The Coco Nation News stories for Episo de 447, January 10, 2025 (Jan 3-9)

The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 447, January 10, 2025 (Jan 3-9)
=============================================================================
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 Indianapolis,
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) The World of Dragon forums had a recent update to it’s uploads board,
which is a ZIP containing all of the programs for the Coco and Dragon that
came with “Hot Programs to Feed Your Dragon & Tandy Color Computer”,
published by Sigma Technical Press:
  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11326

2) Julian Brown posted an update to his Dragon ATX PCGA VGA board:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4272761196316850/

3) John Whitworth posted an update to his SuperSprite FM+ board, which
his now using surface mount, and he mentions other updates planned:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4274035986189371/


Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
-------------------------------
1) The next live TRS-80 Trash Talk show will be streamed and recorded live
is January 17 at 9 pm Eastern:
  https://www.youtube.com/@TRS80TrashTalk

2) The 8-bit guy did his yearly update/plans for the next year video,
and one that he mentioned that should be out by the end of January is a
documentary style video about the Coco:
  https://youtu.be/nNVIeTqR60M?si=ljhODBt8YPCOCSrq&t=135
He also showcased Paul Shoemaker’s Quarx game, even showing off a
prototype cartridge version:
  https://youtu.be/nNVIeTqR60M?si=3l1CXLQ3rF3kild6&t=588

3) Tony Capellini posted a link to a podcast called “Stray
Pointers”. Season 3, episode 12 interviews Tom Zimmer, who wrote a bunch
of Forth compilers for various machines… and he mentions that he did a
Coco Forth as well (without much detail):
  https://youtu.be/2ZtTzqIaJaQ?si=S4hEtW_jqdwTvD56

4) TRS-80 Retroprogrming released an update video on his Ulyesses game
that he is working on for the Coco 1&2, including target practice and
other new game elements:
  https://youtu.be/lpaS_vgF2S4?si=2dR4Qd0Gg5aauMUa

5) Ron Klein posted on his CocoPi blog about updates to the CocoPi project,
including updated emulators, cross-compilers, etc.:
  https://coco-pi.com/coco-pi-project-update-2026-01-04/

6) The Downland Unearthed blog has a new entry, caleld “Boulder Ball
Bat Bird”, which covers how the bat and boulder work:
  https://www.puffweet.com/2026/01/08/downland-unearthed-boulder-ball-bat-bird/

7) David Kroeker posted another video of him learning Coco assembly language
from the book “Assembly Lanugage Graphics for the TRS-80 Color Computer”
by Don & Kurt Inman, this time covering animation a piston:
  https://youtu.be/fLa2sDCcG5c?si=RcgQUpbyQQQldLgE


MC-10
-----
1)


Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
==========================================
1) Paul Shoemaker posted 2 video updates of his Quarx adaptation (originally
by the 8 Bit Guy) to the Coco 3. In WIP #2, it now has multi-voice (and
instrument) music (thanks to help from Simon Jonassen) on the title screen,
and he mentioned on the Coco Discord that a 32K cartridge version is also
coming out (with help from MrDave6309):
  https://youtu.be/QQO87evl0m4?si=ygd98L-oElFxTm7j
WIP #3 now has the game fully playable
  https://youtu.be/n_Ufdrtj4sI?si=iAiPPPEv7jLN4QDf

2) Jim Gerrie released an updated version of his MC-10 port of Switchbox
originally by Todd Heimarck from the March 1986 issue of Compute! Magazine,
with updated animations and some code speed optimizations:
  https://youtu.be/qa38vUQ-FGI?si=f2gPrVm_UDrpPQPc

3) The Ellimist channel on YouTube released videos of 2 more speed runs
of adventure games for the Coco:
666 The Haunted House (a graphical adventure released relatively recently
– March 2003 was the last updates on it):
  https://youtu.be/fClytvPK1Xg?si=Dlp_zfmjziE5RhqD
He also sped run the text adventure Zector Adventure, which is based on
Star Wars:
  https://youtu.be/eFKA59Onqtc?si=oEJNokUguu12160A

4) Squeeplay on YouTube posted a video of the Microdeal/Dragon version
of Time Bandit, using MAME on Android (on a Retro Flip 2) (truth to tell,
it’s more the loading process and not gameplay):
  https://youtu.be/yTLG-0R2dWU?si=HQWp9dRQtHWtq_s0

5) Jim Mullis posted an interesting survey on the Coco Facebook group-
what is the best fighting game for the Coco:
  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10163696483582641/

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

Speak your mind! Let us know what you think at:
    [email protected]

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Get connected with more of the CoCo, Dragon and MC-10 community here:
    https://thecoconation.com/community/

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