Welcome back to part 4 of my SepTandy Spectacular 3. In the last post we ended our look at TRS-80 clones by taking a look at the miscellaneous TRS-80 clones sold throughout the world. In this post we're moving from TRS-80 clones to Coco clones starting with the Dragon 32.
The Dragon 32 (1982)
Released in 1982, The Dragon 32 was a computer for the British and European market, and was more or less a Coco underneath, with claims of 98% compatibility. However, its success didn't last long and was off the market in 2 years taking its manufacturer with them.
This computer I jokingly like to nickname The Bonnie Tyler, or Bonnie Tyler's Computer. No, not because it had a hit song that was used in the soundtrack for a movie about a bunch of dancing teenagers, but rather because they're both Welsh as the Dragon 32 hails from the English country of Wales.
There's a connection for you!
The story of the Dragon 32 begins with a company called Mettoy, they were founded in 1933, and made a variety of lithographed metal wind-up toys.
A Mettoy police motorcycle (1940)
By the 1970's, Mettoy realized the need to diversify as their die cast toy car business was starting to wain in profitability due to children moving on to other forms of entertainment. Tony Clarke, the division manager of Mettoy, noticed that many children were starting to become more interested in electronics and home computers than traditional toys. Seeing the opportunity, and proposed that Mettoy create there own version of Texas Instrument's Speak and Spell. Being given the go ahead from the board of directors he contacted Motorola to see what they could suggest.
After a visit to Motorola's plant in Scotland, they suggested he look at their “68xx” reference designs and datasheets, Including one for the MC6847 video display generator, the same design used that Motorola had designed with Tandy for the Videotex terminals and the Coco.
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The Motorola MC6847 datasheet (1984)
Seeing an even bigger opportunity, In 1982, Mettoy created a spinoff company called Dragon Data to manufacture personal computers. The name Dragon Data was picked as a dragon is the national emblem of Wales.
The Dragon Data logo (1982-1984)
They didn't waste any time and introduced the Dragon 32 to the British market in August of 1982 for £175 pounds.
An ad for the Dragon 32 (1982)
On the front of the machine is a logo/model badge and the keyboard. Already you can tell this is a clone of the Coco as the keyboard layout is exactly the same.
The front of the Dragon 32
On the right side, there is a slot for ROM cartridges, Just like the Coco.
The right side of the Dragon 32
On the back, There is the power plug, the power button and a Monitor port.
The back of the Dragon 32
On the left side, there is an RF out for TVs, a reset button, left joystick port, cassette interface, left joystick port, and a printer port.
The left side of the Dragon 32
And finally on the bottom is the model information sticker, as well as some red seal stickers covering the screw holes, reminding you that if you were to break the seals, your warranty will be voided.
The bottom of the Dragon 32
Powering up the Dragon 32 drops you into BASIC where you're greeted by a start up screen with a READY prompt. The BASIC for the Dragon 32 was licensed from Microsoft and is almost identical to Color BASIC on the Coco. So any BASIC program from the Coco, can be happily typed in and run on the Dragon.
Much like the CoCo, the large source of software for Dragon 32 users came from typing in programs from books and magazines, with Dragon User being one of the most popular dedicated magazines containing games and program type in listings, tips and strategies for some of the most popular games, reviews of new hardware and software and more.
The cover and one of the listings from an issue of Dragon User (1983)
You also have the ROM cartridge slot, with uses cartridges which are the same physical format and uses the exact same signals as the Coco.
Storage wise, the cassette port that is, As you would expect, compatible with the CoCo line. So any cable and cassette recorders, Radio Shack branded or otherwise, will work fine. Though the tape format is slightly different so some tape software won't load on its own. Oddly, Dragon never made an official tape drive for the Dragon 32 and just said to use either a Prinz TR12, Prinz TR15, or a Realistic recorder (Really a dangerous move huh?).
Being a computer from the UK, Most Dragon 32 users stuck to cartridges and tapes, much like the Coco. However you also have the ability to use floppy disks. Dragon sold the Disk Controller cartridge for the Dragon 32, which plugs directly into the cartridge port and allows you to have up to 4 floppy drive daisy chained, just like the Coco. However the Dragon's drives were 200k in capacity rather than 156k.
The Dragon Disk Controller cartridge
Also Dragon's disk drive for the Dragon 32 was offered in both a single drive and a dual drive, having 2 floppy drives in 1 case.
The Dragon Floppy Drives
For joysticks, much like the Coco, Dragon sold two analog, single-button, non-centering sticks, with a 6-pin DIN connection. They do come in a weird shape, they look a bit like ping pong paddles and they are designed to be held in one hand with the fire button near the thumb while holding the stick with the other. Much like the Coco's joysticks, while not unusable, they have the same problem of the non centering stick's are not ideal for some games. However since it uses the same pinout you can easily buy or build adapters to use Atari 2600 joysticks or better third party analog sticks.
The Dragon joysticks
The Dragon also has a built in Centronics Parallel printer port, and while Dragon never sold an official printer for the Dragon 32, You can use any standard Centronics Parallel printer. Like the classic Epson MX-80 that Dragon recommended in one of their documents.
For the hardware of the computer itself, It uses the same components as the Coco. It uses a Motorola 6809E microprocessor running at 0.89 Mhz, 32K of RAM, and 16K of ROM.
