Thank you for watching I hope you enjoyed the Dragon32 series! If you want to support The Cave in making content then head over to patreon.com/retromancave - Your support makes RMC possible. Thanks! Neil - RMC

@AdrianCastravete

5 жыл бұрын

I was actually looking forward to this part yesterday when I watched the second one. Awesome RestoDocumentaries! Love your work.

@MrJohndoakes

5 жыл бұрын

With better game software and a non green on green programming screen, the Dragon could have gone places for a little while, like the Commodore Vic-20. The TRS-80 clone to find (because it was sold under a bevy of names) was the EACA Video Genie, aka the Dick Smith System 80, the TRZ-80, PMC-80, PMC-81, etc. It's a clone of the Model I TRS-80 with a built-in tape player/recorder. It's not completely compatible with the Tandy machine but in the four years the Hong Kong-based EACA produced the machine, they produced three variants, improving upon the original 1980 computer. To make things even more convoluted, EACA had a color version ("Colour Genie") that was just a Model I TRS-80 with a color generator and wasn't a CoCo clone! Embezzlement imploded the firm by 1984.

@paulleadley9337

5 жыл бұрын

Hi, As young man around in the computer ball park from 1979, and a very pleased owner of a Dragon 32 at the time, I feel you have been a little unfair on the machines support and sales. For a start, you could purchase a Dragon and software from just about any of the thousands of independent computer stores, but also Boots the chemists. As for limited software, not correct. The killer app on the Dragon was "Donkey King" then renamed The king from Microdeal. Although not actually licenced in many cases, Microdeal sold clones of just about any game you could think of, most produced by the brilliant Tom Mix software from the USA. Most games had three versions on the tape, Green version, B/W version, and the woeful White version. Many of the full arcade games are just as playable as the C64 and more to the point, the Sinclair spectrum. As for the price of the software, again, not correct. Microdeal clone games retailed around £5.99 to £12.99, pretty much the same as any other computer on the market at the time. I have three dragons in my collection of 60+ machines, and I love them. Programming on the green screen, was actually nice, as you didn't tend to go blind looking a bright white background and black text, or the many variants on other machines. High speed arcade games where no problem for the Dragon as it could move screen data far quicker than the humble spectrum. Later tricks developed after the machines demise, where simply amazing. I love the Cave, but I think the Dragon review was a little wide of the mark. Play Donkey Kong, and you will see, the best version of any machine...…. Keep up the good work from York Bit Bits Collector.

@christianlingurar7085

4 жыл бұрын

THAT Motorola reference design is coming from the data sheet of the MC6883. I started building up my own homebrew 6809 computer according to it and only halfway through I found out that I was building a TRS80CoCo/Dragon. My intention anyhow is to run OS-9 on it... find me on hackaday if you care (but badly distracted at the moment, bumpy times)

@dennis8196

3 жыл бұрын

A significant omission in your history was the difficulty in getting various chips, mostly RAM, but there was a long wait for Motorola chips too. They had a large warehouse of boards waiting RAM for half a year early 83, while RAM chips sat doing nothing on containerships. This can be seen with the more expensive OKI RAM in a few boards, and other cheaper types on other revisions. When the stock finally arrived and they were able to ship stock, they found most orders were cancelled (presumably to be filled by other micros of the time). This forced them to sit on a LOT of stock for the following year that did nothing except gather dust. There were many revisions that altered some aspects of the Dragon internally. Some were minor to accommodate different brand RAM chips, while others were to make bad chips work as if nothing was wrong with them. There are other mods done to convert 32K boards into 64K boards. Some people have reported buying 32K versions and receiving fully converted 64K and half conversions in the boxes. And some with the wrong labels on the top altogether, demonstrating quality control wasn't a major concern, nor were they operating a FIFO warehouse. I am restoring 2 Dragons right now (the plastic housing for both were in the dishwasher for a first wash (no detergent), and I'm looking at the boards and I can see the first was an early 32K (16x4116 ITT RAM chips), and the other a later version, a row of DIP switches along the top and (8xM3732 OKI RAM), Both need significant work because the video signal is playing up on both. Between them I only have 1 PSU so I might do a full power conversion, using the then free space for a Raspberry Pi video server so the screen and sound is mirrored over IP to allow me to record / stream my game play. I have other uses for this kind of project leaving one Dragon in it's original condition and the other one modded to the max.

