMEqcyhG6nRVQrC9aQre73Vk8fhdqav49iDGAl

21) Tyler Durden uploaded a video showing his progress in making a Coco
3 Burgertime game strictly in BASIC, like his PacMan game:
(Show local file “Tyler Durden-BTIME9.mp4”

22) Boisy Pitre posed on the Coco Discord about his vibe-coded Python
interpreter for BASIC09, and a link to his github:
https://github.com/DrPitre/basic09

MC-10

1) Industrial Retro Gamer on YouTube posted a video (part 1 of 3) about
his Tandy computer collection. In this episode he covers his Model 100
and his MC-10:
https://youtu.be/8NQN4hekw7M?si=OyLfBQ0K1IVzBE2m

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

1) Renga in Blue reviewed “Deed of York”, originally written by Chris
Harland based on ideas from Chris Harland. This was for the first Rainbow
Adventure writing contest:
https://bluerenga.blog/2026/05/18/deed-of-the-york-1983/

2) Jim Gerrie ported ArdiMaze, originally written as a BASIC 10 liner
game by Ardi Ardi on May 25th in the Facebook BASIC programming group. The
player has to navigate a changing maze from left to right, and runs in 4K:
https://youtu.be/YBr1ASOcvaY?si=_fp_O12y2MJkeNWh

3) Paul Cordingley posted about the Coco game Draconian, and how it actually
changed and improved play from the original arcade Bosconian that it was
loosely based on. I totally agree with that sentiment:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164316064232641/

4) As mentioned by Rick last week, Penguin Icarus by Paul Thayer has been
released. This is an ML arcade style game that was originally a Super
Extended BASIC game by Nick Bradbury and published in Rainbow back in the
April 1990 issue. The new version requires RGB, a disk drive and 512K of RAM
(show demo recording from VCC):
https://pthayer100.itch.io/penguin-icarus-2026

5) Vincent Tran posted his Git repo for the AI assisted ML Coco 3 game
he wrote with Chat-GPT Pro & Thinking, called Space Raid. He noted in
an earlier post that it took Claude 10-15 tries to get it to even run,
and about 50 to get it playing properly:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164311209347641/
Video gameplay (turn volume down a bit):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164309908572641/
Download of DSK image:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164309967972641/?cft[0]=AZZgKA8-EqJeIdIaV9jgNfimF-w3Vs-4qpUhVdDnb6Pa0Z7O-O0nj4ZMO86IVFIL15WZUJta1ImXtx4hPZP1Vr-1MsrRhyY_Z92KBYnvGnqBBEGyc-9szwej4CZCCc3AKtIeEqfzyH7j_xEmtNv5wFzT&tn=-UK-R
github:
https://github.com/tequestafarian/space-raid-coco3

6) Nostalgiavault on YouTube posted game play and high score attempt videos
of a multitude of Inufuto games, both the Coco 1&2 and Coco 3 versions:
https://www.youtube.com/@nostalgivault3439/videos

7) Ayeka 2 on YouTube posted a 3&1/2 minute video showing the risque text
adventure Wet T-Shirt contest:
https://youtu.be/phX6UibUY14?si=TZccgMi8MuDjz4yN

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

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/