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:

VCF SoCal is this weekend (February 14-15) at the Hotel Fera Event Center
in Orange, California:
https://www.vcfsocal.com/

The next TRS-80 Trash Talk live show has already been scheduled, for 8 PM
CST on February 21st on their YouTube channel:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163801640387641/

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/

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). 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/

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/Satruday) (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

Tandy Assembly dates and new venue have been announced on Facebook. Oct
2-Oct 4 at the Doubltree 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) Robcfg on the Dragon forums is working on a big BASIC program with
ML routines and graphics data, and is wondering how to set this up (what
CLEAR command settings to use, whether he should make it tape only and load
the whole thing at once or make it disk friendly but have to load chunks
from disk as the game is playing)… if any one has suggestions for him,
please leave him a reply:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=11334

2) Julian Brown posted a poll about some extra graphics support he wants
to add to the FPGA that he is using for his video board for the Dragon ATX
that go beyond the VDG (regular or T1), with different tile and palette
options. Place your vote!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4311006075825695/
He also announced that the updated Rev 2 Dragon replacement motherboards
came in, and he has 9 available:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4309808522612117/

3) Perry Andrews on the Facebook Dragon group posetd a link to the STL
file to 3D print Dragon cartridge covers:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4306380089621627/

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

1) Glenn Hewlett has announced version 5.01 of his basic-to-6809 compiler,
which has the following changes:
V 5.01 is available on the GitHub V 5.01
• Fixed a bug with the palette command, it would calculate the location
to change but it wasn’t saving it before actually using the location.
• Fix the RND(x) routine with Single and Double types. Previously it
would generate a value from 0 to x, now it matches normal BASIC and
will return a value from 1 to x. The fix was to add 1 to the result,
so technically the result can still be it’s possible that x could be
fractionally larger than x like x.8 but the integer value will truncate
it to x. If I change the code to give a max value of x it will slow
down the random routine, and the main goal of the compiler is speed.
• Changed all 4 colour modes so that a variable with more than 4
colours will display properly.

2) Microhobbyist (Frederic) posted episode 3 of his series “6309
Unleashed” YouTube series, about his homebrew 6309 based single board
computer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTkPItNtBMM
He also did an almost 4&1/2 hour live stream of his breadboarding memory
for the same project:
https://www.youtube.com/live/kxCnGRjCcEo

3) PW_32x has another blog post on the technical details of the Downland
game, this time covering player/object collisions, and how it uses two
techniques combined to check for the collisions:
https://www.puffweet.com/2026/02/07/downland-unearthed-8-player-object-collisions/

4) Rulthariuz Gaming released two videos this past week about installing
a Coco 2 composite modification. The first one is his first test:
https://youtu.be/fnL5NpjC1D4?si=YgG7Vox8lmFhsL-Y
The second one is his full test:
https://youtu.be/esnx6T7Ldy8?si=OkOcdTlrYOBY7xHn

5) ugBASIC has some updates over the past few weeks that are Coco related,
both in the main and beta branches:
Main (fixed console for 6847):
https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/main
Beta (added SG24 support for 6847, corrected optimization on LINE variable
for 6809):
https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/beta

6) TRS-80 RetroPrograming put up a video about how to draw a circle in
Super Extended BASIC on the Coco 3 without using the CIRCLE command:
https://youtu.be/_X85VSwrWSc?si=6mwSehJRSn_UXXQU

7) YouTube channel D2Soft did a 10 minute walk through of the 1984 Radio
Shack Computer Catalog:
https://youtu.be/2nPZMVOgHp8?si=MFYPd-IS3Q12gXbm

8) Glenn Beck posted photos of the the program guide & attendance badges
for some of the Princeton RainbowFests in 1986 and 1987 and Trenton Computer
Festival in 1988:
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=26497376109866483&set=pcb.10163850730617641

9) Antonio Caballero posted some photos of Milton Solomon’s 3D printed
cases for the joysticks we showed last week:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163842731647641/

10) Bruce W. Boaz posted that he has a cartridge enclosure for his
HDB-DOS expansion board, but now is looking to produce a label for it. Any
suggestions?
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163833268962641/

11) John Linville announced that the Coco Crew podcast page has moved to
a new server, and would like people to check and make sure there are no
broken links, etc on the new site (same web address as before):
https://www.cococrew.org/

MC-10

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

1) Marlin Lee returns, this time covering Space Ambush by Andy Kluck for
Computerware (I still like the pre-release version’s sound better than
the official Computerware version):
https://youtu.be/zspwns3tUQQ?si=ZTL-uqRdK5TO4b-1

2) Ellimist on YouTube did another Coco adventure game speed run, this
time covering Dungeon Adventure by Steve Sherarrd and published in the
first Rainbow Book of Adventures:
https://youtu.be/x8dnACOVPbE?si=bBHfwgS8S9rMtRCg

3) A followup up Henrique Porto’s question about how to win the 3rd
(Expert) level of the graphical adventure solving game Sam Sleuth; this
time he posted a link to map and tips to solve the first two cases:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163840215517641/

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