As for graphics, Like the CoCo, The Dragon 32 uses the Motorola MC6847 Video Display Generator, capable of displaying 9 distinct colors across multiple text and graphics modes, the text mode is uppercase-only displaying at 32 columns by 16 rows, and color graphics though, with resolutions ranging between 64x32 and 256x192 with up to four simultaneous colors. The biggest difference between the 6847 used in the Dragon and the 6847 used in the Coco is that The Dragon has additional circuitry to make the MC6847 VDG compatible with European 625-line 50 Hz PAL television standards, rather than the US 525-line 60Hz NTSC standard.
The sound is also the same, using a 6-bit digital to analog converter (DAC) outputting single voice 1 bit sound that’s directly handled by the CPU. There are also the same custom chips such as the SAM (or Synchronous Address Multiplexer), which handles memory addresses for the CPU and video chip. and two chips called P.I.A. (or Peripheral Interface Adapter) chips, which are essentially general input/output chips for things like the keyboard and the joysticks.
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The Dragon 32 Motherboard
So whats different from the Coco? Well despite most of the hardware being similar there are a few differences. The first is that while the keyboard uses the same layout, its wired slightly differently.
The second is that while the BASIC is Compatible, the tokens are not, so you need to retype a Coco Program for it to work on a Dragon.
The third difference is that the the RAM and ROM addresses are slightly different. For Example, The ROM reference $BAC5 enables sound on the Dragon, but on the Coco the address is $A976
And the fourth difference is, as previously mentioned the tape and disk formats are slightly different. But there were many loaders and conversion software to use tape and disk software from the Coco on the Dragon, and as long as it makes calls to roms that are the same on both, some ROM cartridges can be used on both computers.
As for the software, Since the Dragon 32 was almost identical to the Coco, many games from the Coco were ported over to the dragon. Even Coco software developers like Tom Mix Software ported their games to the Coco.
The King (1983)
However the Dragon also got some ports of popular games in the UK at the time, Like Chuckie Egg, Hunchback, and Manic Miner. One notable series of games that actually got its start on the Dragon was MicroDeals Cuthbert series starting with Cuthbert Goes Walkabout (A clone of Amidar).
Cuthbert Goes Walkabout (1983)
Now you would think that since the machines are so similar that Tandy would sue right? Well they never did, and I theroize that that was because they didnt really have a strong presence in the UK. Although I have mentioned that RadioShack did exist in many countries that didn’t really happen until the formation of InterTan in 1986. Prior to that, at the time of the Dragon 32's release, in the UK, Tandy only had around 200 stores at least.
Either way the Dragon never maintained that much popularity, due to growing competition. But that didn't stop Dragon from producing new models. There was the Dragon 64 released in 1983, which was the exact same machine but it doubled the RAM to 64K.
The Dragon 64 (1983)
There was also a version made for the US market by a company called Tano corporation out of New Orleans Louisiana, who Dragon partnered with to produce them. Its basically a Dragon 64, but modified to work with 60 Hz NTSC and 120 volts rather than the UK's 50 Hz PAL and 240 volts.
The Tano Dragon (1984)
While The Dragon 32's initial sales were successful, unfortunately, Mettoy was struggling financially and decided to sell Dragon Data to a company called General Electric Company (Or GEC, No relation to General Electric) before shutting down in 1984.
Either way the Dragon never maintained that much popularity, due to growing competition. But that didnt stop Dragon from producing new models. There was the Dragon 64 released in 1983, which was the exact same machine but it doubled the RAM to 64K.To combat losing market share GEC planned for Dragon Data to produce 2 successors to the Dragon 32, the Dragon Professional Alpha and the Dragon 128 (Codenamed Alpha and Beta respectively). The Professional was meant to be a business computer with the option of having 1 or 2 built in 3.5 inch floppy drives, a built-in DOS and disk interface, an on-board three channel programmable sound-generator chip, an internal modem, RGB monitor socket and a built-in power supply, and the Dragon 128 was meant to be an advanced business computer with 68B09 processors, 128K of RAM, 2 internal 3.5" floppy drives with an external hard disc available as an add-on, an on-board power supply, 80-column text mode, an RGB monitor connection, a detachable keyboard with a separate numeric pad, Microware OS-9 in ROM, and Centronics parallel, RS232, light-pen and mouse ports. They also had plans to make an MSX compatible machine as well, But soon GEC also was struggling financially and soon shut down in 1984 canceling all these machines while still in the prototype stage.
Left to Right The Dragon Professional prototype, The Dragon 128 prototype, and The Dragon MSX-64 prototype (1984)
The Dragon Data were then sold on to a Spanish startup cald Eurohard who re released the Dragon 64 as the Dragon 200 in 1985.
The Dragon 200 (1985)
Eurohard also suffered financial problems and went into receivership a couple of years later after the release of the Dragon 200, and finally discontinuing the Dragon in 1987 before going Bankrupt in 1988.
However the story of the Dragon still doesn't end there as the remaining stock from Eurohard was purchased by a Spanish electronics hobbyist magazine and given away to those who paid for a three-year subscription, until 1992, and in the US a company called California Digital did the same with Tano's remaining stock selling them until 2017!
And today the Dragon 32 has earned a little bit of a cult following being considered one of the best selling computers in the UK, and gaining a small, but dedicated fanbase.
So how do I rate the Dragon 32 on compatibility? The Dragon 32 ranks as Fully Compatible due to using the same components and while it differs some in hardware A significant amount produced for one machine will run on the other, with the remaining easy to convert over with tweaks to code, living up to the 98% compatibility claim.
This concludes Part 4 of my third Septandy Spectacular, join me next time as we take a look at a series of Coco like computers from a rather unexpected source.
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