The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 458, March 28, 2026 (March 20-27)

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.

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:

The next Dragon Meetup is on right now 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/

The Brazil Color Computer Club has announced that their 10th meeting is
on May 2:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ClubeColor/posts/25741764422191262/

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/

Retro Fest in the UK is running May 30-31st at the STEAM Museum of
Great Western Railway in Swindon, 10 am to 5 pm both days, and there is
confirmation that a Dragon Fujinet rig will be shown at the show:
https://www.retrofest.uk/

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) Phil Harvey-Smith psted photos of his latest (hopefully final, as he says)
DragonDVI and DragonPicoSD boards, which he will hopefully be demoing this
weekend at the Dragon meetup:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4351208191805483/

2) Tony Jewell was hoping to bring this to the Dragon meetup, but it may
need to wait until 2027 – a Dragon controlling 3 independent displays:
VDG, DragonPlus 80 column card, and the SuperSprite FM+. He does have a
photo of it up and running. I have seen Coco 1’s with the 80 column card
and VDG running at the same time, but not 3 independent displays at once:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4351122121814090/

3) Robcfg has posted the ROM and manual of the FarmFax ROM/RAM Memory Pack
to the world of dragon archive forums:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11347

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

1) Brett Gordon posted a quick video showing a Coco 3 raycasting program
he wrote using 16 bit integer math: It shows a side by side view of the
top view including the view line of sight area, and the 3D representation
(I think this a single Coco 3 screen):
https://youtu.be/yEyqN6lhPmU?si=Dm4mExGOHY197zxp

2) Glen Hewlett has uploaded version 5.2, 5.21, 5.22 of his BASIC to 6809
cross compiler, with the following additions/changes:
V 5.2
• Added New -m option that allows the user to select 3 byte or 5
byte floating point math with Type Single-m0 is 3 byte fast floating
point option-m1 is 5 byte floating point option which is slower but
more accurate than the 3 byte option
• Fixed a bug where printing to 40,64 or 80 width screen could print
a weird character if a control character is used
• Fixed the INPUT command with WIDTH 40,64 & 80 mode
• Fixed a bug with string commands that have commas in them (they
were being treated like arrays)
• Fixed a bug with VARPTR() given a numeric variable or string
variable was using the value and not the address of the variable
• Fixed a bug with variables that started with “FP” as they were
used in an older version of the compiler to identify floating point
variables. This is no longer needed and that code has been removed so
variables that start with “FP” will work as any other variable
• Fixed a bug with MID$() if the start and length values were not
Unisgned Byte format, it wouldn’t give the correct value
• Fixed a bug if there were comments after the LOADM command and it
had an LOADM used an offset value
• Fixed a bug with the CASE command not handling comma separated
values properly
• Fixed a bug with the IF command while doing logical operations
like IF (X AND 1) = 1 THEN
• Made the compiler smarter and faster when doing division of integers
it will now do integer division instead of the old method of converting
the numbers to floating point then doing the division and converting
the result back to integer.
V 5.21 is bugfixes:
V 5.21
• Fixed a bug in the DoREAD
• Fixed a bug with GMODE 164 causing a hang of the compiler. Assignment
of variable needed to be LONG not integer
• Fixed some bugs in array 8bit/16 bit assignments
• Sped up VAL() command to now use Integer conversion instead of
always doing String to Single then Single to INT
V 5.22
• Fix a bug with IF comparing an _Unsigned _Byte and literal values
that were greater than 127
https://github.com/nowhereman999/BASIC-To-6809

3) Jason Ross has uploaded his first AI generated BASIC09 game, a port of
Stocks and Bonds originally by Avalon Hill, to his Github:
https://github.com/Rastamafugg/stocks-and-bonds

4) Jim Brain released some further pictures from the Indy Classic show in
Indianapolis last weekend, which includes some Coco’s:
Part 1:
https://www.facebook.com/go4retro/posts/pfbid0MZL6e44MGjugFjL2dkFqpVfg8nG9cGfdQHdVqKefYvSPiZ2xe6db6Mupk4VX4NPhl
Part 2:
https://www.facebook.com/go4retro/posts/pfbid02mXFCgx2mMfJNsPk4E7gG6iCFEsyVDkpRhKtq5UuX3z4iaTbFUWfLkc69S7Y47TJnl

5) Jayfor80’s on YouTube put up a video showing a Coco 2 he picked up
from ebay, and running it through Tandy’s version 2.0 Diagnostic cartridge.
https://youtu.be/bshJK6C_bFY?si=i6Th84SfvC4kWaau

6) 8bitsinthebasement has released Vlog 9 for his Super Shooty Aliens
semigraphics-24 multi-stage arcade game, that he took a bit of a break on
after Christmas. He also goes how he tracked a bug using the Debug feature
in XRoar, with Ciaran’s help:
https://youtu.be/wcpI3GaRp38?si=8URcY3lGYItR7wJ4

7) Jim Gerrie’s presentation on Canadian BASIC Retro Game Archeology,
covering BASIC games written from the 1970’s through 1983. This includes
him showing MC-10 ports of some of these:
https://youtu.be/I-9jr9Nk6JU?si=ZR1ktQpEFHriv-sa

