Guys, there be a DRAGON in that there CAVE(!)

Yes, here it is... the moment you haven't been waiting for - a thread from Baz after going AWOL the past few weeks.

As Paul mentioned, after busily abandoning our garden to the builders, having had a moat trench built around our back door (and rescuing a hedgie and 3 frogs which had fallen in - thank god we got them out before the concrete footings went in), and now clearing out kitchen cupboards before the inner walls get demolished, a new roof and skylight gets plonked on and then floors levelled out and a new Wren kitchen installed... I also took a sneak opportunity to acquire a green hue-emanating DRAGON 32...


ABOVE: Somewhere, deep within this dark cave, lurks a Dragon...


ABOVE: YIKES! There it is - showing off its "vast" colour palette - the majority of Dragon play is distinctly GREEN.


As well as loading tape software on it - the interface, btw, is as bad/touchy, if not worse than the Oric's(!), I've also hooked it up to my laptop and also CLOAD via WAV files from sites such as World of Dragon (a world of more green to be found over at:
http://archive.worldofdragon.org/browse/





File loading via WAVs is much, much more reliable whereas the old cassettes are often on the way out - not surprising after nigh on 40 years, I guess.

So, what do I think to the mythical beast from the land of Port Talbot, Wales (thanks to backing from Mettoy/Tano in the USA) which shares more than a passing OS resemblance to the Tandy TRS-80 Co-Co?

Hey, you know what I'm like when it comes to underdogs, there's no dog which lies lower than an Oric! I've had a good old blast through quite a few of the Dragon back catalogue top titles and some aren't too bad (Chuckie Egg the overall winner for me!), but in a nutshell, the micro is rather limited, rather slow and rather green. You get the feeling that although the keyboard and case present a decent looking machine, what lurks inside was probably obsolete in 1982 when it first appeared.


ABOVE: A nice nifty 5 games in 5 mins to showcase the Dragon's (extensive) palette (!)

I have though enjoyed playing with it but I'm sure - as spending on materials and building supplies etc goes literally through the roof here (god, it will be good when we have one...and a back door!!) - the Dragon 32 and it's stack of tapes and various bits and bobs I've acquired with it will alas go back on that well-known auction site up for sale so that I can plough a little bit of cash back into the rebuild of "our cave" which our house now resembles.

Fellas, I hope you are all keeping well, safe and healthy and enjoying your retro hobby just as much as ever.

I'm sure, as we get closer to October/November, we will all have a bit more time for our entertaining hobby once more and threads and posts will increase as we have the long autumn and winter nights to look forwards too and once more some strange retro micro machines get released from their closets such as this distinguished (but probably for me, now extinguished!) beast!



If anyone is interested in taking it on - you guys always get first dibs here - then just let me know.

Take care and catch you all soon.

Cave Man Baz.

 

Hey Andy, what weird discoveries can be made while restructuring the Baz Towers... There in the higher tower of the castle where the princess was asleep guarded by a ferocious dragon with 32 sharp teeth, ready to snap and eat you all out, the bold and stainless knight called Sir Barr managed to kill the princess at last... and save the Dragon!!

Nice to see you back here,mate. And yes, I'm definitely interested in the d32 lot, if still available.

 

Absolutely, fella.
The next thing we know, there'll be an Atari FALCON swooping down from the Baz battlements to drop hard drives on our heads etc(!)
I will PM the Dragon costings to you tomorrow, fella, as you are 1st in the queue (form an orderly line there, that man and his mouse!).
The beast cost me £80 and I've added a few bits and bobs here and there - more pics to follow of the tape library - so I'll be looking to at least recover my costs, fellas.
I almost 'invested' in a pair of Dragon Data joysticks...

ABOVE: These joysticks are neither perfect or good value

But at £40 the guy can forget it - I made him an offer around the 50% mark and he clearly didn't like it as I heard nothing more(!) but this might be a better bet for the would-be Dragon gamer:


ABOVE: The Dragojoy joystick interface - just use your Atari jossie and have done with it.

