Dragon32 Trash to Treasure | Repairing the Dragon (pt2)
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- Опубліковано 27 сер 2024
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Part 1 | • Dragon32 Trash to Trea...
Part 2 | • Dragon32 Trash to Trea...
Part 3 | • Dragon32 Trash to Trea...
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● Description
Trash to Treasure returns with the only micro computer to come out of Wales. A 1982 Dragon32. It's not working and it deserves to be saved, can we breath fire into the Dragon once again?
● Music
All music is used under license
Innovations - From Now On
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Numb - Nihoni
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Thank you for watching I hope you're enjoying the series. In Episode 1 some of you pointed out that other computers were manufactured in Wales, I don't believe any others were designed, manufactured and supported from Wales end to end by a Welsh company so that's why I'm presenting it in this way but if you know of others to come out of Wales in any shape or form I'd love to hear about them. Neil - RMC
"Most Pis are made in a Sony factory in Pencoed, Wales and some are made in China or Japan" - Although you have a fair argument, some Dragons were made in Spain as we'll see in part 3
About when will the live stream be live ?
The BBC Micro was manufactured at AB Electronics in Wales
@@RMCRetro Actually the whole company moved to Spain at that time. 8 bit micros were extremely popular in Spain back then.
SAM Coupé manufactured by Miles Gordon Technology (MGT), based in Swansea.
Your attention to detail and quality of production are second to none. Great work.
I especially liked the music on this episode. It was very relaxing and also trippy.
Eagerly awaiting Retro Man Cave: The Soundtrack.
Very chill wave
almost as if one might've been "chasing the dragon"
So wonderful seeing this old machine come back to life.
Watching soldering is calming for some reason. :)
I love that you're breathing some fire into this old dragon.
He also slain some of the myths that hung over it.
MontieMongoose ditto. It’s great to see the Dragon gaining the respect. Great underdog machine!
I'd suggest getting an insulating washer and a nylon bolt to secure that negative voltage regulator to the heatsink. It'll last a lot longer and means that you're less likely to be one knock from a blown regulator should you have it open again.
Thanks for the tip David
Extremely high quality channel! Honestly right up there with 8-bit guy or perhaps exceeding, at a fraction of the subscriber count. Top notch analysis and entertainment.
Thank you for the kind words
I really feel blessed to have been a kid/teen in the early ages's of 8-bit home computers which were exciting times and there were so many models of computer when looking back and it would be nice to see a face value comparison of systems sold, tech comparison and potential debates/reasons why certain systems didn't match the expectations of them and value for money.
I admire your soldering skills. I don't feel confident enough to solder yet. But i do want to learn so that i can preserve the machines i have :)
ahh retro man cave sits back pours a cup of coffee and breaks out the rich tea biscuits
great minds.. i've got a cuppa and a choccy bar :)
Rich tea with coffee? We're going to have to revoke your Brit license for that! :-D
stephen preece A cup of tea here too. I’ve just eaten my breakfast - a bowl of porridge and scrambled eggs on toast - and am enjoying my Saturday morning dose of RMC before getting on with the day.
Thanks again for another great video. This is essential training for all of us who currently have working collections who have yet to tackle faulting parts.
The Dragon lives on. It's great seeing you bring these machines back to life and I'm also glad to see you trim your leads before you solder. A mistake I often see on UA-cam is people who solder first then cut which can cause micro fractures in the newly soldered joint. The mood music was also a nice addition, great video all round.
it' unbelievable to think that we made many successful computers here in England let alone Wales, I owned a Beeb back in the day, I am also half Welsh, thanks for the videos and the memories :)
Been checking nearly every day for part 2 of this. I'm not sure WHY I'm so enamored by this series in particular...
Thanks Daniel I'm glad you're enjoying it. I'm trying to weave more history into the T2T series rather than it just being a repair. Hopefully the balance is good for you and others
I could feel the frustration when fixing one thing resulted in more failures, particularly when it seemed so simple.
Well done another memory saved from land fill.
The most useful tool is patience. And a cold beer at the end of the day but mostly patience! Thanks Richard pt3 just being finished now
@@RMCRetro Oh I look forward to that. I remember the first game I saw on a Dragon 32 was chucky egg. I thought it was amazing at the time (Both game and computer).