8) Brian Palmer uploaded both a screenshot and a DSK image from an
Australian Coco magazine showing a 16K graphics demo of parallax scrolling
stars that was done by Craig Stewart back in the 1980’s (he later did
multiple machine language games like Space Marauder for the Coco’s)
to the Coco Facebook group:
Download DSK image:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164058900727641/
Screenshot, and some comments by the original author:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164058893507641/

9) Alex Gayer was getting frustrated trying to order a GIME-Z (since it
sells out almost immediately everytime new units are put up), so he wrote
a script to monitor AC’s site to see when it was available again:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164058493942641/

10) Sean Sibbet posted a github link to his project to run Coco Extended
BASIC programs natively on Windows:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164057849252641/

11) Alex Redman uploaded a DSK image containing his RD-DOS for the Coco 3
version 3.2 to the Coco Facebook group, which has some TSR’s (terminate
and stay resident) programs that one can run in the background:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164057023502641/

12) Luc Dion posted a short BASIC program for the Coco 3 that can be used
to get key repeat working in your BASIC programs (rather than single hit
keys like INKEY$ does):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164056014852641/

13) Allen Huffman posted a blog entry about allowing ML subroutines that
are called from BASIC to know whether they are called via EXEC (with
or without an explicit address) or via USR, and whether USR was sent a
floating point number or a string:
https://subethasoftware.com/2026/03/27/exec-versus-usr-who-called-me/

14) Ken Waters (Canadian Retro Things) posted a video doing a deep dive
into how RND works and how to get it to be more random than it is by default:
https://youtu.be/8xHvP1czPoY?si=s7BuXltDeyUWaK2r

MC-10

1) Scott Gilson released a short video showing his improved version of
Zippsterzone’s MC-10 composite mod, and he has some kits and boards
available for it:
https://youtu.be/00HvkbliS7k?si=FXnJym3of-cLvvnD

2) FFF Archive Emporium did a followup video to his acquiring a variety of
old Tandy computers that we covered a few weeks ago. He has now upgraded
the MC-10 with the 16K RAM expansion pack, and he goes through the Model
102 & Model 1 as well:
https://youtu.be/jpsFr26gnmo?si=ihOgeAkv-_g3bcBk

3) Charlie Pelosi posted on the MC-10 group on Facebook a link to his new
host of his MC-10 download site:
Announcement:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/26024831183883691/
New website:
https://chazbeenhad.great-site.net/

4) Jim Gerrie has a new blog post about his programming a game called Dojin,
originally by Hiroshi Suziki in 1980. This is his 3rd blog post update for
this game, which he is recoding since it is lost, based on the book “The
Untold History of Japanese Game Developers” by John Szczepaniak. You
can play test it from a link at the bottom of his blog post:
https://jimgerrie.blogspot.com/

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

1) German YouTube channel does a play video of several quiz style games for
1980’s retro computers, including the Coco with QuizSpin, an educational
game from 1983 from Spectral Associates, written by Ron Gabbard. Unfortunately
close captioning isn’t working on the video to translate German to English
(mind you, I heard some english expletives, so maybe that is a good thing):
https://youtu.be/NKHwt1uSMO4?si=kOEtriic_Je1Mo5Z

2) Henrique Porto was asking for help after getting stuck in the graphical
adventure game Calduril Flame of Light (including a screenshot). One of
it’s original authors (Jeff Noyle) came into the comments to help out. And
his new 512K Coco 3 / Windows Ultima style game has been making progress too:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164057026857641/

3) Jami Cho has uploaded an enhanced version of his Space Bandits (Coco
3 enhanced Space Invaders game), adding 3 voice background music to both
the 6809 and 6309 versions. The special thing about it? He used Claude AI
(along with CMOC and Dynosprite) to add these enhancements:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164053796512641/

5) Paul Cunningham posted a screenshot of a game called Space Warp (I believe
it is based on the 1970’s Star Trek), but he is using PMODE 4 to fit more
text on the screen to the Coco Facebook group. He is looking for beta testers:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164036305832641/

6) Allen Huffman posted a video showing an OS9 Pong game he made back
in 1993 for the Atlanta CocoFest for a Pong programming competition. He
promises a full blog post on it later. It looks like this one is done
entirely with hardware text characters on the 80×24 screen:
Facebook post mentioning upcoming blog:
https://www.facebook.com/subethasoftware/posts/pfbid022gwJhJoFgaDpgHaYUHyhnQyBTJqAPTmyKmYaSYa9XBAVfAELMF6kqSM9633vmaeJl
Video:
https://youtu.be/B8VqeJi1-oI?si=rBubBq3Q3pb6-CA-

7) Episode 18 of The Retro Adventurers podcast has guest Iain Lee, and
they go through Calixto Island for the Dragon/Coco/MS-DOS (and the National
Lampoon spoof of Lord of the Rings called Bored of the Rings):
https://youtu.be/KZjogqhWZK4?si=AULRE6kJlJEzJ2as

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