This bit of kit is much better value at £27 incl postage but of course you only get one useable jossie port and have to use your own Atari joystick!

Right, I'm heading topside - work in morning and the builders lining up with their cement mixers to seal my collection of floppy disks as per Bev's instructions to "skip all of his dust and throw it away with whatever other 80s junk you find in the cave...", so I'll need me wits about me and start hiding it all... before beasts like the Dragon breathe no more!

 

I wonder if the Dragon 64 was a better machine or the same with more memory . I'd better look it up

 

I don't think that the Dragon 64 was any great quantum leap, Graham, other than that extra 32Kb of RAM.

Here we go, for anyone else interested in the story of this scaly, much-rumoured beast:



and

 

Hi Daz,

Here's a few more pics then to whet your appetite should you/others wish to make me an offer that makes my Dragon fly off to a new roost:

Basically, it's all ready to go with the machine, PSU (very non-standard), tape leads, UHF TV, a manual, a mag, a CD full of PDFs of more Dragon reading material, a SONY data recorder (needs a 6V PSU) plus... a STACK of software (nigh on 20 tapes) but alas no box so if you wanted the full shebang, you need to look elsewhere, but it's all in very nice working condition:









Just drop me a PM, folks, if you want to make an offer, else I'll be Feebaying it probably next week.

Cheers and enjoy your retro computing.

Next up in the Baz AWOL threads -

ORIC MICRODISC - THE BOOK, THE MOVIE (directed by Simply Graham) -
THE RESTORED POWER SUPPLY!

 

HEHE
DRAGON 32
Well I've been doing a bit of research, looked through your Video links.. And learnt a lot. The Motorola 6809 CPU I've had a search on as well, interesting little beastie... But sorry 6502 rules.. (Well that's my opinion of course ) but each to their own.
Glad you found your PC in among all the cement dust and Mud.. Good to have you back.
Hopefully Richie is now up and working with a 1050 although showed as delivered on Hermes and Richie hadn't received it ... OOOOO
Looking forward to your testing with the Microdrive, Klyde pointed to two Atmos on Lebcoin or something like that for 50 Euro each. However thought I'd hang fire until I've sorted all the backlog of bits I want to sort out.. Some of which Aren’t Atari, as have a small synthesiser to house with a converter to proper 5 Pin DIN MIDI.. not poxy USB. (But will be attached to Atari )
PokeyMAX received but never tested, XEGS BUILD. All parts now but.. Hmmm BUT ... Also Incognito for 800 same boat.
Shed. Well with help from others is gradually getting there. It’s water proof, and Pam's son's a brick and helped a lot.
And that's without any Radio based stuff, I've a stack of what would now be very expensive High gain Yagi Antenna, I used them to bounce radio signals off the Moon back to earth, (think of a TV antenna but 33ft long and 16 of them on a scaffold frame, in a 4x4 array) attachment shows a 4x2 array !!!
I need to get my head around assembler on the 6502 Atari platform. Also some old DOS/Win 3.11 computer that I've found a load of original software for, along with programs I'd written for work 25 Years ago (not as a programmer but as a one of 15 support staff responsible for the whole of the Cellnet Mobile network at the time (and the only Support Engineer!)) that's not including the one's written for Amateur Radio.
MICRODRIVE
Andy worst case worst at least you can use a 3.5" drive if it still plays up or a Gotek, and having played with a 1050 for some time I'll be doing the same mod to the voltage regulators in that as well. I've also an old ST 314 drive to convert to SIO which I can build a board for. (only bought it coz it mached the XE style case.)
I hope you didn't allow Bev to much time alone with your retro goodies and an empty skip... Glad things going well for you both ..

 

Hi, Graham.

Yes, powered by some fiendish 6809 processor, the Dragon is certainly..."different".
All it needs next is a set of those amazing (Radio Ham?) aerials of yours (incredible!) plugging into the joystick ports (also non-standard) and this beast would probably be able to FLY to the moon and back!
Yes, the time available for computing and hobbyist activities has been little of late as we're either at work, home unwinding/going for a walk to escape the building site or...sleeping! Weekends start at 6am to catch the NHS shopping hour to beat the queues and so we're usually absolutely knackered after 6 early starts out of a full-on week so bed's calling and then you begin the same old routine over again... it's been an exhausting cycle of late, mate.

