[Coco] The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 412, May 10, 2025

Thu May 15 22:00:54 EDT 2025

The sysop of telnet ribbs.griswoldfx.com <http://ribbs.griswoldfx.com/> 6809 can you please send me a email to phil.taylor at professionalsoftwaredevelopment.com. I would like to know how. You got Ribbs bbs to work over the internet please?

Thanks
Phil Taylor

> On May 11, 2025, at 8:44 AM, R. Allen Murphey via Coco <coco at maltedmedia.com> wrote:
> 
> The Coco Nation News stories for Episode 412, May 10, 2025
> ===============================================================
> Collected by L. Curtis Boyle
> 
> 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:
> telnet ribbs.griswoldfx.com 6809
> 
> 
> Special Guests today:
> ---------------------
> Some CocoFest goes, perchance?
> Bob Emery will be on to recap the Texas meetup he was at recently?
> 
> 
> Interview schedule:
> -------------------
> Richard Lorbieski of BoysonTech will be on to talk about his returning
> to the Coco hardware world & answering questions about his upcoming
> products on May 17.
> 
> 
> Upcoming conventions/trade shows of interest to Coco people:
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Retrofest 2025, organized by Tony Jewell, is a retro computer festival
> happening in Swindon, England May 31-June 1, 2025. Some Dragon people
> (like Richard Harding and Chris Poacher) have already committed to
> attending the show, being held at STEAM (the Great Western Railway
> museum):
> Retrofest website:
>  https://retrofest.uk/
> They even have a promo video:
>  https://youtu.be/UCZ-BtFW9Ok?si=B441wLvpDI2iekLN
> 
> VCF-SW in Texas has been booked with dates: June 20-22, 2025 at the
> Davidson Gundy Alumni Center, University of Texas, Dallas, Texas.
> Tables & Tickets will go on sale January 2025. $20/adult ($25 if bought
> at the door), $10/student ($15 at the door). 17 and under are free
> (with accompanying adult). Tables are $50.
>  https://www.vcfsw.org/
> 
> The Southeast Michigan Vintage Computer Club is having their 8th public
> meeting/display June 28, 2025 from 11 AM to 5 PM Eastern at Grace
> Chapel's Gymnasium, 2515 N. Williams Lake Road, Waterford Township,
> Michigan (near Pontiac). This covers all retro gaming consoles and
> home computers.
> 
> https://semichiganvcc.blogspot.com/2025/04/se-michigan-vintage-computer-club-ver.html
> 
> BoatFest (now International Retro Computer Expo) will be July 11-13
> in Hurricane, WV. There is now a promo video for it:
>  https://www.ticketsource.us/ircexpo2025/t-eanjyje
> 
> VCF-Midwest (the largest retro show in North America, I believe) is
> September 13-14 at the Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg,
> Illinois. This year is the 20th anniversary of this show, and there is
> a lot of collaboration between CocoFest and VCF-MW, so expect a large
> number of Coco and Glenside people at the show! Still free admission,
> and hotel booking is open already.
>  https://www.vcfmw.org/
> 
> That same weekend, Retro World Expo will be held September 12-14 at
> the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford, Connecticut. Tickets
> and vendor applications aren't quite ready yet but will be soon. This
> is a gaming oriented retro show (including tournaments) but also
> includes things like wrestling:
>  https://retroworldexpo.com/
> 
> Also that same weekend, for Canadians and anyone wanting to travel
> up to Canada, the WoRC (World of Retro Computing) show is September
> 13-14 at the old Goudies Department Store location at 8 Queen Street
> North, Kitchener,ON, Canada (West of Toronto, and right beside The
> Museum). This is a general retro show with a bunch of gaming and home
> computer platforms, vendors, seminars, LAN parties, workshops, door
> prizes & raffles and is sponsored by Retro Rewind. Admission is free,
> and it runs noon to 5 pm Eastern on both Saturday and Sunday:
>  https://worldofretrocomputing.com/
> 
> Tandy Assembly for 2025 is Sept 26 to Sep 28 at the Courtyard by
> Marriott Springfield Downtown in Springfield, Ohio:
>  https://www.tandyassembly.com/
> And they have some exhibitors already (click Exhibitors link)
> 
> This year's Portland Retro Gaming Expo runs from October 17-19 in
> 2025 (they just had this years Sept 27-29). Oregon Convention Center,
> Portland, Oregon.
>  https://www.retrogamingexpo.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/
> 
> 
> Coco 1/2/3 (and multi-platform)
> -------------------------------
> 1) An announcement from Richard Lorbieski about the return of
> BoysonTech. Richard will be on the show next week to talk about his
> hardware that is coming back, and the schedule it will be on:
> "this is what I posted on #boomerang channel and a portion to
> #CoCoSDC....
> 
> BoysonTech, a retro computer company based in San Antonio, Texas,
> is pleased to announce the reintroduction of the Boomerang 512K
> Classic and 2 Meg memory boards. We will also resume production and
> distribution of our Paragon Joystick adapters, SDC cards, and other
> products.