Nice to see it lives, This certainly makes me wonder whatever became of my old Dragon 32 from when I was a kid.
I was proud owner of a CoCo and a CoCo 3 back in the day. The very early CoCo did have an upside down board to provide the PAL output. We jealous of the pseudo colour displays that could be done on the NTSC version but there were attempts to do it on PAL versions. Basically the difference was that where the NTSC version used one pattern the PAL version used two, one on the left side and one on the right side. The Dragons parallel printer port was something CoCo users wanted and I suspect someone did make a Centronics port cart. At least Tandy did make the RS232 Pak.
That PSU board was a big problem in the design. I worked as a kid in a shop selling the Dragon 32, and we had lots of returns. All of them were caused by breaks on the PSU board. I was only 18 at the time, but I worked out that the delivery process, with packages being dropped hard, caused the PCB to flex. A quick repair, but yet another nail in the coffin for the product. Shame, I loved it!
Komodo dragons are great swimmers. They can swim from one island to another.
I'm very happy I found this channel!! Awesome work, well thought out and overall a great format :)
Thanks James and welcome to The Cave!
What a great couple of episodes - brings back so many memories :) Thanks for your time doing these, didn't know how much I wanted to see this until I saw it :)
I never had one of these, so it's great to see it coming back to life and finding out what it was all about.
A friend Robert Palmer (no, not that one) was a programmer for Dragon. I remember seeing a prototype Dragon that he had.
Never played on of those systems. Copyright was 1982 which was the year I was born. Great fix and another great video. Very well done.
Love this series keep up the great work
Great video Neil. Love you restoration videos. Keep'em coming.
The D32 was my first computer. I went to (all?) 6809 shows at the Royal Hortical halls in London.
Years later in college I used a 6809 embedded board to create an alarm system. Mine spoke! Yes, it was Beavis.
NEW RMC VIDEO!
*grabs cat*
*pours drink*
*gets comfortable*
*tells girlfriend not to call*
Oh hell yes.
My first colour computer and me and my mother took a trip by train from Yeovil to Portsmouth to the Boots store there to collect it, they were the first to have stock at the time. I'd been waiting to get a Spectrum but gave up and got the Dragon instead. Probably a mistake but someone I knew who did wait for his Spectrum had to wait 1 or 2 months later to get his and when he did he had to return it something like 3 times due to faults. The good thing about the Dragon was it's lack of software meant I was forced to create my own so did conversions of games written in basic listed in magazines for other computers. I seem to remember I converted games from the Sharp MZ-80k, Atari 400, ZX81 etc that used to be listed in Computer and Videogames. It was reliable and the keyboard felt very good but the display was not great and had a huge border. I actually used a black and white tv and had adjusted it to eliminate most of the border with the Dragon. Like many Dragon 32's the sticker on the case was a bit crinkled, whoever was responsible for that part of assembly was truly rubbish. I loved the time with the computer it seemed exciting somehow to own a computer and explore using it. Surprisingly some of the games were really good and the sound came through the tv if I remember rightly so was a world away from the pathetic beeper of the spectrum.
Great memories, and I know Yeovil well, I grew up over the hill in Dorchester
This is such a great channel.
Thank you Steve
The first game I ever played on the Dragon 32 was this one called "Quest"...anyone else remember it? I still think that the keyboard on that machine absolutely kicks the crap out of anything in this day and age...ah, the good ol' days.
I had a Dragon 32 back in the early 80's.. It had the RAM daughterboard which enabled me and my dad to upgrade it to more ram. Iirc, it was around 52kb. My dad made the tape-drive cable and we had lots of fun programming on it.
Fascinating! I love this stuff. And the extended soldering b-roll is incredibly satisfying and relaxing.
Brilliant work there! Yes it’s an underdog computer but we love underdogs in the shed. Loved the vid and kudos for rescuing the Dragon!
This new lab setup is fantastic! Well worth you shifting your storage area to upstairs :)
Great to see the ol’ Dragon 32 getting some love, was our first family computer
Your content is just amazing, so professional and a pleasure to watch, as a 45 year old I remember all the old systems :-)
Love watching these types of videos! Well done sir! Nice trippy music!