My first computer was a Dragon 200 here in Spain. I was 6 at the time. I started playing with basic with it and now i'm a full fledged dev. 10/10 would buy it again

As a ship carpenter and a hobby in electronics, bought a dragon and cut my programming skills on it, went on to become a senior IT manager in the local shipyard, contracted to a shipyard in Melbourne Australia, and then finished my career as the Student and Staff Systems Support Manager at a local university. Still have my Dragon, along with an Apple IIe, BBC Micro, IBM PC, Osborne 1, Compaq luggable, a couple Psions and an Oric 1.

I was working at GEC Telecoms in '84 when I bought my D64, primarily to get hold of OS-9. With a couple of Cumana 5.25" disk drives me and a friend tried to re-write the badly written bootloader and floppy device drivers. The great advantage of the OS-9 disk format was it's ability to support different layouts depending on the disk drive type you were using. GEC was trying to get a corproate development license for the OS from Microware, and our interest was for a dual-processor 6809 based miniature telephone exchange that was being developed. I left the company and moved to the Netherlands, where I ended up working for Philips on the OS-9 based CARIN nav system, and then later on, CDi (which used a custom version of OS-9). I still have an interest now, and there are annual Dragon meets at the Cambridge Museum of Computing: OS-9 for 6809 lives on in the form of NitrOS-9.

The Dragon 32 was our first family computer, and the also the first machine to hook me to programming. The BASIC was an excellent introduction to coding for a newcomer (as was the keyboard), while the 6809 processor was pretty darned powerful for its day. The machine was nonetheless let down by its horrible fixed palette graphics modes, and lack of gaming titles. Still, it started me on a journey, leading me to a career in software and the video games industry. So for that alone, Dragon Data: I salute you :)

That was an entertaining and informative little journey. You and the 8-Bit Guy are really great on the retro computer tech. The restorations and clean ups are so satisfying to see. The results are always fantastic and really compliment the somewhat ‘how to’ aspect. One of my very favorite channels to date.

That TV program was for the Catalan Public Television (TV3). I remember it quite well, it was a TV program + books. I think I still have all of them at my dad's place. The show was a translation of "The Computer Programme" in Catalan, with a 15 minute local production about the program listings on the books. It was an ambitious program, a local bank gave cheap financial lease to buy a Dragon 200. Coudn't find videos, but the books are here: electricdreams.blog/2017/10/29/connecta-el-micro-1985-1-fem-informatica/

Thank you for another episode on a machine that is close to my heart. As the PC that I spent most of my early "computer" years using, the Dragon will always be special to and for me. Learning more about it from a different perspective makes it even more special. I always look forward to your quality videos.

Great video, thanks! I still have the Dragon 32 my father bought for me and my brother when I was about 12 years old, and remember traveling to London (from Devon) several times to visit computer shows where we bought hardware and software for it. Sadly many of the cassettes are now unreadable after being stored in my parents loft for many years after I left home.

This and your other videos are very inspiring. I have several old computers on my storage area, some multiple units (Amstrad CPC, Amiga 500, Commodore 64, VIC-20, Apple IIe, Apple IIc, Spectrum, plenty of old Mac and of course a galore of old PC gear, from an original IBM AT board to older XT ones). So now I feel the urge to restore them to their former glory :-) My very first computer was a VIC-20 which I still own but now does not boot. So it will be the first one to be rescued!. I work fixing electronics (communication gear) at my personal electronics lab so it won't be too hard for me. Thanks again!

As Usual, your restoration was top notch! The combination of history, practical knowledge regarding the silicon and your general passion for the entire subject bleeds through in all you do. So happy we found you! Would you consider doing a basic episode or two about soldering, what all the different components are and how the function, and just some general knowledge on working with electronics at that level? Best Wishes for 2024 from Nick & Caro in Arizona, USA!

