The CoCo Nation News stories for Episode 456, March 14, 2026 (March 7-13)
The CoCo Nation News stories for Episode 456, March 14, 2026 (March 7-13)
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.
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/
Saturday March 21 at 9 pm Eastern is the next live TRS-80 Trash Talk (episode
48), which can be viewed live and after the fact on their YouTube page:
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) Tony Jewel posted in the Dragon Facebook group about getting his display
ready for the Dragon meetup at the end of March… and he is recreating
Roy Coates’ demo of the Dragon’s Claw and camera from the December
1985 issue of Dragon User magazine. This is a video digitizer project for
the Dragon. It is not as sophisticated (or have the resolution of say,
a DS-69), but it was a project that one could build themselves for cheap:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4339337362992566/
2) Phil Harvey-Smith posted some photos and an update on his Dragon Pico
DVI adaptor:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1602723113320685/?multi_permalinks=4336699963256306&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen
3) Julian Brown posted some reworking he did of Ciaran Anscomb’s SAMx8
board to make it a little friendlier for hand assembly. This allows the
SAM to access static RAM and run at full double speed in a Dragon (or CoCo
1/2), like the CoCo 3 is capable of:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4336420646617571/
CoCo 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
1) Brian Blake posted a bit of a different blog post on his site this past
week: Auction rant, about people who take a perfectly working CoCo and
then sell parts (chips, etc.) and then the motherboard itself, possibly
damaging things in the process:
https://tandy-trs80.com/cococommentary-auction-rant/
He also posted part 3 of PBJ expansion bus repair:
https://tandy-trs80.com/pbj-c-c-part-3/
2) Someone on the CoCo Discord mentioned a couple of methods of booting
NitrOS9 with no floppy or hard drive interface (including the CoCoSDC),
and posted a link to downloads to boot using DriveWire with one of two
methods: 1) cassette based loader to load the DriveWire NirOS9 boot loader,
or 2) a custom ROM to do it when the CoCo turns on and then talks to the
DriveWire server (is this TJBChris’ loaders?):
http://jechar.ca/coco/Download/Diskless-NitrOS9-Workstation.html
3) Part 4 of George Janssen’s CoCo 3 assembly language series lesson
19 (graphics) is now out on his YouTube channel. George is also looking
for suggestions on what topic(s) to cover in the future, or any previous
topics that we people would like expanded on. Also I should note that
the DSK images for the files for the entire 4 part series on graphics is
available in the “assembly-with-georgej” channel on the CoCo Discord:
https://youtu.be/nlaACCKpXiY
4) TJBChris released an almost 1 & ½ hour video showing him getting OS9
running the original Tandy Hard Drive interface adaptor and original Tandy
hard drives (originally for computers like the business Model II). This
is the same type of set up Steve Bjork ran for awhile back in the day. He
also plugs our show and mentions that he has an idea for a new ad for us,
thanks to wine consumption lol:
https://youtu.be/oCZeUzvtj3g?si=I9Fxuh7Lyp2PZ22y
5) I don’t normally post “for sale” posts from the CoCo group
on Facebook, but a fairly large CoCo collection is available from Mason
Wanderlust in the CoCo Facebook group. He is located in Wisconsin if anyone
is interested.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/?multi_permalinks=10163985773252641&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen
6) Cedric Beaudoin’s ESP-32 based CoCo hardware system (now supporting
CoCo 3 as well) has been doing really well with Cedric selling far more
than he was expecting right off the bat. He has now created a Facebook
group for the project, and there is a new CoCo Discord channel for it as well:
Announcement:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163972734892641/
New Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/4262638377332924
He also announced that he has started production, and has pictures of the
case and boards:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163966581547641/
And finally, he released a video of it in action based on the first official
release (with both CoCo 3 & CoCo 1 & 2 programs). :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzW-fjZ9t-c
7) Simon Jonassen posted that thanks to some help by Glen Hewlett (famous for
the CoCo 3 arcade transcodes, amongst other things), he has the GOATTRACKER
ported to the CoCo from the original 6502 C64 assembly languages. This
uses one of the SID cartridges for the CoCo that were created by Sheldon
McDonald and Brendan Donahe:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163985100792641/
8) TRS-80 Retroprograming released a quick video of his working on Ulysses,
where he has an issue on the CoCo 3 text screens – how to get rid of
the cursor if you want to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1nid0XhD1g
9) Spanish YouTube channel “De Teclas y Voltios” ((Google Translate shows
the english version of this spanish phrase to be “Of Keys and Volts”)
posted a video showing how to emulate a cassette player for the Dragon 32
using a Linux laptop. (turn close captioning auto translation on):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5KSbMD5NTU
10) Our very own Ken of Canadian Retro Things released Part 5 of his
programming the Electronic Book peripheral for a game:
https://youtu.be/gMRdTXQIIPw?si=6qGCK3I4yrzgDH3J
MC-10
1)
Game On news (all CoCo related platforms):
1) Tomorrow (March 15) is the live recording of the Amigos The CoCo Show,
this time covering the only commercial 3-D glasses game for the CoCo 3
that I know of: Warp Fighter 3D by Steve Bjork. This can be viewed on
their Twitch or YouTube pages live:
https://www.twitch.tv/amigosretrogaming
or
https://www.youtube.com/@AmigosRetroGaming/streams
2) RetroGamerDiaries released a video talking about the history and 31
different versions of the UK game classic Jet Set Willy – including the
Dragon 32 version (seen at 22:57):
https://youtu.be/idDsa-fTNPU?si=Ajrl0X1INxdOUd_M
3) Pere Serrat has ported the latest Inufuto game (AWASS – one of our
Game On Challenge games right now) to the Dragon, and it is available on
the World of Dragon forums, in he Uploads section:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11345
4) Paul Cunningham posted a video showing a version of Tetris (called
Bare Naked Tetris) that is written in Forth. And while not a game, he also
released a Kaleidoscope prorgram for it:
Tetris:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163978587127641/
Kaleidoscope:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163973194622641/
Link to his Bare Naked Forth project page:
https://github.com/ugufru/coco
5) Erico Monteiro, who started developing his BASIC 10 liner contest entry
during our show last week, has released both the name (Bombanoid), which
was visually inspired by Arkanoid, but with some different game elements,
and a short animated GIF video to show it in action:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163973566412641/
6) Alex Gayer has a text version of Hunt the Wumpus running on the
CoCo. There are other versions available (including a graphic enhanced
one based on the TI-99/4A version by Evan Wright), based on the original
version from the 1970’s:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163968420927641/
7) Ellimist on YouTube posted a speed run of playing Spectral Associates
Ghost Gobbler (obviously a PacMan clone) to get to 10,000 points:
https://youtu.be/zKVvqGqkKA0?si=Uy7-P59yuuX2MAkW
8) ZXFrankie on YouTube did his high score attempt of Android Attck running
on the Dragon at skill level 15:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZLHNQ-t7rk
9) Attempts: A gaming channel (by LRU) did a high score attempt at the
Dragon classic Tea Time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtrwnFAl_po
10) Jim Gerrie posted a video that shows multiple game ports to the MC-10
that he did: Shoot-Em Again (originally by J.W. Meyers in 1982), Cosmic
Fortress (original on the CoCo from T&D Software) and others:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk4JtBK5K8w
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