The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 477, August 8, 2026 (Aug 1-7)

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

Interview schedule:

Not scheduled yet, but Logan Ward and Britt Monk have agreed to come on
the show.

Special Notes

SepTandy is coming up in a couple of more weeks!

Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:

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) Ciaran Anscomb has released an update to XRoar; version 1.12.1. The
main changes involve the debugging features, which can now report register
information to GDB. This not only includes the 6809/6309 (and 6803 now as
well), but also the pseudo registers from the SAM, GIME and PIA. There is
also a new monochrome mode added thanks to code contributions from Erik
Gavriluk (of Color Max 3 Deluxe fame, amongst others):
https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11362

2) Second Life Electronics posted a quick update video of what projects
he will be covering soon (his August Coffee Chat), and mentions that he
will be talking about his Dragon 32 again, since he now has a tape deck
to load programs:
https://youtu.be/AxhAhV92L-Q?si=SDrpT_LH5Nai-3MA&t=132

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. This
round he has added the spider and some further gameplay:
https://youtu.be/p71W4FDjYbI?si=5B0vjKtNPLpvxSbf
He also made a video he called “Weird Coco errors – part 2”, covering
some of the eccentricities of of using geometric functions with floating
point math:
https://youtu.be/CipS_OoxXnU?si=B895VdiJ5uG63JoG

2) Henry Strickland has shared some photos from VCF-West last weekend
(that he joined the show from):
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Rm5TZEQ5uGWdk4Rc9

3) Allen Huffman posted about an online HTML Coco 1&2 emulator – but
written mostly by AI. It’s a github project by “star-fs” (Star Morin)
and even includes some debugging tools. The author shared a post about it
in the Coco Facebook group:
http://subethasoftware.com/2026/08/04/ai-wrote-a-coco-emulator-in-html5/
Original author post and github link:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164490918602641/
https://github.com/star-fs/varispeed-coco2
He also released a blog post about his working on a Coco 1&2 game called
Backrooms, with his first development diary entry. In this entry he describes
the two main inspirations for the game, and what he is hoping to achieve:
http://subethasoftware.com/2026/08/04/coco-backrooms-development-diary-entry-1/

4) Bradley Goldsmith posted an update on his Coco HDMI project, showing
his second rev board that he is starting testing on:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164632461972641

5) Joseph Quinn II posted a screenshot in the Coco Facebook group a sample of
his 80×25 CP437/ANSI screen in a “16 color” mode, which could be very
useful for rendering ANSI BBS’s. The two existing programs that support
this use very different methods for rendering the full 256 character font
and all the colors; Twilight Terminal uses page flipping with 3 640×225 4
color graphics screens, and NetMate uses a 320x200x16 color screen with mini
4×8 pixel fonts. Joseph is trying a 3rd method: 640x200x4 single screen,
but changing the 4 palettes every scanline:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164622548507641/

6) Chris Burke of Burke & Burke fame posted a photo of the internals of
the Hitachi HD6309 chip to the Coco Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164616898522641/
He also posted a readme for his 6809 tracing disassembler on his github,
having not made one for it before:
Announcement:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/4090397864586898/
Github:
https://github.com/cyberabi/diffdasm/

7) Mauricio Matte has released another update (version 1.0.77) of his Coco
FIU utility, a graphical file GUI utility that handles disk and cassette
images, real disks, DriveWire & Fujinet drives, OS-9 and regular, etc.):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164615833017641/

8) Erico Patricio Monteiro posted a DSK image to the Coco Facebook group
showing a PMODE 4 artifacted rendition of the famous Coco Cat by Rainbow
magazine (screenshot in comments):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164613178892641/

9) Tom Erik Gundersen posted another update to his Choplifter port to the
Dragon and Coco, adding 4 hostages in each of the 4 barracks, dropping
the hostages back at the base:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4496203333972634/

10) Allen Leno has posted some sample badges he is working on for the
ESP32-Coco:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/4262638377332924/posts/4412305059032921/

11) Cedric Beaudoin has announced a milestone in his ESP32-Coco page:
They have reached 1,000 members already:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/4262638377332924/posts/4408020229461404/

12) GB Janssen posted a new Coco 3 graphics animation in assembly language
video, more of a demo, and based on Glen Hewlett’s older sprite demo. He
also uploaded the DSK image with the program (and source):
https://youtu.be/-xdUAt6PWkM?si=NBXEE0LhrO7cQud0

MC-10

1) Dave Bernazzani posted on the MC-10 Facebook group that he has
released version 1.7 of his MC-10 emulator (MicroDS) for the Nintendo
DS/Dsi/XL/LL. This includes bug fixes for sound for games like Demon Attack
(which requires changing a sound filtering setting), and the ability to
adjust the sensitivity of the joystick (on either/both axis):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164632706097641/

2) Geek With Social Skills on YouTube did a quick overview of his MC-10,
including the 16K RAM expansion:
https://youtu.be/-t7kgYRftD0?si=nGd4zTmPFOzeQNcL

Game On news (all Coco related platforms):

1) Jim Gerrie has released a port of the 1982 strategy game (originally on
the Apple II, Atari 8 bit, PET, MSDOS and TRS-80 Model 1/3, from Avalon
Hill) to the MC-10, called Andromeda Quest. It supports up to 4 players,
and Jim added a title screen:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/731424100317748/posts/27568705066162954/
Gameplay footage:
https://youtu.be/rXFDmbPWadk?si=ttzyEi3NKY-KkCAR

2) RetroGamerDiaries did a review of the various versions of the Predator
game by Activision, including the Coco 3 version by Greg Zumwalt (Coco 3
version covered 32:37 in):
https://youtu.be/Do6foIejug4?si=-aktRLwnNkXEY4hJ

3) Alex Gayer has released an updated version of his Sea Battle game
(updated sound effects) for 32K Extended BASIC and higher Coco’s, to
the Coco Facebook group (video demo in comments):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164609922962641/

4) Attempts: A gaming channel (by LRU) on YouTube posted a few videos of
going for high scores in Android Attack (originally by Spectral Associates)
on the Dragon. He did videos in 3 different graphics modes (PMODE 3 with
both colorsets, and PMODE 4), but I will just show one here since the game
is identical except for the mode:
https://youtu.be/nMVp_wcA2qg?si=OUnER-Vl2D9LEdKp

5) theLogBook on YouTube did a video about the Coco version of Demon Attack:
https://youtu.be/b5Pc6YjB7Mg?si=3L5SDpAE03-oObFw

6) Chronlogically Gaming did a brief mention of Spectral Associates
CC-Thello game on last weeks episode (covering 1982 released games), but
he couldn’t get it to fully run. I know I have since I have screenshots
of the actual gameplay, but I don’t remember if I had to do anything
special to get it to play. Does anyone else know?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYYGcS5qSp4&t=507s

7) Gregg TV on YouTube did a video showing Caverns of Narzod (by Max
Betteridge in the 1985, in Australian Coco or Australian Rainbow magazine,
if I remember right):
https://youtu.be/QYU0v10vyvY?si=EgxcuOXlUelv4-ba

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