What a great series! Fascinating to see a computer that I remember in name only. It was always talked about in the same crowd of spectrum and bbc b , back when I was in school. I’m pretty sure a few of my friends had them!

My dragon kept crashing and filling up with garbage text. I thought there was something wrong with the ROM chips but I had inadvertently enabled Welsh mode.

I love these trash to treasure episodes. Great video, thumbs up !

looks like something Delboy would of bought in bulk and tried to flog down the Market, whilst Rodney used it, to do the business accounts on with his one GCE. :P

Yes! The conclusion! Haven't been this excited since The Best of Both Worlds Part Two.

I've never had any interest in Dragon computers, and knew nothing about them. I stumbled on this video and thought it would be interesting to watch. Your video style, narration, and thorough research are wonderful. I enjoyed watching this very much. Nice work.

@RMCRetro

4 жыл бұрын

Thank you Michael

Really, really enjoyed all three of your Dragon 32 restoration series. The amount of detail you go into is superb, and I love seeing the insides of computers I don’t own. I’m always scared of breaking them.

@RMCRetro

5 жыл бұрын

Thank you so much, this was a fascinating journey for me too! I hope to take the same trip with a Mattel Aquarius soon

After a day at the doctor's this was a nice tonic! Fine work as always, Neil!

Nice video. The first system I ever bought with my own money was a Tandy CoCo 2. I was ten and loved it.

Ahhhhh! So that was the purpose behind that red cartridge with a reset button that came bundled with our used C64.. It only took me about 32 years to figure this out :)

@vectrex28

5 жыл бұрын

Oooooooh shit I have that cart as well now that I think about it. Never understood what it did either... until today that is

Thank you for the video and for the whole Dragon series. I really enjoyed every moment of it. You do put a lot of effort into making these so stylish and informative videos and really care for your viewers, and it really shows. Thank you and keep up the good work! PS. From what I can remember, resetting the C64 would cause the BASIC program to be discarded. However, with some two POKEs (or the OLD command for all those lucky Final Cartridge users) one usually could get the program back.

@RMCRetro

5 жыл бұрын

You're welcome and thank you for the kind words

Its nice you respect the older tech and bring it back to life

The Dragon 32 was my first computer, so i have fond memories of it - great set of vids and nice to know what really happened to them.

Always such a great choice of music in these vids, as soothing as any ASMR but actually interesting as well! :)

Great restoration and very interesting and well researched story m8. I remember the Dragon 32 well although I didn't know anyone who had one.

This was a great series, The Dragon32 was pretty much destined to fail at the offset as it was a bit late, it can't be underestimated how saturated the home computer market was back in the 80's and considering that I think it done pretty well, it is remembered fondly.

@ClayMann

5 жыл бұрын

I certainly remember seeing it in the stores and immediately judging it a flop that should be avoided. The beautiful atmosphere and camera moves still can't hide what an ugly little thing it was too. Sorry to any hardcore fans who may love it if it was there first computer.

Nice Video. Things which would have helped Dragon would have been: 1. Offered a second reduced cost version with Membrane keyboard (Mechanical Keyboards back then still cost a lot) but made so that it could have been swapped out at a later date with the Mechanical Keyboard. (This reduces expense for buyers, and opens up a lucrative market for upgrades.) 2. Integrating the Power Board with Main PCB would have saved a fortune in costs. The case size could have been reduced too, adding more savings. 3. The only thing Dragon should have gone after in the USA was Tandy's help with porting software and hardware peripherals. Back then Tandy was a massive player in home computer marker, a market that was saturated like the UK, adding to the fact that FCC compliance added a whole lot to the cost of the US Dragon machine it would have been very difficult to compete.

@MrDuncl

5 жыл бұрын

I think the only thing that would have helped would have been to produce a C64 or Spectrum compatible machine, which would never have happened due to copyright issues. In 1984 I decided to replace my ZX81 and didn't want to spend too much. First I bought a new TI99-4A for £60, but realised it was almost unusable without the expensive expansion RAM and quickly sold it on. A few months later at £60 it was a choice of a new Commodore Plus 4 or a new Toshiba MSX (which explains why Dragon dropped theirs) each with a good bundle of tapes. I bought the MSX and for the price was happy with it until I bought an Atari ST six years later. In 1984, in the same shops, the C64 was still selling for over twice that price, and the Spectrum wasn't much cheaper. However people were prepared to pay more for a computer which was in the top two for software (games) availability. This decade the situation almost repeated itself with Windows phone O/S.