Any road, it sounds like you've got some groovy projects on the go/back burner there with the PokeyMAX/XEGS, 6502 assembler and those old DOS/Win 3.1 disks to delve through...it's all happening and why not? Your Cellnet programming days deserve a thread all of their own, Graham, and I'm sure we will see some progress with the old Microdisc in a thread to appear shortly...hand on heart, it's still all in its bubblewrap to protect it from plaster dust and rubble! (It also serves as a camouflage so that Bev doesn't realise it's 80s technology and hopefully thinks it's part of her new kitchen units!!)

Hey, talking of old units, the old fire-breathing DRAGON 32 beast is still available if anyone can (at the very least) match the £80 I paid for the machine and the basic set-up. As I said, I've since spent another £20-30 on extra games tapes, mags etc but I might take a bit of a hit there just for the sake of a sale and giving someone else a "buzz" out of checking out such a strange and exotic micro. Let me know, guys, via a PM else it's on Feebay next week.

OK, toodle pip and catch you fellas again soon - btw, I dropped Beamer320 a note last night and requested his presence on the good ship Atari Owner...we will see if Dom joins us...?

 

Q



Ops

 

Had to delete what appeared as a double post sorry about that thought I was editing it
Had to correct text I wasn't by far the only engineer, just the only support engineer for the U.K.(the rest managers) (although I never went to Northern Ireland, I was due to go to Enniskillen, but someone decided to remove the front of a hotel with a car bomb, so my visit was cancelled)

The Welsh Wonder :
I got to admit the Dragon is green... even the black was a very dark you guessed GREEN well apparently, but the links made interesting viewing so Thank You !!

Oh and Hermes did deliver Richie's 1050.. complete with a crack in the PSU casing, so god knows what they did with the parcel, as I'd though I'd protected it well enough with bubble wrap and additional cardboard .. I'll sort out something to make sure he's a happy bunny. Get Well soon Richie.

 

Andy already knows this but I gave a boxed Dragon 64 away as a prize in the Oric Meet back in the early 90’s. I picked it up from a local farm as the U.K. government had a “Farm Fax” incentive to help computer literacy. Farmers still have the odd Dragon in the loft so it’s always pays to ask. The 64 is really a 32 with extra bank of 32KB of RAM and not much of a improvement overall, but still very desirable.The 6809 is a really nice CPU and for me would be my top pick especially the improved model that came a bit later. The problem with the Dragon is the design spec being based on the Motorola chipset which gave it a “distinct” look the same as the Co-Co.
Shame about the 1050 PSU, hopefully will be able to test it later when my meds have kicked it, under supervision.
Very impressive radio setup Graham were you measuring the distance between the earth and moon using radio?

 

I would like to take you up on the Dragon Andy but I have no more space for any extra Retro kit.

 

I'm in the same boat, to much kit and not enough inclination at the moment.

In regard bouncing signals off of the moon, It was possible to measure distance yes as a noticeable delay in the reflected signal, from memory 2 to 3 seconds, also the frequency we transmitted on would be changed by Doppler effect due to relative movement between the earth and the moon, so usually used a spectrograph to watch for any return signal.

Only reason for trying it was because we could, A special licence required as power was very much higher than an amateur licence allowed. It was the technical and practical difficulties to overcome that made it interesting, building a monster RF power amplifier; the; I’ll call in plumbing to the antenna system, building the array, generator power supply, Making sure the farmer was happy about taking over one of his fields for three months etc.etc.

And the back up from others across the world in trying to receive our transmission..