Thanks Gorf, glad you're enjoying them
@@RMCRetro I have a Garage load of these classic machines that I wish I had more time to get to. So these videos give me great instruction on what to do once I find that time.
The Dragon feels more like a sibling to the Tandy than a clone, part of the same family, not a direct copy.
Great stuff and I can't wait to see this one all done and playing some games. Keep em coming, a world without RMC is not a world I want to live in!
Awesome job as always Neil. Good to see a computer that only one friend of mine BITD had (we were all otherwise Speccy and Commodore kids) saved and working. I'm now off to cook a Dragon, 350C sounds a bit on the warm side for my oven but I reckon a nice slow cook at 160C will do the job over the next few weeks...
Thanks Vicky, currently enjoying your DPaint episode
Aww thanks@@RMCRetro hope you enjoy the DPaint stuff :)
Great video Neil. I always find it a great shame when components have to be replaced with modern alternatives rather than repaired. I can see why, but it makes me sad in a way. Great to see it working. A shame you had to replace the power port with a new one and that it could not be repaired, especially considering the new one was different.
You should get one of those cheap transistor tester, because there is something satisfying about knowing the condition of the old parts. Mine does value and ESR.
i was 16 in 1982 and i had four part time jobs and i still wanted one of these desperately ...i worked like a Trojan to get one and as i got nearer the total everyone stopped stocking them and stocked c64 or spectrum !!!
If it was a true clone of the Tandy CoCo, hardware and software would be exchangeable between the two computers. But for the most part, they aren't, not unless you make several hardware modifications, including swapping out the ROM chip.
Opinions may differ, depending one what the word 'clone' means to you individually. But if in 1982 I had been sold a Dragon 32 on the premise that it was a Tandy CoCo clone, only for me to find out that all my Tandy CoCo applications, games and catridges didn't actually run on it, I would have been pretty annoyed.
So by my definition, the Dragon is not a CoCo clone, they just share the same reference design.
Completely agree. If it is a clone it should be compatible with hardware and software and it is clearly not.
Completely agree too. Part of producing a clone is the INTENT to produce a copy of the other machine. This was never the case. As was stated in the video, Dragon Data needed to get something to market quickly and Motorola provided the design and parts for a perfectly functional machine. The fact that this design was developed in conjunction with Radio Shack for use in their CoCo was purely incidental. This is also borne out by the fact that the Dragon differs from the CoCo in the areas not specified in the reference design - ie. they both have the same core but different "extras".
Good points raised. I understand some changes were necessary to avoid legal implications, so perhaps a clone as far as was legally possible. Interestingly Tandy visited Dragon with a view to buying out the company when it hit hard times, but didn't buy them. 10,000 units were part of the deal. I wonder if we would then have seen them rebranded as CoCo's with ROMs swapped and keyboards rewired, such is the similarity.
I can remember going into Tandy and buying coco tapes which happily ran on my Dragon so software was compatible to some degree...
@@RMCRetro now that would have been interesting. Living in the states I got to see Tandy computers all the time, especially in high school but was completely unaware of the Dragon back then. That would have given it some legs.
Geeee my first computer, just found it in my uncle garage in it’s original box....plan to try it soon.....rétro nostalgia....
"The only computer ever to come out of the country of Wales"- The Sam Coupe was entirely a Welsh product.
Dragon where the only UK computer manufacturer to support the Japanese MSX system
"A clean down with some ISO and an anti-static brush" .. I'm just going to assume you were wearing your ground strap on your ankle ;)
Great video!!! There was was a Dragon MSX coming out of Wales... though you may have already known and in a way this is the only computer to ever come out of the country, as the MSX was unreleased and there are only a handful of prototypes around.
Speaking of that... hopefully one of these days you'll do something on MSX computers!
This gets a mention in pt3. They made a couple of hundred Dragon MSX's and apparantly gave them to staff when made redundant. They never got a public release. Would love to find one. I have a couple of MSX's, one that needs a good refurb is a Yamaha CX5M which is geared towards music creation. Trying to source a power brick and then it will get some videos 👍
As a crazy Coco fan, I really find this fascinating. I always heard about the Dragon 32 and saw it featured in Coco based magazines like Rainbow, but I really never saw what one looked like. I can tell you the keyboard is a step up from the "melted keyboard" that the Coco shipped with. Having just picked up a Coco 2 last year and getting it up and running, I can tell you the innards are quite different, as you pointed out. Fascinating stuff Neil..i'm loving the coverage!
