The Coco Nation News stories for Episo de 446, January 3, 2025 (Dec 27-Jan 2)

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 446, January 3, 2025 (Dec 27-Jan 2)
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Collected and Presented by L. Curtis Boyle


Interview schedule:
-------------------
Not scheduled yet, but Logan Ward has agreed to come on the show.


Special NOTES:
--------------
NOTE: We are planning to do a special “Coco 4” episode for January as
part of the virtual Tandy Retro Show (this hopefully gives enough time
for some of us to get our old machines up and running enough to fully
demo). These are the computers 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.

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


Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
------------------------------------------------------------
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 24-25 of 2026. It
will be held at the Royal Military College outside of Montreal. At least
2 Coco speakers have been confirmed so far, and at least 4 Coco people
are attending:
  https://vcfed.org/vcf-montreal/

The Indy Classic retro show will be happening March 21-22, 2026 at a
new location – the Wyndham Indianapolis Airport Hotel in Indiapolis,
Indiana. This show includes Randy Kindig of the Floppy Days Podcast as
one of it’s hosts:
  https://indyclassic.org/

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) John Whitworth uploaded an updated PDF of the Eurohard (spanish) Dragon
technical service manual to the Dragon Facebook group:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4267196633539973/

2) Julian Brown posted a couple of updates:
A quick prototype of the combined PAL+NTSC board for the ATX system:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4269057943353842/
A Facebook video showing PAL+NTSC working from one part, showing the
scope readings:
  https://www.facebook.com/reel/1112939090811366


Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
1) TRS-80 Retro Programing posted an update video with his Ulysses of
Ithaca character, adding in bow training (shooting arrows) and updating
viewers on a few of his projects:
  https://youtu.be/RYJS414LY_s?si=A6A2NL7Vg2W1ktRi

2) Rich Stephens posted a video update of the News Reader app for Fujinet. It
now supports 42 column upper/lower case text (using the PMODE 4 graphics
screen), can toggle between green/black and white/black color sets,
and switch to the hardware 32x16 screen at any time. (I will note that
he says it is 41 columns; But that doesn’t divide well into 256 pixels,
and all other Coco 1&2 programs that used this mode were 42. I also counted
42 characters across in some screenshots from the video):
 
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2822283394719985/?multi_permalinks=4385344751747167&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen

3) Brett Gordon posted an update video for his Coco 2 GUI in ROM project,
with more features added:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt4rZEDhSyk

4) ugBASIC had more updates on both the Beta and Main branches:
Beta branch – multiple bug fixes for 6809/6309 (fixed fill routines,
better optimized code):
  https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/beta
Main branch – optimized code generation for 6309/6809 on direct assignment
(does this mean direct page?)
  https://ugbasic.iwashere.eu/changelog/main

5) Paul Shoemaker showed a quick video of the Coco 3 port (now supported
by the 8-Bit Guy)currently unofficial) work in progress that he is doing
of the 8-Bit Guy’s game Quarx:
  https://youtu.be/GMX4QpGYUXI?si=fUJY1pu2FUGjKRHR
He later did a WIP #1 update which is considerly longer, showing monitor
selection (using a color selector), scoring and more (no sound yet):
  https://youtu.be/-vg65eIDzMU?si=pFE1nSRVknMw2o3q

6) 8-Bit BASIC on YouTube released a video showing the various 8 bit computer
versions of a New Years 1985 program written in their native BASIC’s,
including the Coco, from the Volume 2, Number 12 December 1984 issuee of
Family Computing
 magazine by Joey Latimer:
  https://youtu.be/pUM0lSET5wE?si=e7yIdpu4HgW9kuZS
He also did an earlier cross platform program from the same magazine &
author, but from the Volume 2, Number 3 (March 1984) issue, musical chairs:
  https://youtu.be/G6ZXw65bJrY?si=C7uvOLM5PqOpC0ai

7) jaggiesjim on YouTube put up a quick video showing his booting OS-9
Level 1 Version 2 on a Coco using a real floppy drive and the default 30
ms track to track speed:
  https://youtu.be/S5kj4rLGI_Y?si=zfFhQPBrpKEpdW8X

