The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 475, July 25, 2026 (July 18-24)

Collected and Presented by L. Curtis Boyle, Mark Overholser, Rick Ulland

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:

VCF West is August 1-2, 2026 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain
View California, and there are a few local Coco people that may attend:
https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-west/

VCF-SE (combined with the Southern Fried Gaming Expo) is July 31-August
2 at The Marriott Renaissance Waverly in Atlanta, Georgia:
https://vcfed.org/events/otherevents/vintage-computer-festival-southeast/

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

The 2nd VCF Montreal dates have been announced, and they have moved a few
months ahead to avoid the dead of winter (it was in January earlier this
year; the next one is November 7-8 this year as well):
https://cvcfed.org/vcf-montreal-2-0/

That same weekend, and newly added to the list, is the next RetroSC retro
computer/gaming show in Brazil that usually features a large contingent
of Coco clones (CP-400, Codimex, etc.), which is happening November 7,
2026 in Florianoplois, Brazil:
Portuguese site (try Google Translate, etc. to translate):
https://retrosc.org/

CocoFest for 2027 is May 14-15 (not on site yet)

NEWS:

Dragon 32/64

1) Dave Hooper has released a new MaxDuiNEO update (version 4.3.0):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4482248125368155/

2) Tom Erik Gundersen has upload several Dragon programming manuals to
the Dragon Facebook group:
Edit+/Hi-Res from Compusense:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4480650422194592/
Dasm/Demon from Compusense:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4480651045527863/
He also uploaded a patch to the Defense game (Missile Command type game
originally by Spectral Associates) to allow it to play in the 4 color mode
rather than trying to artifact (thanks to work by Mike Miller):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4480094845583483/

3) Julian Brown has uploaded his 5th blog entry about his updated Dragon
motherboard, with this one “digging the VDG” and how he does it with
Verilog:
https://youtu.be/PV91ZWL2RYQ?si=LzyzdxURNNctye4w

4) John Whitworth posted a heads up that he will soon stop exporting
DragonPlus items to a handful of EU countries (Portugal, Greece, Norway,
Germany and France), do to some new EU regulations that make it a real pain:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4478149682444666/

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

1) TRS-80 Retro Programing released another update video on his BASIC port
(with some differences) of the Atari 2600 classic Haunted House:
https://youtu.be/OYAch9pC4E4?si=8NcbGwx8V0fW1juC

2) Dr. Boisy Pitre has released a BASIC09 compiler prototype, which uses LLVM
to compile BASIC09 source on modern machines, and also has an experimental
graphics library for modern machines as well:
https://github.com/DrPitre/basic09c
He has also released a new HiRes screen package for Level II
OS-9/NitrOS9. This takes some of the system calls that are done both by
CoVDG (which is the Coco 1&2 / Level 1 graphics package, but added high res
screen support for directly writing to graphics RAM for Coco 3 modes –
and even included the 160x192x16 mode that is not supported in the native
Coco 3 drivers (or Super Extended BASIC, for that matter) at all). This is
something that was done in a different way in the famed Level II upgrade, and
means one can save value system space while retaining all the functionality:
https://github.com/nitros9project/nitros9/pull/367
He also uploaded “coco-codex-pet”, an animated custom pet using ChatGPT
based on the Coco character from the original BASIC manuals:
https://github.com/DrPitre/coco-codex-pet

3) Richard Stephens has released a full how-to manual for setting up
Fujinet-pc and XRoar for the Coco in the #fujinet channel on the Coco
Discord and in the Coco Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164562707412641/

4) William Astle has released lwtools version 4.25. This contains bug
fixes and extra features like bitwise shift operators (using << and >>):
http://www.lwtools.ca/

5) Paul Cunningham released a short video showing multiple Coco emulators
and an early prototype of the sequencer engine for a new game based on
his Bare Naked Forth:
https://youtu.be/OE9EB_S6ZrQ?si=d4k32m8LZl2cxyo9

6) William Athing provided a link to Fujinet for the Dragon 32/64 that is
being made by FutureVision Research:
https://www.fvresearch.com/product/fujinet-for-dragon-rev0000/

7) Allen Huffman put up a blog covering Color TRS-DOS – the set of
utilities and driver code to allow assembly language programmers to access
disks at the file level, rather than the raw sector level that Disk Extended
BASIC’s “legal
“ ROM calls used. Brian Wieseler has full commented source for this and
Robert’s original manuals for it that were supplied to Tandy to basically
give away, but it didn’t show up with many programs (Disk Edtasm+ being
the main one).
https://subethasoftware.com/2026/07/21/unraveling-the-mysteries-of-color-trsdos/

8) Retro Islander posted an hour long video (and says a second will be coming
out later to talk about the ChatGPT component of it in more detail), which
he used in developing the game (ChatGPT Sol and Codex to be specific). It
is a Coco 3 version of the arcade classic LadyBug:
Demo of game state right now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO9B9HP8kYs&t=1118s

9) Tristan Robichaud has been doing updates to his manual for the ESP32-Coco
(by Cedric Beaudoin):
https://github.com/mast4rbug/ESP32-CoCo