I really love the case and keyboard on that machine. IMO, as compared to the CoCo, it seems to be the superior build.
Well done.
Ah, part 2 eventually, what a great Easter gift! 😇
Great to see you get it working again. Maybe worth running some sort of test program to test all the RAM.
For viewers, does Neil visually remind any of you of James Richardson? I half-expect Neil to be looking through old computer magazines while an enormous dessert melts in the foreground. So that’s my headcanon for this channel.
Great episode Neil! Nice debut from the new vice too!
Great stuff. I love my Dragon. The only computer to come out of Wales? Just gonna say "Sam Coupe" and leave it there. Also I have a spare copy of Cuthbert goes digging if you want it?.
I'm steeling myself for increasing amounts of green as the series continues...
Nice Video. It's interesting on the Dragon that the keyboard probably cost as much as the hardware which I think was a big downfall. I think having a simpler keyboard and more advanced hardware would have helped it sell much better.
I still have my dragon with the 6809 assembler cartridge :-)
Nice job!
I had waited for Enter the Dragon part 2 since 1973...
Bruce Lee has let himself go
@@RMCRetro At least he's not gaining any weight. ;)
Great episode as usual and I'm a huge fan off Nihoni Road 105
Tape drives drove me nuts.
Would almost never load.
Those INPUT magazines behind you.
I typed in many of it's programs multiple times because of the sodding tape drive. :)
It's been ~38 years and I still hate tape drives.
Should've gone with a Commodore, then. Commodore had the slowest tape drives, but also the most reliable, because it was the only home computer with a *digital* tape format. The reason it was so slow was because they thought *reliability* was more important than speed. Also, because their earliest computers... the early-model PETs and the VIC-20... came off the shelf with only 4k of RAM, so a slow tape drive didn't make much difference.
All those computers that let you use an off-the-shelf tape deck were vulnerable to changing the volume (causing distortion of the signal) or minor speed differences (stretching of the tape or a failing motor), so they were comparatively unreliable.
I have a dragon 32 with a failed psu and daughter board. The ac psu is virtually impossible to find a replacement for. In the end I bypassed the daughter board and used a jama arcade psu which had all the correct dc outputs. Great video!
Great solution. There's plenty of room in the case to squeeze alternatives in.
That is some nasty green on green lol
11:48 ... "4K Color Computer" ... well that means something entirely different these days :D
Input magazine. Wow!
Nice Vlog Neil great history and a great repair, the dragon lives once again. Why not upgrade the ram to 64k why....because you can mate😀see you in part 3 😁😁😁 Kim 😁😁😁
Great channel !!! Thank you for your correct pronunciation of 'composite'.
Looking forward to part 3 !
Fine work Mr Cave.
if you're gonna fix up a powersupply, at least with the power supply, just replace all caps doesn't matter if they're still good or not, they're old and won't last another 10 years anyway... then check the resistors are on value, replace the ones that aren't... but be careful there are no other components in parallel with the resistor or it could bring its value off...
There was the SAM Coupe, which was made in Swansea.. I think there’s still one in my moms attic
Yeah. And isn't the Rasberry Pi manufactured at Sony's Welsh plant?
David Barton : yeah, but that’s just manufacturing.. the Sam coupe was designed, developed, manufactured, etc in Swansea by mgt.. who later became sam computers Ltd. Who later became bankrupt
I have a Tano Dragon 64 I bought a few years ago.
Another thing...I think the manual has programs with a red triangle to mark a 'space'.
I looked for a triangle key for ages... :/
When I was in university, I worked in the library computer lab. Your comment reminded me of all the people who used to ask me where the "any" key was. (You know, as in "Press any key to continue".) While *some* people were just trolling me, there were others who genuinely thought there was an "any" key. I solved that problem by getting my fine-tipped paint brush and a pot of black paint from the hobby shop, and painting "any" on the 5 key of the numeric keypads.