8) Jeff Noyle released two screen shots showing the new main menu for his
Coco 3/Windows Ultima style modern game Myth Farer to the Coco Discord
channel devoted to his project:
  (show to screenshots saved on my desktop)

9) Cocopedia (ran by Allen Huffman) has been getting hit with a ton of extra
traffic the last few months, which has caused his provider to limit access
to the site itself. To combat this, he has created a username/password to
stave off the bots. The access information is:
  The username is "6809"
  The password is “Motorola6809”
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163663753517641/

10) Retro Byte Meister on YouTube put up a video on how to service the CCR-81
computer cassette recorder (used by the Coco and other TRS-80 computers):
  https://youtu.be/7-nTzFYyOIA?si=q_QLj60cI8woD9uA

11) Henrique Porto posted to the Clube Color Brasil Facebook group a list
of DSK files on the Color Computer Archive that have had their instructions
changed to Portuguese:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/ClubeColor/posts/25089663797401331/

12) pw_32x posted a new blog entry in his Downland Unearthed series,
this time covering how the background terrain is constructed:
  https://www.puffweet.com/2026/01/02/downland-unearthed-backgrounds/


MC-10
-----
1) Jim Gerrie also ported Joey Latimer’s New Years program that we showed
earlier, to the MC-10. Jim updated it in several ways as well, and I believe
he has both the MC-10 and Coco versions of the updated program available:
  https://youtu.be/KYrXU3OXEoA?si=O8PHAnsgLQzl3tCk
He also ported Santa Claus by the same author from the December 1984 issue
of Family Computing, tweaked for the MC-10:
  https://youtu.be/T_A7Yu7Xm1c?si=_eSLzhYq62BsTFxj


Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Amigo Aaron announced that the next CoCo Show will be Jan 25, 2026 and
that they will be playing Pinball by Nick Marentes
  https://www.youtube.com/@AmigosRetroGaming
They also did their year end wrap up of best/worst games for all of their
shows, including The Coco Show (which is the first one):
  https://youtu.be/09tP_dJMpN8?si=Ha-xAcuWKuPhA8kd

2) Attempts: A gaming channel (by LRU) posted a video of his high score
attempt of the Centipede like game sold by Tandy/Written by Spectral
Associates, Slay the Nereis:
  https://youtu.be/xRgdXrpG-Jc?si=EuCH-k-cq7JxMiYO

3) Speaking of high attempts, raskulous on YouTube posted a video of his
high score for one of the Coco Nation’s games – DropPack (a Tetris
derivative):
  https://youtu.be/vARrvVg4zII?si=_0NF0aCcXDnZ-EYa

4) Ellimist on YouTube did a speed run of the text adventure game 4 Mile
Island on his YouTube channel:
  https://youtu.be/tVNwMZ9hSCg?si=DA9SmnjenfpcgKBl

5) Jim Gerrie ported the puzzle game “Subterranean Plumber’s Blues”
(originally by Steven C.M.Chen in the April 1986 issue of Family Computing
magazine for the Coco and IBM PC) to the MC-10, adding instructions and
some visual tweaks:
  https://youtu.be/935_ZyJqcKc?si=gwf5gIqoDcscefA7
He also ported “Bandit!”, originally by Steve Rimmer from the June
1984 issue of Computing Now! Magazine for the IBM PC:
  https://youtu.be/mPfxXGyi3NA?si=Odc_fwM3eEgKkvDO
He also released “Meteorite”, original for the NEC PC-6001. The original
actually had some machine language routines to move the meteorites,
but Jim managed to get good performance using a large string and MID$
(And POKE VARPTR to wipe out meteors as they are hit. Jim also running
commentary in the video, which I don’t remember him doing before (or at
least not very often):
  https://youtu.be/WAuwNzcuvns?si=cr2uQGm-JAXNVdFd

6) YouTube channel tschak909 put up a video showing head to head play of
the multi-platform Fujinet game BattleShip, with the Atari 8 bit, Apple 2,
Coco and MSDOS all playing in the same game:
  https://youtube.com/shorts/3BQc3zVl8qk?si=0VMWMQN6Rd_RMuzW

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

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    https://thecoconation.com/community/

-- 
R. Allen Murphey <[email protected]>
Weylan-Yutani Corporation
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