The Dragon 32 is 30

The Dragon 32, arguably the best-known and most-successful of the UK's early 1980s home computer also-rans, was introduced 30 years ago this month. The micro's story goes back more than a year before its launch. Tony Clarke, a senior manager at Swansea-based toy company Mettoy - best known for its Corgi die-cast metal car …

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The BBC has "C64 is 30" and...

Ah, the playground computer wars. When someone called my machine a "Commode", the standard retort to the inevitably Sinclair owning antagonist was to tell them to eff off back to their "Spacktrum" with its crappy keyboard*. As for the poor sods who got an Oric or Dragon, they were better off pretending they didn't own a computer.

* From a politically incorrect term for a mentally handicapped person, or "spacker". Children are such lovely creatures.

[Neil Barnes]

Re: The BBC has "C64 is 30" and...

And yet I got outbid on not one but two Orics on the bay t'day...

[Pahhh]

Happy days

Wasnt that keen on the machine being a BBC owner myself but it was ok. The 6509 was a lot better processor than the 6502 if you did things in assembly.

In truth in that Golden Age of computing it didnt really matter which machine you had, it all seemed quite magical.

So happy birthday.

[dogged]

Re: Happy days

Wasnt that keen on the machine since my parents had stupid amounts of money to waste on me

Fixed that one for you.

[Dabooka]

I remember picking it up with my mum...

Form (what I recall) was a Tandy in Coventry.

We got the bus back to Nuneaton and plugged it in. Had loads of great times playing Android Attack (with synthesised speech!) and a flash on the cassette claiming it was written in 100% machine code. Along with Space War and some random game where you trained to be a German spy in world war 2, it had quizzes and an assault course and came in huge blown plastic case with what I think was 4 cassettes. I guess it was pseudo-educational, but I liked it nonetheless!

As above mine simply refused to boot in the 90s and has remained dormant ever since.

NB We moved onto a 464 ----> 6128 afterwards.

[Slartybardfast]

Radio Amatuer Use

I bought a second hand one very cheaply to run one of the best RTTY programs available at the time. I took the innards out, lined the case with tin foil and earthed it. After putting the boards back it made a wonderful RTTY machine which generated very little RFI. It was in use for quite a few years until finally dying sometime in the early 90's.

[Anonymous Coward]

Graphically limited

The poor old Dragon. The problem was it was just too graphically limited. Poor old thing couldn't even do lower case letters easily. Just couldn't compete with the Spectrum.

Ironically the next Welsh computer (the Sam Coupe) also flopped, but for different reasons (although it did also have some graphics issues).

Not forgetting the legendary Welsh games console, the Konix Multisystem. That never even got as far as launch which was a tragedy. The story of the Konix is fascinating and I hope El Reg covers it one day so it can reach a wider audience. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konix

[Anonymous Coward]

Micro Men CD Player Myth

Christmas '84 was tough for computer companies, but I'm not sure it was CD Players that did it. Indeed they were still excruciatingly expensive. You wouldn't see much change from £500, which was way above the cost of these home micros.

The real problem was the market was flooded with different models from different companies.

By Christmas '84. Sinclair were already dominant, the C64 was having its first proper Christmas and Amstrad had muscled their way in with a very aggressive strategy. All the smaller players were squeezed out as evidenced if you look at hardware and software sales across the period. Walk into a branch of Dixons by 1986 and your choice would have simply been Amstrad, Spectrum, Commodore. Your Dragons, Orics, etc had all vanished. Even Acorn had retreated to the safety of the education market where they had a considerable niche.

In short it was a complex situation that was over simplified in Micro Men. It wasn't CD players, it was market forces. People who had wanted computers already had them, and the market was crowded. Only the fittest companies survived.

We also mustn't confuse the fall of Sinclair with these changes in the market. Sinclair failed because the Spectrum was bankrolling all of their ill thought out projects. Even if sales hadn't fallen, Sinclair would have failed. The problem with Sir Clive is that you could give him any amount of cash and he'd find a way to spend it inventing something.

[Tony McAlinden]

Re: Micro Men CD Player Myth

If I remember rightly, they do actually mention the market over-saturation in Micro Men, with a particularly pithy clip from (I think) John Humphreys on the news "Last Christmas every child wanted a computer, this Christmas every child already had one".

I'm still amazed how few people have seen it - for all of its factual inaccuracies (otherwise known as "dramatisation") its a fun movie.

Oh, and hello to Duncan Smeed, who taught me at Strathclyde in a 68K age. Our platform? A bunch of surplus Sinclair QL's given away as a job lot to the Uni by Uncle Clive.

