Re: How to get back in the CoCo saddle?

> On Apr 28, 2026, at 7:16 PM, Rich Carreiro via Coco <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> I've been out of the emulation world for over 10 years and now with the purchase of an ESP32 CoCo (so kinda halfway between emulation and hardware) I'm looking to get back in.
> 
> Some questions:
> * Is there any software for stuff like creating disk images, etc. available for Apple Silicon Macs?  Or do you pretty much have to stick with Windows?

Mac user here. Toolshed command line tools work for everything - so I use them on a Mac, Raspberry Pi and PC.

LWTools is the cross assembler.

> * Are there any IDEs for CoCo development?  Ideally it would be something where you could develop in BASIC or in assembler and could hit a button and run it (optionally under a debugger) in emulation within the IDE or an auxiliary emulator that the IDE could autolaunch?  I assume that if such a thing exists it probably only runs on Windows?

There is at least one for Windows, but I don’t know of any for Mac/Linux. There are extensions for MS Visual Studio Code editor that let you launch and run programs in the XROAR (or other) emulators.

> * Related to both those questions, for times when I want to run stuff on my laptop rather than real or emulated hardware, what are the recommended emulators these days?  And again, anything decent available on Macs or gotta stick with Windows?

Xroar is the easiest for me. One download, throw in some ROMs and you are ready — Mac, Linux and Windows.  MAME probably does more, but I struggle with it every time I try to set it up due to it (last time I tried) still using keys that don’t exist on most laptops for getting to the menu and such. It can be remapped, etc. but I just run XROAR and am done.

> If it helps, while I might be interested in NitrOS-9 some day, initially I'd be wanting to do BASIC and assembler, be able to load .CAS/.WAV files, and be able to read and write to .DSK files. Being able to run cartridge images would be nice too.

XROAR is great because it can load a text file as a basic program. You can make:

10 PRINT “HELLO WORLD”

…save it out as “hello.bas” (or I think it allows .asc for ascii too) and then you mount it in XROAR and type “CLOAD” and it loads.

I build assembly in LWTools exporting to a BASIC loader, then CLOAD (turbo speed in XROAR) it into the emulator to run and test with. Super quick and easy.

www.subethasoftware.com is my blog with some articles about these items, all from Mac perspective, but they should work on other platforms as well.

Drop by.

		— A


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