Anyone else still got a Dragon?

[simonIOW]

It turns out my old Dragon 64 is still in my mums attic.  I might just have to see if it can be resurrected after 30 years of baking and freezing...

[spamel]

Nah, got divorced last year!

[Joules]

You beat me too it..... I don"t think locking her in my mum"s attic would have worked.

[Benedict White]

No I don't have a Dragon. I have 2.

I have my original Dragon 32, with a few bits and bobs, and then there was the Dragon 64 I looked at in a car boot sale. I knew the vendor, said I had one... he said I could have it for a pound or he would bin it. I bought it...

Ah well...

[digital_addict]

Absolutely



Although I have neither a suitable TV, nor tape deck, I can't throw it away.

It was purchased for my children for Christmas 1983 and cost £200. It was purchased in September, to give us a chance to type in the basic code from magazines so they could play the games on Christmas day. In 1984, I met John Morrison, a machine code programmer who supplied me with a monitor, assembler and dis-assembler cartridge and taught me to program in 6809. I also learned, 6502 and Z80 on machines acquired later.

I owe this machine a lot.

[Benedict White]

digital_addict said:


Absolutely



Although I have neither a suitable TV, nor tape deck, I can't throw it away.

It was purchased for my children for Christmas 1983 and cost £200. It was purchased in September, to give us a chance to type in the basic code from magazines so they could play the games on Christmas day. In 1984, I met John Morrison, a machine code programmer who supplied me with a monitor, assembler and dis-assembler cartridge and taught me to program in 6809. I also learned, 6502 and Z80 on machines acquired later.

I owe this machine a lot.


You can pick up a suitable TV on freecycle or equivalent surely?

As for tape drive, that is another matter. I did try the hifi once, with the speakers set to mute. Tried all sorts of volume levels. Then accidentally turned the mute off. My father, who was having a doze almost killed me! (Well, it gave him a massive "start" anyway).

[xtramural]

As it happens I have the very first Dragon -  the prototype that I used to develop the Dragon BIOS for Mettoy, later Dragon Data. I wonder if it'd be worth as much as the very first Pi that’s being auctioned right now!

[Benedict White]

xtramural said:


As it happens I have the very first Dragon -  the prototype that I used to develop the Dragon BIOS for Mettoy, later Dragon Data. I wonder if it'd be worth as much as the very first Pi that’s being auctioned right now!


No good without a picture! Go on... put one online!

[xtramural]

Benedict White said:


xtramural said:


As it happens I have the very first Dragon -  the prototype that I used to develop the Dragon BIOS for Mettoy, later Dragon Data. I wonder if it'd be worth as much as the very first Pi that’s being auctioned right now!


No good without a picture! Go on... put one online!


There's a couple of photos at http://dragondata.worldofdragon.org/har ... pippin.htm

[Benedict White]

So that is the original Dragon, and you still have it? Cool!

[v12cat]

No Dragon, but I've still got my beloved Tatung Einstein. Two in fact. Cracking programming machine. XTal basic was good and there was BBC basic also available for it.

[stevecv]

Brilliant, just why the Raspberry project caught my eye.

Still have a D32 with the diskdrive in the loft and as far as I recall it was in working order when it went up there some 20+ years ago so here's hoping. Remember fondly messing around with the MS basic programming and the eternal question of squeezing everything into just 32k.

Found a nice simulator to run on my iMac recently and who knows I may yet get to finish the Ket Trilogy...........

[spr97ajm]

Nope. But had one from new until just a few weeks ago. It finally failed with a video fault after all those years. I loved it, and spent hours and hours typing in code from 'Input' magazines in my misspent youth. It was really rewarding and laid the foundation for my lifelong interest in computers. I also spent hours trying to load games from tape. Happy days!

Andy.

[xtramural]

Benedict White said:


So that is the original Dragon, and you still have it? Cool!


Yes, it was the very first Dragon to breathe fire. I hand patched an Easter Egg in the final ROM image with my initials - DNS. Fuller details at http://dragondata.worldofdrago...../index.htm if you're interested!

[Jongoleur]

Nahh - after all a Dragon is for life, not just for Hogwatch!

[Luny]

That is one of the few machines I don"t have in the collection. I stopped buying old machines about 10 years ago due to lack of space. They are all now slowly decaying up in the loft. I tried my tape recorder out last night, to find and old track on a cassette, but there was no ound coming from it. Where the hell am I going to find a tape recorder? I do use the emulators, but being able to turn on the original hardware wakes up so many fond memories.

[Prometheus]

Luny said:


Where the hell am I going to find a tape recorder?


If you're UK-based, Argos has some tape-players (unfortunately, no recorders that I could find) of various sorts available from about £12.50. I picked up a portable one for about £20 to digitise some old tapes, and the sound-quality is really very good.

A search on their website for "cassette player" (minus quotes) should bring them all up, if that's suitable.

[TonyD]

v12cat said:


No Dragon, but I've still got my beloved Tatung Einstein. Two in fact. Cracking programming machine. XTal basic was good and there was BBC basic also available for it.



Yeap, still got my Einstein and a couple of Dragon's I picked up a few years back. But agree with you about the Einstein being a cracking programming machine. But the Dragon had the best 8-bitter, the 6809

[v12cat]

TonyD said:


Yeap, still got my Einstein and a couple of Dragon's I picked up a few years back. But agree with you about the Einstein being a cracking programming machine. But the Dragon had the best 8-bitter, the 6809



Think it was 1985 when I got the Einstein. Paid £175 for it IIRC with twin drives. Very cheap for the spec at the time. Think it should have been around £500 but never caught on.

Powered it up yesterday for the first time in years. Brings back the excitement that Windows PC's just don't have.

[DBloke]

Once had one,

it didnt work, but what did I expect for a fiver

possibly the only Welsh computer?

[fivdi]

Sorry for hitting such an old post but I couldn't resist. I still have mine and I got a new one today. Well, sort of, it's a Dragon 32 being emulated on the Raspberry Pi. Here it is:



I works for about 10 minutes but then freezes. The emulator is called XRoar and works fine on Ubuntu and Windows. Here's the link: http://www.6809.org.uk/dragon/xroar.shtml

It looks like the author is aware of the freezing on the Pi: http://archive.worldofdragon.org/phpBB3 ... ?f=5&t=754. Maybe he'll fix it sometime.

[scruss]

As it happens I have the very first Dragon ...

You are Duncan Smeed, and I claim my five pounds!

I didn't study CompSci at Strathclyde, but most of my mates did (graduates of 1990) and spent most of my time lurking in the various common rooms ...

[robin850]

no dragon, just a Sinclair ZX-81, along with the manual and the 64K add-on.

[malakai]

no dragon, just a Sinclair ZX-81, along with the manual and the 64K add-on.

That takes me way back had the US version TS1000 don't think I was lucky enough to get the 16k add-on gonna have to dig around the parent's place to see if it still there.

[SN]

Install MESS
You can relive all your 80's 8-bit computing wetdreams
And realise that it wasn't actually that good...