The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 438, November 8, 2025 (Nov 1-Nov 7)

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 438, November 8,2025 (Nov 1-Nov 7)
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Collected and Presented by L. Curtis Boyle and Mark Overholser


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

NOTE: We are planning to do a special “Coco 4” episode in the
future, which will included all the computers that were announced in
the 1991-1994 time frame that were supposed to be successors to the
Coco 3. We have Joel Ewy who has volunteered to show off their MM/1,
I am going to try and get my TC-9 up and running at least enough
to show it working, and Rick Ulland will show off a Delmar System
V… but we still need volunteers with TC-70’s, Kix-20 or Kix-30,
Delmar System IV, AT-306 and MM/1 B’s. Anybody still have these
machines that they would like to show off in an upcoming show? Email
me at [email protected] if you are.


Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
------------------------------------------------------------
The Retro Computer Festival is being held November 15-16 at Cambridge
in the UK, and this year’s theme is gaming:
 
https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/74558/Retro-Computer-Festival-2025-(Gaming-Edition)-Saturday-15th-November/

This year’s RetroSC (a general retro show in Brazil, with a lot of
Coco and Coco clones present) is November 15, 2025 in Florianopolis,
SC, Brazil.
Native Portuguese site:
  https://retrosc.org/
Google translate to english version:
 
https://retrosc-org.translate.goog/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
NOTE: Erico Monteiro has kindly given me the schedule for the show:
09:00 - Event start
10:00 – POCKET FIGHTER tournament
10:30 - SPEED RUN with Matheus Furtado (AKA “Furious”) on Super
Mario World
11:00 - SUPER BOMBERMAN tournament
12:00 - FROSTBITE tournament
13:00 - Band “Dos 8 aos 128 Bits”
14:00 – Talk: Retro scene in Brazil
14:30 – Talk: GamesCare – Project Sega Neptune
15:00 - Quiz Gamer
16:00 - Cosplay tournament
18:00 – STREET FIGHTER 2 tournament
19:00 - Event closure
He have been told “we will have full proper internet going on this
year, again, if that be a fact, I will see to bring it live on Coco
Nation.”


World of Commodore is December 6-7 in Mississauga, Ontario at the
Admiral Inn. The show “warmly embrace(s) enthusiasts of all retro
computer gear, not just the Commodore computers (although the SuperPET
does have a 6809 in it and runs a version of OS-9 Level 1… making
it a cousin to the Coco in a way).
  https://woc.tpug.ca/

As Mark Overholser mentioned on our show, the next Tandy Retro Show
will be happening January 24 and 25th, which will be a series of live
YouTube streaming presentations. He is currently taking bookings of
people & topics. Send an email to: [email protected]
  https://tandyretroshow.com/

Canada is getting it's own official VCF - Montreal, January 25-26
of 2026. It will be held at the Royal Military College outside of
Montreal, but I don't have any more details (the venue, for example)
yet:
  https://vcfed.org/vcf-montreal/

Date for CocoFest 2026 - April 24-25, as mentioned in the Glenside
meeting this past week. And hotel rates are locked in now (see post
on Glenside website)
  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/

NEWS:
=====

Dragon 32/64
------------
1) Although the Dragon meetup from October 25th was quite a small
affair, there are some pictures from it in the comments of a post
by Adrian Sinclair in the Dragon Facebook group. Apparently even the
bartender took a go at Ghost Rush:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/permalink/4211743832418587/

2) Ross Mcgowan, who made two Dragon 32 videos last week, adds a 3rd
that goes into the ROM’s and chipset of the Dragon, with another
video to go through the BASIC ROM upcoming:
  https://youtu.be/z2jwXQCIX5E?si=nmm2sfpaUI08-0-x


Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
1) George B Janssen returns with another Coco 3 assembly language
program demo – doing a spinning ball illusion… it’s quite
cool how he does it. You can get the demo DSK in his channel on the
Coco Discord:
  https://youtu.be/3iLF2eJZfuo?si=nsgLEX-LJyp9EKLL

2) Allen Huffman has posted multiple Coco related articles to his
Sub-Etha Software blog:
  Part 1 of his dissecting his Mini-Banners program (the DECB version)
  – a program he sold back in the day:
 
https://subethasoftware.com/2025/11/03/dissecting-my-minibanners-program-part-1/
He also managed to find some of his source code for programs for the
MM/1, which he has uploaded to his github:
 
https://subethasoftware.com/2025/11/05/more-sub-etha-software-mm-1-source-code-on-github/
Github link:
  https://github.com/allenhuffman/SubEthaSoftware
Another blog post by Allen is a little different – he is asking
if anyone has a copy of the InfoPatch program (written by Sub-Etha
cofounder Terry Todd), which patched Infocom games to run in 80 columns
with mixed upper/lowercase on a Coco 3, double speed, and change the
disk read/write routines to use 6 ms track to track rather than the
default 30 ms. While we have patched versions now that do the same,
I think this was the very first program to do so. And Allen no longer
seems to have a copy of it – either in source or running form:
 
https://subethasoftware.com/2025/11/06/wanted-sub-etha-softwares-infopatch-for-infocom/
He also posted a blog about PEEK versus Arrays in BASIC to read/write
to the 32 column screen:
  https://subethasoftware.com/2025/11/07/peek-versus-array-in-basic/