[xtramural]

Re: Micro Men CD Player Myth

Tony, although the procurement of the QLs happened whilst I was at Dragon Data and before my return to Strathclyde, I don't think you could categorise the purchase of the QLs as "A bunch of surplus Sinclair QL's given away as a job lot to the Uni by Uncle Clive." IIRC, the University spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on the 'QL for every student' initiative.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Micro Men CD Player Myth

A QL for every student but no software. :-)

[Antony Shepherd]

As well as SEX the 6809 had BRA (BRanch Always)...

Never owned a Dragon but I did love the 6809 as it was the best of the 8 bit processors.

I liked it more than the 6502 and loathed the 8080 or Z80.

[EdScio]

First Computer

I remember bugging my mother to get me one of these when I was about 14. I'd never used a computer before but had looked at the list of commands and seen 'TRON' which I duly typed expecting to play a game based on the film. Needless to say turning line number TRaceing ON wasn't particularly impressive! Later I learned BASIC then assembler and had a couple of games pubished by Microdeal; Wizards Quest (an Atic Atac clone) and Airball (loosely based on Knight Lore).

Still got the Dragon in the loft, might see if it still works.

[stucs201]

Re: First Computer

I spent many hours playing Airball. I was rubbish at it, but loved it anyway.

<--- I'd love to buy you a real one, but the icon will have to do.

[EdScio]

Re: First Computer

Lol thanks but you already did as I spent most of my royalties on beer!

[Andy Fletcher]

I had one of those!

Somehow spending 4 hours typing in games, then finding out you mis-spelled "peek" at line 827, before you could play them created an enormous feeling of accomplishment. This stick in a disc and off it goes malarky we get these days is for noobs I say.

Don't think I'd want to turn back the clock, but somehow proud I was there at the time.

[jason 7]

Stick in a disc??!!

Hello Grandad!

Heheheee

[Carl]

It was *garbage*

it couldn't do boolean comparisons.

I paraphrase but

IF A > B THEN PRINT "A BIGGER"

worked

but

IF B < A THEN PRINT "A BIGGER"

didnt

So you ended up having to code comparisons a certain way to make anything work.

My dad took it back and got me an Atari800.

Oddly, I see Dragon used a M$ BASIC. Explains a lot.

[Eddie Edwards]

Re: It was *garbage*

What are you talking about? It worked fine. Sounds like you took a perfectly good computer back because you made a typo somewhere. I guess it's the 80s equivalent of blaming the compiler :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: it couldn't do boolean comparisons

It certainly could. I can't remember the syntax now after all these years, but the BASIC programmes I wrote for mine used boolean logic and it worked. you must have made some schoolboy error

[A J Stiles]

Re: It was *garbage*

I just downloaded XRoar and tested it. Less-than tests worked fine.

Are you sure you were doing it right?

[Joeman]

Re: It was *garbage*

Clearly you were doing something wrong... Boolean comparrisons are the basis of all programming.

Dont slate the Dragon - it rocked!!!

[stucs201]

POKE 65495,0

Still available new if anyone wants one : http://www.cadigital.com/computer.htm

[Christine Hedley]

Re: POKE 65495,0

Hah, strange how I can't remember what I was doing yesterday but I can still remember that number from 30 years back!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: POKE 65495,0

Ee, thou 'rt raht bloody soft using 't decimal.

For some reason I recall it as hex; POKE &HFFD7,0. Never touched hex again barring the odd web colour, but oddly still recall this. For a trip down memory lane:

http://bit.ly/OJWbJR

[Eddie Edwards]

Superb

I used a Dragon 32 from 1982 to 1988, and knew the machine and OS inside out ... and I still learned a lot from this article!

The 6809 had the best ISA by a mile. I did as much assembly programming as BASIC programming: 5 text adventures, and the Dragon WIMP system which sold about 5 copies :) Amazingly my machine and disc drive still both work; some errors on the disks but most of them are fine too. After 30 years. Incredible.

One nitpick with the article - it's the graphics chip that didn't support lower-case letters. BASIC supported them fine; it was just unable to display them. In fact, Dragon WIMP (and other packages) implemented 8x8 fonts on the graphics display, so you were able to use proper lower case. MS BASIC needed no modifications to make that work. I coded a couple of text adventures that way.

Another unsung feature is the 6-bit DAC. Instead of using some Yamaha chip or ASIC, the Dragon 32 included a raw 6-bit DAC which was driven by code. It meant that while it was making sounds it could do nothing else (!) but it meant that you could do some very nice polyphonic waveform-based synthesis. Ultimately, though, it was a PITA for games. (The same DAC also formed the ADC for the joystick, which didn't help.)

Funny you say the Dragon died around 1983-84. I used mine faithfully until 1988, when I got an Archimedes. Ah, Britain truly was once great :)

[CiaranA]

Re: Superb

Broomsoft!

For fun DAC use, search for CoCoSID (rem) or Dragon 64 Nyan Cat (me) or of course one guy went and typed in the whole of Toccata and Fugue like a crazy person.