After all if we transmitted, anyone that could see the moon could receive, so approximately 49% of earth. Our station was using CW (carrier wave) modulation, Morse code, sent from a ZX spectrum, rather than by hand. Frequency in the 2M Amateur band approx. 145MHz

As I'm sure you will gather there were more than just myself, there being three of us building the ground station and equipment; that taking about 2 years but, peeps all over the world looking out for the signals return. Not something easy to
Orchestrate 25 years ago.

https://www.electronics-notes.com/a...ur-propagation/moonbounce-propagation-eme.php

 

That sounds like a lot of fun and the little Spectrum at the heart of it. How did you interface the Speccy? I think we need a blog on this

 

Congrats on the Dragon Andy! I looked into the beastie myself when I was deciding what other 8-bitters to collect, once I found out it was essentially a clone of the Tandy/RadioShack CoCo 2, I figured I'd go with a CoCo if I went for a 6809 machine, since it's domestic and easy to get in the states, and I think it has a larger library. But anyone can turn an Atari into a CoCo/Dragon and run an Atari port of NitrOS9 software on it with one of these puppies below:

http://www.frontiernet.net/~mmarlette/Cloud-9/Hardware/Liber809.html

I thought about it briefly, but for the same price I can get Co-Co- 2 or 3 computer!

 

That looks very interesting Matt, I am sorely tempted by that little widget

I still need to fit my 2nd POKEY to my 65XE and then stick a dual OS EPROM inside. Getting stuff from the States is getting expensive these days, when I got the Blitter from Best Electronics for my 1040STFM I was hit with some hefty import charges on top of the shipping. So $65 + shipping is a bit steep right now. The 6809 is a good CPU. If you look at Rommels Revenge on the Dragon/Co-Co compared to the Spectrum version it does really well.
When I moved to this area my new neighbour had a Dragon 32 and had never seen an Atari or C64 running he was very impressed and so not long after he got a C64 from woolies and the Dragon went in the loft. I think by that time Dragon Data were on the verge of going under so the software was drying up.

 

Yeah, @Vyper68 , I've got enough on my hardware plate with fixes and planned upgrades to worry about another yet myself.

I'm still on the 800 atm, I desoldered the old 4051 sockets, and didn't see anything stuck underneath, but of course with my PCB vice-rack, the PCB was upside down while I was desoldering and removing the sockets, so some small bit of wire or solder could have easily fallen off when I removed the socket.

Anyway, I installed new sockets and got the girl put back together, turned it on...and was welcomed with the red-screen-of-death. So I didn't get it put back together properly and still don't know if I have a working keyboard or not yet.

I just hate testing things without it all properly mounted with proper ground, etc., and after a while it's quick and easy to disassemble and re-assemble in no time anyway.

If the keyboard still isn't working once I get the red-screen sorted, I've decided to go ahead with all the upgrades I intended anyway, as they have nothing to do with the keyboard circuits and I know the POKEY and stereo upgrade is good from playing games without a keyboard. I'll go back to it after I finish what I started, with the multi-meter and following the traces testing components. Right now I'm just sick of it holding everything else back.

 

@Andy Barr , Those controllers look horrid! I remember playing with Apple analog joysticks and I owned a Kraft of similar design for my Atari for a short time (I think I just threw it away), and I hated the feel of loose sticks. The Odyssey 2 console has similar sticks as well, and yes, they are terrible too, to me. But then with your Dragon controllers they have to throw in some weird and very uncomfortable "handle" with the button in the worse possible spot! Were they actively attempting to make their games terrible to play? Thank God you don't have to use them and have that joystick adapter! IIRC, RS/Tandy Coco's also have similar 1st party controllers and they need 3rd party joysticks or adapters to properly play games as well.

 

Yeah, I get your frustrations over wanting that 800 mobo fixed but done properly but share the feeling when one job is seemingly holding up everything else, Matt... it just creates a log jam and you know you'd feel a whole lot better once that red screen of death is resolved and any other issues identified and cured.

As for those shockingly anal analogue potentiometer-style joysticks - who the hell invented them, some early flight simulator geek? They want binning / sending back to hell...as you say, they haunted many a system from Dragon, through Acorn BBC right on to RS/Tandy TRSs and 1-2 other beasts too and were next to useless for anything requiring a quick, sure left/right and fire response.