10) Reinaldo Torres has released his TTGO-VGA32-COCO, a Coco 2 and 3 hardware
emulator (both on the same firmware) which uses a LiyGO TTGO VGA32 board:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164442530407641/

11) Alishar Hugo posted photos of replacement Dragon motherboards (version
2.1) and mentions working on a “more radical” Rev 3. But if one zooms
the photo, this is Julian Brown’s boards. Does he have a second Facebook
name/account, or somebody stealing credit for his work?
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164494430037641/

12) Erico Patricio Monteiro released an animated GIF showing a heavily
artifacted tank game that he is working on (I presume written in ugBASIC?). He
may be on the show today to talk about it:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164574145682641/

13) Carlos Camacho uploaded an artifact color Coco 1&2 image showing a
mountainous landscape. He says he uploaded the source code to draw it as well:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164559254917641/

14) Ronivon Costa posted photos and a video into the Clube Color Brasil
group in Facebook with his CP-400 color with an SRAM expansion, daughterboard
with connectors for 2 joysticks, VGA, Sdcard slot, audio, ESP32 and more:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ClubeColor/posts/27238750909159265/

15) Allen Leno posted a link to his case design for the joystick option
for the ESP32 Coco:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/4262638377332924/posts/4393900237540070/

MC-10

1)

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

1) YouTube channel Retro Recenzent has started making game play videos for
Coco games (all Coco 1&2 so far) in alphabetical order (similar to what
HighRetroGameLord did some years ago). He has 3-D Breakaway, 3D-Ghostmania
and 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe so far. They are using AI for the voice, so it does
have odd pronunciations at time (or maybe he speaks a different language
natively?). He does give full descriptions and playthrough’s:
3-D Brickaway:
https://youtu.be/LBQ5qj-bmI4?si=A72X_WITKIblrJqJ
3D-Ghostmania:
https://youtu.be/fE1tMRCoxJY?si=-6CebKnNmHWjOdgj
3-D Tic-Tac-Toe:
https://youtu.be/lSonwh01NPo?si=psctWOUni3Yc-He0

2) If you are on the Coco Discord and have a 512K Coco 3 (or emulator),
pop into the #general-game-posts channel. Lee Perkins (leep) has put up
a test version of his port of Montezuma’s Revenge for the Coco 3 for
people to try and report bugs

3) Bug Twentythree on Facebook released a video of his Space Invaders port
to the Coco 1&2 level machines, that even incorporates the sound from the
original arcade game. He also released the game itself:
Video:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164548309557641/
Download (both .BIN and .CAS formats):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/files/files

4) BugTwentythree’s new Space Invaders game for the Coco 1/2/3 is now
available for the Dragon as well, thanks to Pere Serrat:
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11360

5) Chronologically Gaming covers another Coco games in the latest episode
covering games released sometime in 1982. This time he covers Box Shoot,
a game from the December 1982 issue of Chromasette tape magnazine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NxPjLLsLVg&t=539s

6) “super Mario glichy 4” on YouTube has released an hour long video
showing various clones and ports of Ms. PacMan, which includes MRS PAC
and Miss Gobbler (and somehow missing the best port, Ms. Maze by Tom Mix):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edOI3iXkZvE&t=3764s

7) Amigo Aaron did a live stream a week ago showing TV Tie In games on
a variety of platforms. For The Dallas Quest (based on the hit TV show),
he chose the Coco version:
https://www.youtube.com/live/lOO4YDyxNgo?si=MqxmElGPm-dXVJye&t=7200

8) theLogBook on YouTube has released a Coco gameplay video this week as
well for Megabug:
https://youtu.be/JH5n3WAFxz4?si=ywRjM0gPgW12tmil

9) Tom’s Toys on YouTube put up a 20 minute video showing some vector
and B/W games for the Dragon (he is using a MiSTer to emulate). He plans
a followup for later games as well. He covers Meteoroids,Asteroids RX,
Rommel’s Revenge, Cosmic Invaders & the just released Space Invaders
(see regular) news) clone this round:
https://youtu.be/HG52-kiOXJc?si=1HQtkfCGQ4Wvsxmf

10) Lance Schafhausen has released the BASIC source code to his Gruntley’s
Dungeon game that he released (and we covered) last week):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164555309717641/
He also showed a screenshot of a graphical Program Launcher that he is
working on – for the Coco 1 and 2 by the looks of it:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164555287992641/

11) Rich Stephens has released a version of the classic game Downland that
now supports the Fujinet high score feature, where you can compete against
high scores with other Coco or Dragon users using Fujinet over the Internet:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164561600587641/

12) Some nostalgia for the oldtimers: Michael Pittsley posted some screenshots
from IMB’s (Illustrated Memory Banks, Fred Scerbo’s company) very first
Coco game which appeared in the December 1981 Rainbow, called Zelda’s
Bat Bottle. Fred always did Extended BASIC games with artifacted colors,
some published in the magazine and others sold commercially:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164569915607641/

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