[Eddie Edwards]

Re: Superb

F@ck me! You remember! Indeed, I ran Broomsoft! :) I was only 15 then. Mike Gerrard gave me some lovely reviews; what a nice man :)

And, it was me that typed in the whole of Toccata and Fugue like a crazy person! I had to compile it in chunks because the source was about 3 times larger than 32K :) I think the final binary is about 24K. Did it during the summer holidays :) Oh how I miss summer holidays!

You made Nyan Cat for Dragon 64? Respect. I went back and did a mod player for the D32, but it was crap ;)

[Toastan Buttar]

Re: Superb

Funnily enough, the 6809 lab I worked in at Strathclyde Uni had Analogue to Digital Converters which consisted of a DAC and a comparitor. By doing a binary search on the DAC and reading the comparitor's one-bit output, you could 'home in' on the input voltage. I wonder how close that was to the Dragon joystick input configuration.

[Eddie Edwards]

Re: Superb

Precisely the same. 6-bit DAC plus comparator. Set the 6-bit value in one register and read the comparison bit in another. You could connect a tape recorder to the joystick input and sample, at some ludicrously low sample rate.

Annoyingly the DAC register bit 0 was the printer strobe, so you either had to mask, or tell the user to unplug the printer ;)

The Dragon also had a 1-bit DAC connected to the tape input, which was a lot faster, but not a lot of use for audio.

[xtramural]

Re: Superb

Yep, that's how it was done. Pretty standard technique to do a binary chop to home in on the nearest value.

[Cyberspice]

Re: Superb

That was quite a common way to implement ADCs back then because they were *so* expensive (A replacement ADC for the beeb was £15). A DAC is basically a resistor ladder. Add a cheap op-amp and you have an ADC.

[Amorous Cowherder]

My first!

I remember coming home from school when I was around 7, my old man was sitting on the living room floor with a new one of these. He said, "Look at this!", pointing at the TV which sudenly exploded into a show of crudely flashing squares and circles! "Isn't that great?!".

Around 2 years later the parents of an old school friend become a reseller for Dragon kit and I got my hands on shed-loads of software and official Dragon odds and sods, like the speech synth!

My very first micro and kick-started my love of computers!

[CiaranA]

Grew up with the Dragon

And, er, never quite left it behind. Might not have been the best equipped machine of the era, but the price reflected that, and there are still some tricks to be exploited...

[Dogsauce]

The poor kid at school with the Dragon 32 was only one off the bottom of the bullying pecking order from the guy with the Jupiter Ace (who was pitied rather than assaulted). The intense rivalry between Sinclair and Commodore users would often be forgotton and both armies turn on that guy. It didn't help that he'd already marked himself out as a bit of an arse before the era of home computer tribalism erupted.

Nobody seemed to pick on the BBC Micro guys though. They were just oddballs that got left alone.

[Boris the Cockroach]

re:picking on the BBC

guys at school was a waste of time since they had either the rich parents who'd call the skewl and get your **** kicked... or they were the swotty son of the head /deputy head teacher and you'd get your **** kicked anyway

Anyway... all I wanted was the 32K one.... never have to stuff the fill 64K of memory...

[Cyberspice]

Re: re:picking on the BBC

No everyone who had a Beeb got their parents to buy it. I bought mine with paper round money and birthday money that I saved up initially for an Acorn Atom but then saved a bit more and bought a Beeb. I still have it.

[LesC]

Not you? Then log in here.

These was a Dragon 32 in a machine shop just up the road from here that had an S-50 bus hanging off it... used to do all sorts of process control shehanigans using it's built in BASIC plus a smattering of machine code.

Those were the days... the 6809 made it into craploads of industrial control stuff plus quite a few pinball machines there must still be a few still chugging away!

Mines is the one with the Babani 6809 book in the pocket.

LC

[Anonymous Coward]

Loved my Dragon

Had it upgraded from 32k to massive 64k for £100; bought floppy disk interface for £300 from Boots (double-sided 40 track 5.25 inch floppy plus cartridge. The entire disk operating system was in an 8k rom. Knew my way round the system peek by poke to every address. Got the Prestel cartridge so was on the pre-internet in 1987ish. I could Prestel the German railway system and get UK train times quicker than dialing British Rail enquiries(!!). It could drive an Epson dot matrix printer that came (ahem) from work and cost £400; I made special interfaces for it to control it through the joystick port. I had it upgraded to run OS9 on a hard disk for £100. The (10Mb) hard drive was another £100. Where is that system now? - I wish I'd never sold it.

I had a program to draw fractals and it took a week to prepare a fractal image. Winfract on the AT could do the same image in a fraction of a second. That's when I went PC. Bigger better faster, but the magic left computing.