This has been an excellent series of videos Neil. Thanks.

@RMCRetro

5 жыл бұрын

You're welcome Colin thanks for watching. We have some SGI goodies coming soon

I taught myself 6809 assembly language programming on my Dragon 32 with the help of an assembler cartridge and Lance A. Leventhal's excellent book. I also obtained some information on how to access different video modes that weren't natively available through basic, by buying various books (more like pamphlets, really) through the small ads in the computer press. Fascinating stuff!

Always so satisfying to see the results of such TLC!

Great stuff! BTW, the Coco/Dragon game library is MUST deeper then anyone seems to think. Great arcade clones and adventure games for sure!

Hello, very good episode, I have one of the last Dragon Tano sold by california digital, when I bought in 2015, I think, he had only about 40 more teams, they were brand new, I sold it for $ 49 plus shipping, and I enjoy it very much , with that characteristic smell of new, very happy, when I arrive, I also have all the computer color information 1,2 and 3

I love the big colorful logo on the computer!

Always a pleasure to watch you bring these old broken down systems back to life. I do actually have a Dragon 32 game cassette knocking about Neil, if you have a P.O box to send it too, i'd be happy for you to have it.

@RMCRetro

5 жыл бұрын

Sure that sounds great! If you can email the channel name at gmail dot com I can let you have a mailing address. Thank you

Great series. I had not heard of this machine, being in the US of A. The mechanical keyboard type (pun) is similar to the Atari 800 keyboard with more than a glancing similarity. The 'wings' contact points, the thick black base and the square plungers are mostly identical to the 800. The 800 has thick, heavy high quality keycaps. Even the keycap font is very similar here. The typing experience is outstanding, but the 800 can handle two keys pressed at once (not three though, barring the shift or control keys). I'm guessing these were either copied or made by the same manufacturer. Even the Atari 800 keyboards are made by two (or three?) manufacturers and there were lawsuits between the manufacturers related to copying. On the 800, the white plungers (as shown in this video) are the preferred type, as the yellow plungers variants are thin and brittle and very prone to cracking. Thank you RMC! Edit: Yes, 6:36 here shows it's a HI-TEK keyboard which was one of the 800 keyboard variants.

Bearded dragons gain "scary appearance" when they are threatened. They are able to enlarge their throats and flatten their body.

Thanks for a great series. The CoCo and Dragon had THE best 8 bit CPU in the Motorola 6809 but 6502/6510 micos like the Commodore 64 also had custom sound and graphics chips that were the real enablers of their excellent 2D arcade-style games. The CoCo and Dragon tried to do it all with their sophisticated CPU. One explanation for this is that the 6809 was more expensive than the 6502 CPU and that, well, at least Tandy/RadioShack, strove to keep the cost down to be competitive by trying to rely on just their CPU. CoCo Retro enthusiast today most covet the CoCo 3, which had an enhanced hardware video subsystem. That model has gotten to be (3 times) more expensive to acquire on ebay than CoCo1 or CoCo2. Well, looks like the Dragon never really got to achieve the equivalent of a CoCo3 kind of model. At least for CoCo lovers they will always have their model 3

When I studied information science, we had a class that used the os/9 operating system on motorola 68k cpu's. I can't quite remember the machines, but the class was all about learning assembly.

i like the concept of "history" and "hands-on" as interleaving chapters in this episode.

@RMCRetro

5 жыл бұрын

Thank you! It's a direction I'd like to take future restorations in. History while reviving the item itself, I enjoyed making it

Great trip down memory lane,I owned a Dragon 32 back in the day.

Great finish to the video. I had zero interest in the Dragon 32, barely heard of it before your part one video - but you made it entertaining and interesting, and I enjoyed all three episodes!

Magnificent work Neil... breathing life into the dragon!!!