> 
> The target release dates are as follows: Boomerang boards by
> Thanksgiving 2025, Paragon Joystick adapters by July 2025, and SDC
> cards (limited edition kit form) by the end of June 2025. Additional
> product announcements will follow.
> 
> The Boomerang boards serve as memory upgrades for the Tandy Color
> Computer 3, available in 512K and 2 Meg memory options. Due to
> volatility and uncertainty with tariffs and supply chains, pricing
> for the Boomerang boards has yet to be determined.
> 
> The Paragon Joystick adapters are the smallest commercially available
> adapters facilitating the use of Atari or Sega Genesis joysticks on
> Tandy Color Computers, Dragon (with additional adapter) or Tandy 100
> computers. Pricing for the Paragon has yet to be determined.
> 
> The CoCo SDC is a widely popular disk drive emulator designed for the
> Tandy Color Computer. In response to popular demand, BoysonTech plans
> to distribute a limited number of SDC cards in the form of kits. These
> kits will include a pre-built and tested SDC reader board, along
> with pre-programmed CPLD, Atmel, and flash chips, while the remaining
> components will require through-hole soldering experience. Our target
> price for the CoCo SDC kits will be under $50 (USD).
> 
> On May 12, 2025, Boysontech.com will launch, providing users with the
> opportunity to sign up via email for updates on Boomerang, Paragon,
> CoCo SDC, and other products. Updates will also be available through
> The CoCo Nation podcast, CoCo Discord (BoysonTech), and other social
> media channels (to be announced).
> 
> You can reach us via CoCo Discord channel (BoysonTech), or email
> – info at boysontech.com"
> 
> 2) Coco Town returns for an episode showing using the Ghidra debugger
> (created by the NSA, and an open source project on their github)
> to reverse engineer Donkey King:
>  https://youtu.be/q7SpWuSU7u8?si=x26Hbd_KGVDw8yEq
> 
> 3) D. Bruce Moore posted a quick video of some of his highlights
> of CocoFest:
>  https://youtu.be/-Dn3Elj9rl8
> 
> 4) Henry Reitveld posted a video showing how is using Fujinet a
> SuperIDE on his Coco (the SuperIDE is a Cloud9 product that allowed
> using IDE drives on the Coco, a sequel to the Glenside IDE board):
>  https://youtu.be/6f14Q6fZPVU?si=OVHROO8APHC_5Pjs
> 
> 5) D. Bruce Moore and David Kroeker posted a video update about their
> MP3 player (that will have Bruce's new game Realm of Doom as it's
> first killer app):
>  https://coco.gracenote.ca/cocomp3-final-settings-achieved/
> 
> 6) David Collins has new updates for his 3MHz 6309 Single Board
> Computer, which includes "massive update to firmware and release
> functional FLEX 9":
>  https://www.facebook.com/groups/403922002342070/posts/563017076432561/
> He also showed screenshots of Flex running on it:
>  https://www.facebook.com/groups/6809assembly/posts/3664107730549249/
> 
> 7) Terry Trapp released a new video on the Coco Facebook group,
> showing further progress with his Coco Blender board (note: he has
> fixed some of the bugs mentioned already):
>  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162602416582641/
> And he also posted that RiBBS was being served through his Coco
> Blender board for 12 hours straight with no crashes:
>  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162604494127641/
> And he posted a link to his Coco Blender source code:
>  https://griswoldfx.visualstudio.com/_git/CoCo%20Blender
> 
> 8) Thomas Cherryhomes, creator of Fujinet, posted some screenshots
> of the Coco, Apple 2 and Coco playing the multi-platform FujitZee
> (Yahtzee) together in the Coco group on Facebook:
>  https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/posts/10162594654682641/
> 
> 9) Roger Taylor is offering a 5 disc DVD set for $49.00 of a variety
> of Coco magazine scans. 35GB of data:
>  https://www.cococommunity.net/product/coco-magazine-library-5-dvd-set/
> 
> 10) For those that missed the seminars at CocoFest (and the auction),
> they are all up for viewing on the Glenside Color Computer Club YouTube
> page (although Henry Strickland's seems to cut off before 11 minutes):
>  https://www.youtube.com/@glensideccc/streams
> 
> 11) L.P.INDUSTRIES on YouTube posted a 5+ minute video entitled: So,
> Bought a trs-80 color computer. I have no regrets. He is another
> example of a young person getting excited about retro hardware,
> which gives me hope for the future:
>  https://youtu.be/1xmnuFjfk3c?si=N6EUj9brZZrVkBYK
> 
> 12) Dim Cave Software on YouTube psoted a video of "Clube Color Brasil"
> - a demo program he wrote as his very first 6809 assembly program,
> running Disk EDTASM++ on the Prologica CP-400 Coco 2 clone (at the end,
> the demo is exited and shows the authors name as "NELITON"):
>  https://youtu.be/O-u-CMGv-rw?si=ydvFtuge1mXH_ZOG
> 
> 
> MC-10
> -----
> 1)
> 
> 
> Dragon 32/64
> ------------
> 1) User Serenarian on the World of Dragon forums posted some pictures