[Spoonsinger]

Pebble Mill @ One...

early eighties, did a sort of review of available kit at the time, (obviously in true beeb fashion the BBC comp came out top, with the Spectrum coming second because of actual content available, commodore was foreign like). However the Dragon actually didn't do badly in their "review" - from what I remember - apart from the basic problem that the new stuff wasn't appearing on it. Only really wanted one because of the keyboard and relative cheapness, however a DK-Tronic keyboard for my spectrum fixed that.

(PS the Pebble Mill @ One building was torn down due to seventies style "concrete cancer", only goes to show that the beeb know how to hire contractors - umm).

[Super Fast Jellyfish]

Dragone

I had one of these for a few months; I cancelled my speccy order as the delivery date kept being pushed out and could get one of these from a shop in town. Loved the fact it was like a proper computer with decent keyboard and even an output for a monitor.

However the screen display was pretty rubbish and annoying. There just weren't enough games around when it first came out. Sold it and bought a Beeb after 6 months... but agree 6809 ISA was much better than 6502 which I was learning at school.

Can anyone confirm the 6809 was used in the Saab OBC for Ariane 4? I know the Ariane 5 used a MC68020 but that was programmed in Ada

[Richard Cartledge]

The biggest problem of 1980s home computers was that if you bought a new later model after a couple of years, all your existing knowledge, software, games, books, magazines and peripherals were useless. After investing all that time and money, people were happier to stick with what they had rather than start all over again.

[Spoonsinger]

I see wot you did there...

(assuming it apple-ies to some modern context)

[Irongut]

TRS-80 - the 'CoCo' as it was affectionately named

Never heard of a CoCo, we always called it the Trash-80.

[Cyberspice]

Re: TRS-80 - the 'CoCo' as it was affectionately named

To me the TRaSh-80 was specifically the TRS-80 model 1. The colour machine had a different moniker.

[Furbian]

Green ..... with envy perhaps?

I remember a quiz in Personal Computing Weekly, I think, it was along lines of ..

What is a Dragon Users favorite colour:-

(a) Green.

(b) Green.

(c) Green.

I still remember my mates having with it's black on green editing screen. Being a Z80 Spectrum guy, I was really impressed with the 6809E having TWO accumulators, it was like wow, hats off to my mate, his machine's has two, A and B. Sad, geeky childhood, but I'm the better for it.

[Rob Dobs]

Was the UK that far ahead of US?

Maybe the U.S. was very different than U.K but the last lines of the Article, "by 84 all kids had a computer, and adults were looking to buy CD players" just did not ring true to me.

So yeah I got my Apple II+ in 84, but less than half my friends had ANY PC at this point.

And CD players? Sure the technology may have existed, but I got my first one 89.

And in 89, only 3-4 small shelves (like 10% or less of store) were actually CD-ROMs, most of the Store was Tapes and even still some records! My very first CD's (which were still back then $25 each or so) were Paula Abdul, The Shocker Soundtrack and few others... not because I even really wanted this music, it was just the lesser evil of the limited selection (Nirvana Bleech, Pumpkins Gish, or for that matter any Zeppelin, Who, Metallica, Etc was simply not available.

Maybe UK was very different, but I think it was at least 88 before anyone could find hardly ANY music on CD, let alone a good selection.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Was the UK that far ahead of US?

As I posted elsewhere, the CD Player thing was a bit of a myth put about by a line in the drama, Micro Men (see it, it's excellent).

I got my first CD Player in early 1991 and I hardly knew anyone with one at first. And getting music was still a pain even then! They were just getting into their swing.

Back at Christmas '84, a CD Player would have cost nearly 3 times as much as 48k Spectrum. Totally out of reach for most people (starting at about £500).

A good measure of when consumer electronics became affordable to the man on the street in the 1980's is when Amstrad started selling them. Best info I can find says Amstrad produced their first CD Player in 1987.

[Christine Hedley]

Re: Was the UK that far ahead of US?

I remember my days at school in 1983/84, pretty much all the kids had either a computer or games console (or both), seems it was very much a minority who didn't. But the situation with CD players was rather different: as Mr Hill points out, it seems that was a myth. They made serious inroads over the next few years, but it was a long while before they became as ubiquitous.

[jason 7]

Re: Was the UK that far ahead of US?

The difference between the UK and USA markets was the price.

In the USA you had Apple II/IBMs being pushed for $1000+ and a few lesser machines.

In the UK you had a mass of machines being pushed in the £200-£400 bracket. Xmas 1983 was a major turning point for many UK kids including many of us here.

Plus there was a big educational push in the UK around that time on the BBC TV about what the 'microcomputer revolution' could do which helped kids leverage their parents into buying one.

By 1984 indeed most of my friends had a 48K Spectrum. The tape swapping was constant.