On the other hand, some pretty amazing joysticks with precision control can be fashioned by users "in the know" - I dig this guy's efforts from seemingly a few pieces of craft wood and components...

 

One of the Atari books @Timothy Kline gave me has many projects for making your own controllers and other external devices for Atari's (and for controllers, if they use Atari joystick ports, then C64 and others as well). I just went looking for it on my bookshelf and was going to take a picture of one example, but it's not with the other Atari books, so now I'm trying to find it! There were a couple projects I really wanted to do in it!

 

OO So were to I start ..
Vyper68
The spectrums I've found may well be from this ere, But I really don't remember how it was done, I suspect I added a Z80PIO chip, and among my box(s) of electronic devices I've found a Tube of these, along with Z80 CPU's and a few other chips that I can't remember.
I remenber writing the machine code /Assember for something that was plugged in but that's all. would have been on a miccrodrive tape but no longer have that or many of the bits from that ere. It was more of quick fix to solve an issue ( All three of us hadn't taken our morse test, plus we needed to make sure it was accuratly timed as peeps all over the world listened out for it.
And who would have know that a bunch of farmers had there own Dragons to play with, Always wondered where the ones in the Harry Potter Films came from
And yes it looks like the 6809 was a good chip in it's day and there is a more modern version in CMOS the Hitachi 63x09E
has a few additional instructions etc. I found this originally from the link to Cloud9 Matt posted.

 

OO So were to I start .. Number 2

M.D.Baker
Wow that was an interesting link, It still amazes me just how much delelopment goes into older retro hardware. I went all through the Clound9 Hardware page ( well I would wounld't I) going back to the rest later on ..

Sorry to hear the ongoing issues with your 800.. Not sure I'd go ahead and do the other upgrades until you have the Red Screen issue fixed. Always worried with an 800 as I don't like the fact they have -5v +12V along with the more normal +5V.

BUT I'm also very aware of the care and attention to detail you pay to adding your upgrades witnessing the pics of both your Incognito & Stereo Pokey. Hopefully going to do my 800 at some point and will be using Dupont connectors for that

.... Hmm I wonder where I copied that idea from... seriously best form of flattery ... copy ..
OO Well BBC joystick do appear pants !! but The guts can be improved on !
Best you find the Book Fella !


P.S Edit sorry miss read 'After you cured the red screen .. sorry Matt

 

Yeah the Speccy was interesting, you have one edge connector for expansion which is limiting compared to other computers. The flip side is it gives you direct access to the CPU.
I have an interface one that provides a networking connection and a RS232 port in addition to the Microdrive, did you use one of those?
Microdrive tapes are very flaky these days but my QL works more reliably than the ZX models which made me change one of my ZX Microdrives into a vDRIVEzx SD Card unit which lets you use an SD card instead and it is 100% reliable

 

OO So were to I start .. Number 3
Andy Barr
Joysticks , well at least analogue joysticks.. Well there only going to be any good under three conditions being met.
1: The analogue to Digital conversion itsef ... witness BBC's Port . Three cheap diodes in series a resister to +5V and a capacitor across the diodes to ground, all used as a 1.8V referance for A to D conversion ... not terriably good.
2: The pots used in the joysticks, the 'throw' the joystick uses is a very small bit of the full travel of the 'Pot' or variable restistor used i.e rotation something like 330 Degrees, however in a joystick down to maybe 70 degrees. Cheap pots arent very 'linear'
Expensive ones can be used if you want to pay for them maybe those by Bournes.
3: The physical build of the joystick, it's drag or feel, and it's mechanical integrity. any slop at all results in differences to the movement on screen.
Interesting link !!

 

Yep standard interface one, think it had networking via cable similar to earphone cable, I don't recall ever using this. just the microdrive's and tapes. The QL internal drives much improved due to shielding required to get them to work within the case. they are apparently different to those in the ZX Microdrive. not sure, thought tapes all the same ..