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 next TRS-80 Trash Talk live show is tonight at 8 PM CST 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/

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). 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/

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 happending 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/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 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) JOhn Whitworth posted a rendition of a prototype board that is making
for a new version of the SuperSprite FM+ board, that will support HDMI:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4314629128796723/

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

1) Brett Gordon has added “spinner” element to his DECB Coco 1&2 GUI
that he is working on, for YADOS. This allows changing the virtual drive #
(0-255) in the GUI, rather than just physical drives. One can use the
arrows to go up and down drive numbers, or directly type the drive # in:
(show local file “Brett Gordon YaDOS GUI update.png”)

2) Glen Hewlett has announced on the Coco Discord that version 5.11 source &
compiled files for his basic-to-6809 assembler are available, with a number
of changes:
V 5.1
• Fixed a big bug in the CASE code where it could crash if one of
the CASEes did a GOTO/RETURN
• Fixed a bug that was messing up the stack doing string comparisons
• ELSEIF now produces proper code that will compile. It was completely
broken previously
• Added the ability to have multiple variables assigned in the DIM
xx AS line, such as: DIM A,B,C AS _UNSIGNED _BYTE
• Now supports constants with the word “Const” followed by a word and
what it equals such as: Const PI=3.1415926 and then use Const First=10
+ PI You can then refer to these constants in your program and they
won’t take any extra RAM, the Constant name will be substituted for
an actual value when compiling (actually at the tokenizing stage).
• Fixed a bug with Double Multiply where it would treat -0 as a
value instead of returning with zero.
• Fixed a bug with multi dimensional arrays, causing stack corruption
and incorrect data.
• Tweaked Tokenizer so it can properly handle a variable like Sin2 on
a PRINT statement such as: PRINT “Sin2=”; Sin2 (This would previously
lock up the compile stage)
V 5.11 late updates
• Fixed a major bug with comparisons of types that are not floating
point, where the < & > were reversed Previously you can only trust = or
<>, now all types are compared correctly. The code produced is efficient
and works well but the compiler is doing some double negatives while
generating the 6809 code which really should be cleaned up (one day)
• Fixed a specific bug with READing DATA into an array that is
exactly 256 elements (0 to 255) as 8 bit values
https://github.com/nowhereman999/BASIC-To-6809
3) The ugBASIC compiler has also had updates this past week:
Main branch – Added error message for invalid maximum number & size of
dynamic strings:
https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/main
Beta branch – added support for SG4 under 6847 (VDG)
https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/beta
Marco (author of ugBASIC) also announced that the official site for
downloading ugBASIC & it’s IDE has been updated:
https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/ide

4) Allen Huffman posted on his Sub-Etha Software blog about “forbidden
variables” in MS BASIC for the Coco:
https://subethasoftware.com/2026/02/17/color-basic-juan-castro-and-forbidden-variables/

5) Not strictly Coco related, a blog post by Harry McCracken (popular
columnist and podcast guest for tech topics) revisited an old TRS-80 Model
1 adventure game that he wrote on the TRS-80 Model 1 back in his teens
(and recently fixed a bug). This time around he use Anthropics Claude
Code AI to make a modern web based version based on the old code, and even
including graphics:
https://technologizer.com/home/2026/02/16/arctic-adventure-2026/

6) AC’s 8-Bit Zone now has an official store, and one can order (when in
stock) the GIME-Z and GIME-Z programmer cable. At the time I wrote this,
they were sold out again:
https://cocobits.org

7) TRS-80 Retro Programming put up a video on his YouTube channel about
using Arc Sine on the Coco 3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D65TR4JMVug

8) Glenside has released an updated version of Henry Strickland’s
presentation from last years CocoFest about his NekotOS project for networked
multi-player games for the Coco, fixing some audio issues from the original
live version:
https://youtu.be/W-8gAMBZV0c?si=D7M2VbVdjAzOYaac

9) Portuguese podcast Retropolis talks a bit about the Dragon and Coco on
their latest episode, particularly with Eurohard’s taking over of Dragon
production (around 12:30 in):
https://youtu.be/S2kSOcG2jkk?si=ydzIFf_HvkNr6qUp

10) Rich Stephens has released a new set of binary utilities for the Coco
running Fujinet, which he has posted on the Coco Facebook group, including
a description of what is all included:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163885272467641/
He also posted the latest manual and guide for Fujinet on the Coco as well:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163876403667641/

11) Cedric Beaudoin posted on the Coco Facebook group how he made a Coco 2
emulator using esp32-s3 modules, and works with USB keyboards and joysticks:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163882537267641/

12) Steve Norton posted links and a photo to his custom Coco keyboard
project, and things this is as fat as he can go (this is the one we
mentioned recently that also supports a joystick):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163863831737641/

13) CocoTown has released part 2 of his AppleSoft vs. MS Extended BASIC,
this time covering animation tricks between the two machines and their
respective BASIC’s:
https://youtu.be/jTLpHccUYW4?si=vMD6tuyZ3mKSowOk

MC-10

1) TJ Ferreira reviews the MCX32SD and MultiPort Expander for the MC-10
in two different videos:
https://youtu.be/fYBCfPYwFMc?si=tmszdXX5csApCo8B
https://youtu.be/md3_J4hw4a0?si=WW346pMdyVddQqIs

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

1) Paul Shoemaker has released his personalized version of the Columns
game (he just did the Quarx port for the 8-Bit Guy for the Coco’s and
Dragons), called Oodles. Same gameplay and platforms, but in the lower
resolution that he likes using to make it easier to port to the MC-10,
and with different graphical theme and sound effects:
https://pshoemaker70.itch.io/oodles
Video of gameplay:
https://youtu.be/Ln9nzniaiQw?si=dBzl03vvrbgzV9g5
He also revealed that the next game project he is working on is porting
Beam Rider by Activision, originally for the Atari 8 bits. He posted a
video on the Coco Discord of the Atari version so people know what the
source material looks like:
(Show local file “2026-02-15_13-41-33 New Paul Shoemaker game project
Beam Rider.mp4”

2) CRPG addict covers an Alice graphical adventure game for the Alice 32K and
Alice 90 (the successors to the original Alice, itself a rebranded MC-10):
https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2026/02/guest-post-game-568-les-six-lys-1984.html

3) YouTuber backhand sandwich posted a video showing him playing the
Defender transcode on the Coco 3:
https://youtu.be/WVhXg-ldco8?si=9sTCUcRSKqs6_f8K

4) Jim Gerrie has released a port of the 1979 BASIC Checkers game originally
written by John Collins for Bally BASIC. Of note is that it fits entirely
into the stock 4K RAM version of the MC-10:
https://youtu.be/mGXqLE83Izc?si=UKsvdf4T-gu66fTr
He also released “Nellan is Thirsty originally by Dr. Furman H. Smith
in 1980 from the July/Aug 1980 issue of Recreational Computing magazine:
https://youtu.be/8VCGA7WvOr8?si=iXATQqJrqRxDTGUO

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