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 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). 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/

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) Richard Harding (I think) uploaded a ZIP file to the World of Dragon
forums Uploads section containing educational programs for the Dragon 32
written by Dan Murry):
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11342

2) Roy Templeman posted a photo of a 6809 based motherboard for a
homecomputer in the Dragon group on Facebook, and mentions that he is
bringing it to the Dragon meetup at the end of this month:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/4332790586980577/

3) John Whitworth posted in the Dragon group on Facebook that the boards
for his new SuperSprite FM+ HDMI have arrived, with pictures:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4330814420511527/

4) RetroGames on YouTube posted a video “Is the Dragon 32 Really
Rubbish?”
https://youtu.be/hucl2Zv6tu4?si=f4sjwRK4C_Q7OQN2

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

1) Ed (Tandy Showcase on Discord) recently received some early advertising
documents from a former Tandy Corporate Advertising/Marketing member,
which includes a pre-release ad for Videotex. But it shows a Coco keyboard
in the Model 1 style case, so it looks like it was made just as the case
design was changing from the very first versions:
https://online.fliphtml5.com/tkunz/wbqv/#p=1

2) Brian Blake posted an entry on his blog about fixing up his PJB CC
CocoBus expansion card… but that he has more to do yet:
https://tandy-trs80.com/pjb-c-c-part-2/

3) Retro Rarez attended the Train and Hobby Show 2025… and met up with Ian
Maverick who went through his Tandy collection, including Coco’s and MC-10’s:
https://youtu.be/2po1x3sj-G0?si=Lp6Q4a-Uwfc3Otkc

4) Jason Ross (Retro Islander on YouTube) posted a new video using Claude
Sonnet AI version 4.6 to attempt to have it write BASIC09 programs for him:
https://youtu.be/aPSHvjmXPew?si=E-zM9fC9TfdZY9l8

5) Frozenbeefpie on YouTube released a quick preview video of his PI
calculator (to 1000 places) that he is working on for the PI programming
contest for the Coco:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP9lL_8ofRw

6) Brian Palmer posted a few images he created on his Coco 3 in BASIC:
One he did as a youngster, and asks if people can guess which game it
came from:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163928021812641/
And a graphical representation of his old Coco 3 setup:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163927707392641/

7) Cedric Beaudoin posted an update to his ESP-32 Coco emulation project
– he has now got Coco 3 partially implemented, and he shared a screenshot
of his live debugger running over the Coco 3 emulated screen:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163936793367641/
He made a video showing it running with the debugger as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81ntL1nGBWw
Tied with that, he has posted some mockups of a couple of possible 3d
print case designs:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163942911847641/

8) Rich Stephens posted another Coco Fujinet app – a real time stock
ticker. It is available on the Coco first, with Apple II, Atari 8 bit,
MS-DOS and other platforms coming soon. He included a video as well:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163940414237641/
He later announced a new version, and that all 4 platform versions
are out. The new version adds status messages, a Refresh option, and
quicker/cleaner aborting editing a stock symbol:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163959347867641/

9) Aaron Banerjee uploaded a DSK image containing both a “9 queens”
program (how to place 9 queens on a chess board so that none of them can
attack the others) and a program for predicting lunar eclipses:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163945722092641/
Screenshot of the Eclipse program:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163938149912641/

10) Damon Beals posted on the Coco Facebook group that he is attending &
displaying his upgraded Coco 3 at the 2026 Indy Classic Computer and Video
Game Expo (March 21-22 in Indianapolis, Indiana), and is wondering if
other Coco people can also come to the show. He noted as well that more
than 90 vendor tables have been sold:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163938936087641/

11) Paul Cunningham posted a 16 bit integer calculator program he wrote
using Bare Naked Forth on the Coco. It’s a fairly simple calculator
with limitations, but it is not often someone writes a program for the
Coco these days in Forth:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163952268592641/
He also posted Coco Forth tutorial, called Getting Started with Bare
Naked Forth:
https://ugufru.github.io/coco/docs/index.html

12) Mauricio Matte posted in the Clube Color Brasil Facebook group that
a new batch of his CocoMFDC drive controllers (gotek inclusive):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ClubeColor/posts/25658942130473492/

MC-10

1) Jim Gerrie released an entry for the 10 liner BASIC programming contest
on the MC-10, called Fallout Graphic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEvCvpl14nw
Jim also did an SG6 64x48x4) update to a Garfield graphic originally done
in 1983 by Carl Reinke for the Coco 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF5IJGDTBiw

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

1) Erico Monteiro released a new video for his compiled game White Rock
Ingotz, which has his traditional great animation in the lowest graphics
mode (64x32x9):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAA1tPJoOkk
You can download it for free here:
https://fued.net

2) WhatHoSnokers on YouTube covered a few different versions of the game
Mine Escape on the Dragon 32, originally written by Clive Gifford for his
book “Games For Your Dragon”. After playing the initial one on multiple
skill levels (and finding some bugs), he goes about improving it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1SaQvrZ-uU

3) Alex Gayer did more updates to his Sudoku, with version 2.1 being
released this week:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163933149127641/

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