> of his Maplin I/O card, which he used to control a model railway and
> radio controlled tank back in the 1980's. He had to modify it to a
> different address (the original board used the same I/O space as the
> disk controller):
>  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=11286
> 
> 2) Julian Brown has some more updates on his ATX Dragon remake,
> including:
> 1st draft of the hardware serial port/Real Time Clock I/O board:
>  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4024976824428623/
> PIA / I/O board:
>  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4024951187764520/
> I/O board (real life - earlier version):
>  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4023793931213579/
> 
> 3) John Whitworth of DragonPlus Electronics has finally gotten his
> CE certification for his Dragon power supply replacement board,
> which means he can sell them legally again in the EU (regulations
> changed recently):
>  https://www.facebook.com/groups/dragon32/posts/4023272987932340/
> 
> 4) Allen Mailer on YouTube put up a brief video of some retro stuff he
> has for his TI-99/4A, but also some new hardware he got, which includes
> a Dragon 64 (latter is 1:59 in) to add to his Dragon 32 & 64K Coco 1:
>  https://youtu.be/izkSLB_8wdM?si=6dTNfmkTWDJUQkNH
> 
> 
> Game On news (all Coco related platforms):
> ==========================================
> 1) Jim Gerrie posted a video showing his MC-10 conversion of the TPUG
> magazine game Sample Adventure, originally by Steven C. Darnold in
> the June/July 1985 issue:
>  https://youtu.be/0x-3Qo-1U8c?si=5obloxpnk0Tcgs9H
> He also released Dotty the Kangaroo, originally by 14 year old Ian
> McTavish in 1984 for the book "Sinclair Programs". This is actually
> his second version released this week; this revised one will run on
> a 4K MC-10 or Alice:
>  https://youtu.be/Ytax66Gzo6g?si=VViT7h25PqUDU_nL
> 
> 2) Pere Serrat & Kees van Oss have released MPAGD games pack #72 for
> both regular Dragons and Coco's. This pack includes:
> Mandarin II
> Project Vaelius
> Rollerball
> S.O.L.O.
>  http://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11285
> They also released pack NP18 (SuperSprite FM+ board enhanced games
> with the new palette), which has these 4 games:
> Ice Slider
> Remote Operated Vehicle
> Robot 1 in the Ship of Doom
> Zbylut Owrzodzien w Kamiennym (nonsense name because the real title
> has swearing)
>  https://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11287
> 
> 3) The website Nerdly Pleasures released a long review of the Coco
> and it is as a game machine, for those who don't know the systems and
> what they were capable of. There are a few minor errors in the review,
> but it is suprisingly thorough and fair. The sample screenshots they
> used are just Tandy sold titles, though - I think it would have helped
> to show some of the vast 3rd party games we have:
> 
> http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2025/05/is-original-tandy-color-computer-worth.html
> 
> 4) Chronologically Gaming covered the Coco this past week in December
> of 1982:
> Cyborg Wars by Bumblebee Software:
>  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TjCLQqOZ4E&t=589s
> 
> 5) Nostalgia Vault on YouTube put up two videos showing the official
> Tetris, sold by Tandy on cartrige, showing:
> Coco 1/2 version:
>  https://youtu.be/-PeI02QR0u8?si=nzAXns9-YRIyF8bx
> Coco 3 version (although only black and white?)
>  https://youtu.be/naeDYyIOeNg?si=QZy9mdsfWh1QJXmt
> 
> 6) Z4RT4N on YouTube put up videos showing gameplay of the two
> officially released Sierra graphic adventure games, running a real
> Coco 3 with 512K with the CM-8 monitor and FD-502 disk drive.
> Kings Quest III:
>  https://youtu.be/dUi_wu-x10Y?si=yxGZ5Avee4lpZJhg
> Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards:
>  https://youtu.be/FEp8MCXqzm0?si=72MiptkYNMxDxdIS
> 
> 7) XperTek posted another amber screen gameplay video on his real
> Coco 2 hardware, this time playing Doodle Bug by David Crandall for
> Computerware (although he ran Disk Utility 2.1 by Jeff Francis by
> accident first):
>  https://youtu.be/Tqu_h8h0aDY?si=rSSp04K5-AW2kt7r
> 
> 8) ZXFrankie on YouTube posted another game play score recording to
> enter one of the high score lists, this time playing Leggit on his
> Dragon 32 and getting 1,540 points:
>  https://youtu.be/kGhWVDE6KpU?si=8emVKGH4KzTROh4k
> 
> 
> ==============================================================================
> 
> Speak your mind! Let us know what you think at:
>    feedback at TheCoCoNation.com
> 
> If replying on a mailing list, please trim replies to the specific
> items.
> 
> Get connected with more of the CoCo, Dragon and MC-10 community here:
>    https://thecoconation.com/community/
> 
> -- 
> R. Allen Murphey <exile at weylan-yutani.com>
> Weylan-Yutani Corporation
> 
> -- 
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