The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 437, November 1,2025 (Oct 24-Oct 31)
The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 437, November 1,2025 (Oct 24-Oct 31)
Collected and Presented by L. Curtis Boyle
Special Guests today:
Richard Lorbieski of BoysonTech has a couple of announcements/updates
on the show today – the 2 MB RAM version of the Boomerang, and an
MPI replacment called Titan.
Special NOTES:
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.
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 Vernon BC Retro Mania is happening November 8th, showing off
various retro computers:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163312949837641/
The Retro Computer Festival is being held November 15-16 at Cambridge
in the UK, and this year’s theme is gaming:
https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/74558/Retro-Computer-Festival-2025-(Gaming-Edition)-Saturday-15th-November/
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
NOTE: Erico Monteiro has kindly given me the schedule for the show:
09:00 – Event start
10:00 – POCKET FIGHTER tournament
10:30 – SPEED RUN with Matheus Furtado (AKA “Furious”) on Super
Mario World
11:00 – SUPER BOMBERMAN tournament
12:00 – FROSTBITE tournament
13:00 – Band “Dos 8 aos 128 Bits”
14:00 – Talk: Retro scene in Brazil
14:30 – Talk: GamesCare – Project Sega Neptune
15:00 – Quiz Gamer
16:00 – Cosplay tournament
18:00 – STREET FIGHTER 2 tournament
19:00 – Event closure
He have been told “we will have full proper internet going on this
year, again, if that be a fact, I will see to bring it live on Coco
Nation.”
World of Commodore is December 6-7 in Mississauga, Ontario at the
Admiral Inn. The show “warmly embrace(s) enthusiasts of all retro
computer gear, not just the Commodore computers (although the SuperPET
does have a 6809 in it and runs a version of OS-9 Level 1… making
it a cousin to the Coco in a way).
https://woc.tpug.ca/
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 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
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) Ciaran Anscomb has started a blog about his experiments with Chroma
video output from the Dragon:
https://www.6809.org.uk/dev/tm016/
2) Dublevay on the World of Dragon forums posted some updated board
designs for adding Lowercase to a Dragon with a daughterboard,
including screenshots from a Dragon 64 with the upgrade installed:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=25935#p25935
3) Julian Brown posted an update on his PAL Video board for the Rev
3 Dragon remake. While it is not booting properly, it is generating a
VDG style screen… so the problem does not appear to be the VDG board:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4201653363427634/
4) Ross Mcgowan on YouTube has posted 2 videos about the Dragon
- The first one is on how to set up XRoar for the Dragon 32 (He
did have the real thing back in 1982), including the setup file:
https://youtu.be/IeiqvNT2y10?si=6eATR4JhVymrO_Eb
Part 2 is running games and programming:
https://youtu.be/Bx5pj6xyRoA?si=lX4AMfQw36SRmBsA
5) BritStalgia on YouTube made a YouTube short going through the
UK’s greatest 8 bit machines… including the Dragon 32:
https://youtube.com/shorts/uYsi3Hb7u2U?si=0E3ZB88OF89yiIPU
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
1) An update from Brendan Donahe about the CocoVGA:
”Hey, Curtis, there’s been various pieces of misinformation floating
around on FB about CoCoVGA and I was hoping to pass along some info
to share on CoCoNation, if you don’t mind. 🙂
I’ve been working with Mark Marlette of Cloud-9 since last year on
getting CoCoVGA into production again. The FPGAs are available.
Unfortunately, Mark had to recreate the board design. Now that
we have a working preproduction board, Mark is preparing his
pick-and-place robot to build a batch for me.