3) Allen also posted some Coco related things to the Coco Facebook
group from his Sub-Etha Software account, including a mockup of getting
a vertical scrolling, 32 column text based version of Donkey Kong:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163430103102641/

4) ugBASIC now has the manual updated to match the latest 1.18
release that we talked about last week, which now includes Hitachi
6309 support:
 
https://spotlessmind1975.itch.io/ugbasic-user-manual/devlog/1102999/new-revision-for-version-118-is-out

5) James Diffendaffer posted a short Extended BASIC program to the
Coco Facebook group to draw a SIN flower ship, a slightly optimized
conversion from the Oric:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163424801097641/

6) Rich Stephens posted to the Coco Facebook group about an updated
Fujinet utilities disk (FUJIUTIL), which includes TIME.BIN (print
out current date/time), DRIVES.BIN (prints out current drive slot
configuration), CFG.BIN (resets drive configuration & reboots Coco
to the configuration program, FINFO.BIN (prints network adapter
information & firmware version), APPKEYS.BIN (peruse through app keys
created by various applications):
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163423941457641/

7) Ron Delvaux has produced Disto Mini-controller labels that duplicate
the originals from back in the late 1980’s/early 1990’s:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163422051857641/

8) Sheldon MacDonald posted a video on the Coco Facebook group showing
MAME version 0.282 running his latest SIDPLAYER disk (this allows
MAME to emulate the hardware version that Sheldon and Brendan Donahe
have made):
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163419388142641/

9) TRS-80 Retro Programing on YouTube did a video with his very first
taste of the Coco 3 (running from VCC):
  https://youtu.be/jNOos9LDFHE?si=iT7UBG6lG1Mrhvj-

10) TRS-80 Trash Talk recorded episode 45 last Saturday a few hours
after our show, and the hour and a half+ episode is available for
viewing on their YouTube channel. Ian Maverick talks about his new
Disto Mini-controller clone he is now selling, and Nick Marentes pops
on to talk about Pinball:
  https://www.youtube.com/live/GxiGHkBBcPo?si=k4ugIpF8oT_9RVG5

11) Curtis finally had a chance to quickly type in the notes that
Glen Dahlgren had for the Phantasm assembler that both Diecom and
Sundog systems used back in the day, so the Phantasm download on the
Color Computer archive now includes some brief instructions as well
as the DSK image:
https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Disks/Programming/Phantasm%20%28Roland%20Knight%20%26%20Dave%20Schewchun%29%20%28Coco%203%29.zip


MC-10
-----
1) Your MC-10 exploits here?


Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Website Renga in Blue, which reviews adventure games, has started
tackling games from the first Rainbow Book of Adventures. They cover
Polynesian Adventure by Don Dunlap:
Part 1:
  https://bluerenga.blog/2025/11/01/polynesian-adventure-1983/
Part 2:
  https://bluerenga.blog/2025/11/02/polynesian-adventure-virtual-vacation/
Search for the Ruby Chalice, but 15 year old Justin Paola:
  https://bluerenga.blog/2025/11/03/search-for-the-ruby-chalice-1983/

2) ZXFrankie on YouTube did a high score attempt on Robin Hood,
this time achieving a score of 12,234:
  https://youtu.be/Vi5fA2X8Em8?si=KwZRQR2Ce5EbfckV

3) Retro Arcade Gaming on YouTube posted short videos showing the 2
main Coco 3 PacMan clones/transcodes, and included them in a comparison
video as well:
Nick Marentes Pac-Man tribute (for some reason his emulator was not
producing sound):
  https://youtu.be/EkgW00Un0Cw?si=iJbBWe1Wr3g-Jcja
Glen Hewlett Pac Man transcode:
  https://youtu.be/O-P91QVzGQE?si=iU2JSRczmLUkkL0U
Compare of Pac-Man home ports on a variety of systems vs. the arcade
(over 3 hours!), including 3 Coco versions (starting just after
2:34:00 in):
  https://youtu.be/7t2p72yqdqo?si=9Du5EVB3rpWg_a9d

4) Spriteworx (Jay Mundy) has made the official video promo for his
newly released MC-10 game Ultrix Sentinel:
  https://youtu.be/9EnMfyOBHm4?si=nS56wmz0D5TISr8N

5) The Amigos are releasing their next Coco Show episode (on Sunday)
– Covering the newly released this summer Spooks platformer game
for the Coco 1,2 and 3:
  https://youtu.be/d60MdaZMas4?si=L1srUbSffkJTjxdy

==============================================================================

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Weylan-Yutani Corporation

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