The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 479, August 22, 2026 (Aug 15-21)
The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 479, August 22, 2026 (Aug 15-21)
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.
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
New England RetroFest is happening in Concord, New Hamphire on Saturday October 24.
https://neretrofest.com/
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). It’s at a new location closer to Montreal proper (Champlain College Saint-Lambert):
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)
https://www.glensideccc.com/
NEWS:
Dragon 32/64
- Adrian Stokes posted a picture of redesigned boards, but I can’t remember exactly what this is for, lol:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4508087936117507/ - Julian Brown also posted an update to his Dragon replacement board, and notes of the RAM access design changes that he has done:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4506771179582516/
He also released the 6th video blog update – this time covering implementing the SAM:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYFUbz1bD_s
Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
- Chris Burke has been teasing with several posts on Facebook about getting Doom to run on a Coco 3 (maybe accelerated via emulator, maybe not). He has been working on the palette settings and using dithering patterns to match as close as we can. (I will mention that this video is running on a modern Linux machine, but it is using the palettes & dithering that would be doable on a Coco 3):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164685231147641/
Some more dithering options:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164683615317641/
His original dither patterns:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164674045552641/ - Erico Monteiro posted an animated GIF update for his tank game, this time adding a meteor impact area:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164683843862641/ - Brian Palmer posted a screenshot of some high res graphics he did with BASIC, but from what he says of the listing, he shouldn’t be seeing as many circles…
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164680983452641/ - Alex Redman posted on the Coco Facebook group some of the hot keys used by the old commercial program BASIC FREEDOM, of which no manual scan is known to exist:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164680164402641/ - Don Sorensen posted photos of a duplicate Coco 3 motherboad from Scott @ Tuc’s Workbench – the Athena board that we have shown before – and has started work on it:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640?multi_permalinks=10164672802977641&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen - Bradley Goldsmith posted an update to his HDMI Cartridge board, showing that it now works in a MultiPac:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164666496637641/ - Glen Hewlett posted on his blog that he now has his Disk Extended BASIC stand alone assembly library ready. This lets you call disk routines without requiring Disk BASIC at all (and thus using memory for all of it’s functions when you don’t need them):
Blog post”
https://nowhereman999.wordpress.com/2026/08/20/coco-decb-stand-alone-assembly-library/
Github:
https://github.com/nowhereman999/DECB_Disk_File_Library - Allen Huffman posted on his Sub-Etha Software blog a video showing some of the video titles that he was doing on his then new Coco 3:
https://subethasoftware.com/2026/08/11/computer-video-titles-in-1987/ - Mathew Ward has been working through the excellent Don & Kurt Inman book “Assembly Language Graphics for the TRS-80 Color Computer”, and posted a video showing sample program 25, which is a combination of BASIC and Assembly:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164664076887641/ - Brenda Make posted about a 3D printed Coco 3 case replacement that she is working on:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1929079184021683/posts/3837928859803363/ - Coco Town put up a video about copy protection, auto-loading and more from cassette:
https://youtu.be/F8JH1q0jP8I?si=585kNP2pXpN0VGO1 - George Janssen has a new assembly language tutorial for the Coco 3, this time showing how to draw lines and boxes in assembly for the Coco 3:
https://youtu.be/R0A31uXrwzk?si=9pU_wycDrSmAUZAm - The Sagegazers on YouTube posted a video of the “album” Mystical Data, produced on a Coco 3 using Coco MIDI 3 Pro, Roland & Yamaha synthesizers and other music hardware. (Coco MIDI 3 was published by Rulaford Research), and written by Michael Milazzo using his Coco 3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACs5z2HtZlc - TRS-80 Color Retro Programing on YouTube posted a video update to his Haunted House game (based loosely on the Atari 2600 game of the same name, showing the first 3 floors:
https://youtu.be/NdY45hYEAcU?si=PzkMG7Dw50zQ1UiV - VCC version 2.1.9.3 is now out thanks to EJ Jaquay, with the following updates:
2.1.9.3 added a check box for over-clocking in the CPU settings, the Function keys are mapped around a bit, and some other changes with user interface. If you press “Function Keys” from the Help menu a list of function keys and what they do will pop up.
https://github.com/VCCE/VCC
MC-10
1)
Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
- Jamie Cho used Claude AI & Dynosprite to create both Coco 3 (512k) and Mac remakes of the MC-10 classic Lost Valley Pinball:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640?multi_permalinks=10164690365577641&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen
Github:
https://github.com/jamieleecho/pinball/releases/tag/0.1 - YouTube channel “Mastertronic Collectors Archive” will be posting a comparison video of the Mastertronic game “Vegas Jackpot” on the 7 different machines that it ran on back in the day, including the Dragon 32. It gets premiered on August 27:
https://youtu.be/Hj7ZezPSOFs?si=vY3LuPhRLSeTH01Y - YouTube channel HUGAGAP posted a short video about a new Atari 2600 game called Skeleton. Why am I mentioning it here? It is meant as a tribute to Phantom Slayer on the Coco:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSGuFB-zcx4 - Brian Jones posted a 10 minute gameplay video of the classic Coco game Downland:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgRy5sETjbs - Guillaume Major has re-released the Sierra games with multi-voice music support that will work with a modified Sound/Speech pack, a Philharmonic/Symphony 12 or the Coco PSG sound cards:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10164694895372641/
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