“
http://www.cocovga.com/
2) ugBASIC’s Beta branch has some more updates which affect the
Coco output of this cross compiler, including some 6847/6309 bug
fixes. Yesterday, an official release (1.18) officially added 6309
support to Coco 1/2/3’s and Dragon 32/64’s:
https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/?news=news
3) Pierra Serrazin released version 0.1.97 of his CMOC C-like compiler,
which features the following updates:
- SWITCH statement now supports Duff’s Device
- Some bugfixes
- PRINTF now supports a runtime minimum field width
- Added function readDECBFileWithDECB() which reads files using
DECB’s own routines (DSKCON)
http://gvlsywt.cluster051.hosting.ovh.net/dev/cmoc.html
4) A Kickstarter has been announced for recreating the Sphere computer
from 1975 which had a 6800 in it, and it is capable of running Flex
if a disk controller is added.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bzotto/go-computer-now-the-story-of-sphere
5) Retro Islander on YouTube put up a 1.5 hour video that he did
with Wayne Campbell about BASIC09 and how it works, and how Wayne is
working on a 3rd version of his BASIC09 decompiler:
https://youtu.be/BWlVpK3Qu00?si=EtWuMqUtcz4zwnVG
6) Keith Frechette posted another update to his SAL (Structured
Assembly Language) project, including loop label naming, statement
syntax, etc.:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163384602672641/
7) YouTube channel BollingHolt did a YouTube short showing his running
the original Tandy Diagnostic Cartridge:
https://youtube.com/shorts/okfQ4PYHtG0?si=o_Z_GfBSSJ5f3dxm
8) Allen Huffman has posted multiple blog entries about his interfacing
assembly to BASIC via DEFUSR, namely parts 3 to 7:
https://subethasoftware.com/2017/02/07/interfacing-assembly-with-basic-via-defusr-part-3/
https://subethasoftware.com/2017/02/08/interfacing-assembly-with-basic-via-defusr-part-4/
https://subethasoftware.com/2017/02/15/interfacing-assembly-with-basic-via-defusr-part-5/
https://subethasoftware.com/2017/02/20/interfacing-assembly-with-basic-via-defusr-part-6/
https://subethasoftware.com/2025/10/30/interfacing-assembly-with-basic-via-defusr-part-7/
A part 8 is still coming.
9) YouTube channel Microcomputer memory did an 8 minute video about
the CP-400 Color II (Coco clone from Brazil) in Brazil’s native
Portuguese, but you can auto translate. Includes some gameplay demo’s
like Eliminator from Adventure International:
https://youtu.be/9lSF5xDHfOA?si=F813GAasIn_bBltc
10) YouTuber Andrew Fisher did a quick run through of issue #3 of
Compute! Gazette, the recently rebooted physical retro magazine
(now for all machines rather than just Commodore as it was back in
the 1980’s). It includes stories on both the MC-10 and a repacked
Coco in a Model 4 case (I believe the latter is Danielle’s):
https://youtu.be/ZbNBHPZuY5Q?si=o0yh9tLHVuJoh7zj
11) TRS-80 Retro Programming posted a video about programming a simple
video game on the Coco, for beginners, including setting up graphics
and reading joysticks. It might just be my machine, but the audio
got garbled for me part way through:
https://youtu.be/yWvd8vJZ2ts?si=Ud4GQDTw3Ye1gH4q
MC-10
1) TJ Ferreira put up a video on his YouTube channel about “The
Island of Misfit 8-bit Computers”, where he covers the Mattel
Aquarius, and the MC-10:
https://youtu.be/LoWUTrsmmEo?si=efMHvFL78d3RjrJI
TJ also showed Spriteworx (Jay Mundy) new MC-10 game and unboxed
it. The new game is called U.S. (Ultrix Sentinel), and is the one that
Jay has been teasing with background story videos the last couple of
months. It is a sequel to T.H.E.M. that he released previously –
I like the “US vs. THEM motif. lol:
https://youtu.be/AH4zV34bghU?si=WFPPvDGhlu8WBp2P
2) Jay himself did a reaction video to TJ’s unboxing:
https://youtu.be/4KE9nbMfqZ8?si=cR0wIrdvrU9Ch1MF
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
1) Rick Adams released an updated version of his Tic Tac Toe game
fixing some palette issues:
https://github.com/yggdrasilradio/tictac
2) Thomas Cherryhomes announced that the next Fujinet Lobby game
(able to have multiple players on multiple 8 bit platforms playing
the same live game at the same time) is Battleships, and included a
Cocp 3 PMODE 3 screen shot showing a 4 player game in action:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163404238547641/
He also showed a screenshot of the latest beta of the PMODE 3 version
of 5 card stud – I am guessing this is a Coco 3 enhanced version with
custom palette settings, since it is showing colors that normally can
not be on the same screen at the same time in PMODE 3 (two different
color sets):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163386922232641/
3) IndustrialRetroGamer posted a YouTube short of Space Assault in
action… although it cuts off the screen on both sides (at least on
my machine):
https://youtube.com/shorts/XSV78zi1GQM?si=iDyirDzqyPNh3n-W
4) TJ Ferreira posted gameplay video yesterday afternoon of the brand
new MC-10 game U.S. Ultrix Sentinels:
https://youtu.be/wwTPc2RK5FQ?si=OZVPdv63rfDnZzjI
5) YouTube channel Industrial Retro Gamer did a video called
“10 Color Computer Games in 10 Minutes” – all Coco 1 or 2
games. However, the first game is labelled wrong in the description
(labelled Space Assault, it’s definitely not:
https://youtu.be/qS5dsM2b77o?si=XpS0Sfx2GDvSio1U
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