CoCo-Pi Project Update (2026-04-04)
Later than I had hoped, but was finally able to get a new release of CoCo-Pi put together. Many changes since the last official release. This latest version is a “release candidate” as I’m sure there will be bugs/issues to resolve. Best way for me to find them is to get this out into the wild for people to use. The latest version of the Raspberry Pi OS is now based on Debian 13.
Biggest change by far is the removal of the old bash script based legacy menu system. It’s been replaced with a new python based launcher. In addition to the new launcher, I’ve standardized on using VS Code for development rather than continue with Geany. Geany is a fantastic editor, but VS Code offers so much more with it’s available extensions, etc..
Speaking of extensions, the new Launcher is fully integrated within VS Code, along with full syntax highlighting and “hover hints” for the various BASIC dialects for the CoCo, including COLOR, EXTENDED COLOR, SUPER EXTENDED COLOR and DISK EXTENDED COLOR BASIC. ugBasic and even Glen Hewlett’s fantastic BASIC-To-6809 is in there. MC-10 BASIC, MCX BASIC as well. 6809/6309 assembly and CMOC (C) syntax, too.
When you add the fact you can use many AI agents with VS Code, there is no reason to not get busy and start developing for the CoCo, MC-10 and Dragon systems.
Storage emulation options continue to include DriveWire 4 (legacy Java version) along with pyDriveWire (now rewritten for python3) and even FujiNet-PC with a tnfsd server. By default they are all configured for Becker use (emulators) but they can be used to host files for real CoCo’s & MC-10’s connected to your Raspberry Pi.
I do want to remind everyone that this latest version was put together using the CoCo-Pi-Installer project. More information about that can be found here:
https://github.com/mrgw454/CoCo-Pi-Installer/tree/debian13
For now, I hope you enjoy this latest version. There’s a lot in there, much more than I can detail in this post.
As always, HUGE thank you to all of the community software and hardware developers. The CoCo-Pi project has always been the cumulative effort of so many people and their projects.
Go download it here:
https://coco-pi.com/downloads/
SD card image is being uploaded now and should be available later today (2026-04-04).