When I bought my Atari 800 XL Computer magazines had advertisements that included Dragon computers in America. I don’t remember how much it cost, but I remember I considered it because of price. I was 13 and was buying a computer with the money I earned on a summer job.

Really Nice Work . Very easy board to work with , Thank You for Saving this Dragon32 . Liked and Shared :) QC

I was always fond of the Dragon although no one I knew had one back in the day! Good work. :)

Full points for exexution Neil. That Dragon will live another 30 years easily. The Dragon is an interesting and enticing system. It's good to hear about the company's history. Their products outlived the factories that made them.

4:40 those key stems /mechanism reminds me of what's found in the HP86 that AkBKukU restored/demod.

This is one of the best series you have done Neil. Great content great product history excellently executed Neil 😁😁😁 Kim 😁😁😁 was the Dragon doomed from day one?

Please do an episode on the MTX500/MTX512. The history reads quite interesting as beeing the last project where British government tried to invest into the home/educational computer market. And in plus there will be definitly no discussions about the pros and cons of retrobriting hence the case is completly made out of black aluminium.

My mate at college used Flex on a 6809 second processor on a Beeb. His tales of the wonders of flex as an embedded OS and developing on it made me very jealous as the nearest thing to an operating system we had in our department was a standard Beeb's ROM or CP/M. Apparently you can also run and develop for flex on a Dragon it would be brilliant to see a "proper", nerdy OS running on a cheap games machine like this.

The Dragon Alpha...A dual 6809 system. Sounds a little reminiscent of the Japanese Fujitsu FM-7 line.

There was a computer shop in Sutton, Surrey near me, they specialised in the Dragon series. Maybe they were called Statacom. As I recall, they were 'reduced' to selling other micros and software; I remember buying a game for my C64 in there. I'd actually asked for such-and-such a game 'for the 64', and they came back with the Dragon version. I'd forgotten about the Dragon 64. It seems I was not alone.

Hey that keyboard bears a strong resemblance to an add-on keyboard for the ZX81, the one that was marketed by Dean Electronics which had 6 extra (unconnected) keys.

That took me back. My very first computer was the Dragon 32. I absolutely loved and still regret selling it to be able to afford my second computer, which I also see you have done: the Amstrad CPC128... Which I hated with a passion. Because it was not the Dragon 32 🙄

Great video. Thanks. PS I have a brand new set of joysticks, still in the box, that I bought back in the 80’s.

Excellent resource !

I have one of those NEW Tano Dragons!!! Beautiful and MINT!

Great video as always

Enjoyed the series, it's been interesting to see what was under the hood. It's a pity though you weren't aware of the best dragon software. Being an owner from the Christmas of 82, I was riveted by the likes of Cuthbert in the Jungle, Dragon Trek, Time Bandit, Hungary Horace and Barmy Burgers around the time. Dragon Trek is definitely one to dig out, fantastic game still.

And the Dragon roars again.

Had one these as as child was a great computer to learn basic, i also had a spectrum though so gaming kind of went to that

With a disk interface & Gotek, or an SD card cartridge you'd be able to check out more of what was available. The Tandy had loads of games, and I'd like to think that most of the 32K ones were ported over. I've just acquired a CoCo SDC for my Tandy Colour Computer 2, and I believe that it works on the Dragon as well. I'll check it out as soon as I next get my Dragon out of storage.

The murky water scripting was rather brilliant!

That was great, thank you.

I'm sure that one day someone could make a modern clone of the Dragon 32.

One tip: peel off the film from the sticker instead of peeling the sticker off from the film. This prevents the sticker from curling up (although a slight curl can be useful).

3:32 Mrs RetroManCave has been scratching her head looking for her shoe brush all day.

@RMCRetro

5 жыл бұрын

It's true Pierre, filthy shoes on her now

@PierreVonStaines

5 жыл бұрын

@@RMCRetro What did Mrs RetroManCave say after wearing for a day the Dinosaur shoes you bought her? Answer: My-feet-are-saurus.

