We keep the CoCo running.
CoCoByte is a small collective of TANDY Color Computer enthusiasts. We started as a user group in Colombia and never put the machine down — today we write emulators, build hardware, and assist some retro-computing events around the world.
// the story
CARRIER 300. For a lot of us that was the message on screen when a DCM-6 modem on a Color Computer 2 finally locked onto a BBS in the United States — dialing international long-distance out of Colombia, one carefully-counted minute at a time.
More than thirty years later we're still connected, but everything has changed. The friendships from that era turned into a club, and the club turned into a workshop: people who never stopped loving the 6809, the green screen, and the feeling of typing RUN and watching something happen.
CoCoByte exists to make sure that machine doesn't fade out. We preserve software, build tools that make old disks usable again, and design new hardware that lets a 1980s computer live inside a chip the size of a coin. And we show up — in person — wherever the retro-computing community gathers.
This site is in English so the work travels further. The community always did cross borders; now the projects can too.
Preserve, build, and share — in that order.
Preserve
Software rots when the hardware dies. We keep disks readable, document undocumented code, and make sure CoCo software survives the machines it was written for.
Build
Emulators on microcontrollers, browser-based disk tools, reverse-engineering helpers. If it makes the CoCo easier to use or study today, it's worth building.
Share
Open licenses, public repos, and a booth at the show. Everything we make is meant to be forked, flashed, improved and passed along.
Where you'll find us.
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2026
VCF Montreal — CanadaBringing our TRS-80 Color Computer collection to the first Vintage Computer Festival in Canada — a milestone for the whole community after years on the North American circuit.
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2023
CoCoFest — WiFi modem demoBack at CoCoFest, demoing a WiFi modem for the CoCo and releasing the source under a free license. Old machine, new dial tone.
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2021
VCF Midwest · Tandy AssemblyRegulars on the retro-computing show circuit, swapping disks, demos and stories with the people who keep these machines alive.
The TANDY Color Computer, in brief.
Sold by Radio Shack from 1980, the CoCo paired a Motorola 6809 — one of the finest 8-bit CPUs ever made — with Microsoft Color BASIC. Three generations later, the CoCo 3 pushed 512K of RAM and the OS-9 operating system. It's the platform all of our work orbits.
See what we build for it →