@RMCRetro

5 жыл бұрын

@@PierreVonStaines never stop trying your best Pierre and I'll always be proud of you

@PierreVonStaines

5 жыл бұрын

@@RMCRetro God loves a trier, and evidently you do too. Thanks Neil, you know I loves our little banter chats each week. By the way - I hope you've had a scrub down yourself since fixing this?! Hate to think you have been muckying up those crisp clean Mrs RetroManCave 100% Egyptian cotton bed sheets covered in 38 year old Dragon 32 cobwebs. ;)

Eurohard went limp ... I see myself out.

Adventure games were damn popular on the 8-bits in general, but one of the benefits is that they often employed a separation of data files and interpreter. In addition several high quality adventure game toolkits were created, including PAW, The Quill and GAC and since these were often indie productions, it would be a no brainer to port these to every available system to try and get a few extra sales. So it might just be that they're granted more visibility by the absence of other software. The Dragon would have been a lovely system to play these on though, because of that keyboard.

Is still have all the computers from my youth. A VIC-20, 2x C64 + 1541 + tape drive, a Mitsubishi ML-48 MSX-1, and an Amiga 500.. They all need retrobrighting now. Maybe I'll get round to polishing them up some time.

great series.. very sad the way all those old 8 bits went the way of the dodo.. there was such a boom in the early 80's and then in the mid to late 80's with 16 bit machines.. it's very sad that the only two computers left standing was the IBM compat and Apple.

@skonkfactory

5 жыл бұрын

I mean, ARM rules the world now. So not really?

@bazza5699

5 жыл бұрын

@@skonkfactory nice come back. but you know what i'm getting at...

@MrDuncl

5 жыл бұрын

In Europe we probably have Alan Sugar to thank for that. With the PC1512 he realised that making a cheaper but IBM compatible machine, was a better idea than yet another format (Sinclair QL anyone ?). Even IBM didn't get that, coming up with the PS/2 range and OS/2 operating system. Imagine how different things would have been if IBM hadn't effectively designed the original PC (in a rush) from Intel datsheets

I have converted 30 year old original recording cassette tapes, ie cheap ones, to audio files, and the first play the sound gets muddy pretty quick. I find that you play the whole tape, which sheds the lose particles, and then clean the heads and the sound is clear again. The only thing that seams to destroy them is trying to record new stuff on old tapes.

You start your episodes with this ad for Monster Joysticks, and you mention "Genuine Sanwa Arcade Parts". I've never heard of Sanwa until you mention it. Would you make a video about Sanwa?

Well, ain't that a thing, just finished catching up on your Dragon32 T2T series about 30 minues ago, and like a boss, you release the next part!😁

@RMCRetro

5 жыл бұрын

I was waiting for you to catch up so I could release it 😁

@RockRedGenesis

5 жыл бұрын

@@RMCRetro It's like it's fate, or something! 👍😄

Another cool video Neil. Oh when the deck ia ready post a pic so we can see it hah

@RMCRetro

5 жыл бұрын

Haha I will. Rain is slowing down progress today, just getting cement into the post holes 🐢 Trevor says hi

I had a Commodore 64, I used to do that trick to short the 2 pins on the expansion port to reset it.

Bought a very good condition Dragon 32 last week. Trying to find some some game carts now. (Can't be bothered with tapes)

Is that a Tandy MC10 behind you (the small red computer)? I think that would be very similar to the Dragon.

Phwoooooaaar, love the music during the title sequence! Which track was that?

I use a CASDuino/TZXDuino that I got from 8bit tronics with my Dragon 32, to replace the ailing cassette tapes that I have. Works a treat!

@stanmarsh14

5 жыл бұрын

Link to the item in question.... www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Tzxduino-Casduino-Zx-Spectrum-16-48-Msx-Amstrad-6128-Dragon-32-64-Acorn-Electron/173357776623

I really enjoyed your video

My mate Roger had one of these and I had a Memotech MTX 512 while the rest of the UK were playing cool games on their spectrums. Any chance of a take apart on an MTX soon?

Retromancave has the best music of any KZread channel and I still don't know where he gets it from

that box that says "single floppy disk" in the back must contain a really big one

Rightly or wrongly all I remember about this machine back in the day is games either in black and white or just green. So. Much. Green. It was doomed against the Speccy.

Ugh. I want to like this machine because the Motorola 6809 is an exceptional 8-bit CPU. Unfortunately, the first hardware to really do the platform proud was the CoCo 3. It’s quite impressive with 512K RAM and running OS-9 in 80 columns on an RGB monitor. But by its release in 1986, the 8-bit train was already leaving the station, so few jumped onboard.

@Lucretia9000

3 жыл бұрын

I've just read about the 6809, an interesting cpu, much more interesting than the Terminator's CPU, the 6502.

@brianh2771

3 жыл бұрын

@@Lucretia9000 You are right. I am tempted to learn to program the 6809 in assembly to see how much it differs from the 6502. Also, there's the even better "clone" version - Hitachi 6309, which can do some 32-bit operations. But I'd first need to hammer one into my CoCo.

Hmmm. I wonder how many people (including myself) taught themselves to program on a Dragon 32 or similar with its wonderful extended Microsoft basic and then went on to use those skills in their career - I get employed to write VBA on Microsoft Apps, basically because I found it a snap after learning on the dragon as a young teenager... And I have to comment that I still think ti was actually pretty good on the games front. I fondly remember Microdeal's imported arcade clones by Tom Mix Software... and I remember playing "Cuthbert in the Jungle" for hours (an excellent Pitfall clone if ever there was one)!

CMI in Australia used the 6809E in their FAIRLIGHT V to produce the ultimate Music Synthesizer which would cost a cool £40,000.00.

It's weird seeing those basic demos from the examples cassette. I've not seen those for over thirty years. Quest was probably the first Dragon tape game I played (After plugging in the included cave-hunter cartridge, the only cartridge we ever owned) I recall you could hit break and load a few variables with more men and ropes and stuff then type "cont" :)

@carledwards9477

5 жыл бұрын

My favourite trick was selling a negative amount of something. I made a LOT of money and had loads of items! LOL Good times!

Anyone know what switches it uses? The keyboard was apparently made by Hi Tek (so maybe one of theirs?) Just curious

I had A dragon 32 for some time back then I even repaired it once iI got it cheap then eventually sold it and then got the Atari st I think

Ahhh, the old paperclip reset trick on the C64!!! The method of choice for entering 'Poke' cheats....I remember it well.

@optimumamoeba3308

5 жыл бұрын

I used the little earth lead on the C64s tape deck, one day I accidentally hit one of the + voltage pins and blew a fuse inside the C64. Fortunately I was on a Y.T.S. learning electronics so this was not a problem and I was able to make myself (and all of my friends) a reset switch using a DIN plug and a little momentary push switch.

Actually the MC6847 can do fast moving arcade style graphics as the Tandy COCO has a pretty good port of Zaxxon and Demon Attack.

Nice video, thanks for sharing. Any chance you could make one about the SAM Coupe? It was supposed to be a "super Spectrum" back in its day, but it was a bit too late and was eclipsed by the new 16-bit machines like the Amiga.

@RMCRetro

5 жыл бұрын

I would LOVE to cover the Sam Coupe but they are very expensive. I'll keep an eye out though you never know when you'll get lucky hunting for these things

Love your work as always! I wish there were a few more games to showcase. What was its flagship game if any I wonder? Anything to push the hardware to the limits? I guess the C64 and Speccy were the major 8 bit platforms to benefit from demo scenes and continued development? Perhaps the Tandy it was based on might hold the answers?! :-)

@SpearM3064

5 жыл бұрын

Probably. A lot of programs written in machine language were completely compatible between the two. Actually, the majority of incompatible software was (surprisingly) BASIC programs, which had to be re-tokenized before they would work.

My computing started with a Dragon 32 :3

hello do you know about a program which gives the start end exec values of tapes back in 2001? machine code games or programs thanks

The one thing I noticed is that those tapes were sitting top of the speaker of that player, that is a big no no for those tapes.

I happen to own a Dragon 32 and the thing that confuses me the most about this computer is why nearly 80% of the case is nothing more than empty air. Is it so big just to look more "substantial"?