Keep in mind that this was back in 1988-1992. Some of the 8-bit computers were still being manufactured back then, and a lot of students - especially the "non-traditional" (older) students had never had any real exposure to computers. So it doesn't really surprise me that some of them thought there was an "any" key.
Awesome as always
I would say it is not a clone, since it doesn't seem to be reverse engineered or copied from the Color Computer, and so is not designed to run CoCo software natively, any compatibility would be the same for other systems based on the reference design
The Green Thumb project was about creating a low cost terminal for farmers and agricultural work, what became the AgVision. The CoCo(and the TRS-80 videotex terminal, I suppose) appears to be derivative of this, but it seems a bit of a stretch to say that this makes the Dragon a clone of the CoCo...
It's only a clone in the sense that it's based off the same reference design. Also, *some* of the software works without modification. I would suspect that most of the text-only software works on both machines, since it's got the same CPU and screen resolution (256x192, which equates to 32 columns and 24 lines of text). Wikipedia refers to it as "a cousin" instead of "a clone".
Awesome video!
MGT released the Sam Coupe. They were based is Swansea, so this isn't the only Welsh computer. The Sam Coupe was a very polished affair in comparison. I am not completely sure where mine went. I think I lost it during a move!
It was manufactured in Wales but designed in England. Pedantic I know and I'd still call it "made in Wales" but that's the subtle difference. The Dragon was designed and made in Wales (and then became Spanish!)
@@RMCRetro come on, it was cribbed from a technical note ;). Origin is all somewhat arbitrary to be honest and difficult to pin down without the word of the originating team. I am an engineer working in the Cambridge tech area, most of the good engineers in the UK will pass through here at some point, as this is where the work is. This place is bubbling with people who actually enjoy what they do, so often work on projects for the sheer joy of it. Their ideas often have legs if they get enough money to leave their day job, or at least sustain their own company!
A boxed dragon 32!!!
There can't be many of those around :-O
A "clone" is a fait assessment but given it addresses a different market and power requirements, perhaps "a port" of the original design is more appropriate.
Every Dragon 32 has that bumpy Dragon logo sticker as a result of the way they were manufactured. Nothing wrong with a good clone as far as the consumer is concerned, that's how we ended up with IBM compatible PCs.
I still have my Dragon 32, havent run in it years. I had about 150 games for it and the majority were Coco games from a friend of a friend penpal in the States. They ran just fine . The key assignment was slightly different as i remember (ASCI?) - sort of 'a''would be 'n', 'b' would be 'o' , 'c' would be 'p' and so on and the screen/colour resolutions would be slightly weird. I know there were some fundamental differences in the resolution modes between the two machines
That was weird. I said "of course it does " just before you did.
Great series Neil! I’m sure you’ve covered it previously, but what is the board holder you are using?
That's just a cheapy from Amazon. Search PCB holder and lots of those blue ones come up
It's really a matter of perspective on the Tandy clone debate, to me it's like "It's a Tandy clone, well great, I like that.". ^_^ I think the Motorola history lesson separates any facts from opinions IE. got to sell those chips.
Do you think you can bring this one together with a copy of OS-9 that was released by Dragon Data? This OS is also still under active development and would be a nice showcase. The 6809 CPU systems deserve much more public exposition than they get!
This gets a mention in pt3, very cool but I think it needs 64k to run?
@@RMCRetro Yeah, apparently it's for 64k. The 6809 has 3x the transistors of the 6502 and really deserves more attention. There's another advanced OS for the Dragon/6809 called Flex, an emulator also exists. It's all linked at Wikipedia if you want to have a look.
Dragon Beta 128 very rare, maybe 2 or 3 in existence.
Great video, look forward to the next, are you gonna do any Dragon upgrades if any !!!!
Good job!
Brilliant video/repair (as usual) can you tell me where you purchase your spares from please ?
Great video!
Good job.
Neil where did you get the gimble/clamp thing you used to hold the electronics whilst soldering? Clampy thing? Nice video mate thanks.
My 1983 children's computer (www.smalltalk.org.br/fotos/pegasus1.jpg) used the same chipset but was most certainly not a CoCo clone (serial keyboard, network and other differences). I did study the CoCo technical manual for extra information about how to use the chipset. My 1988/1992 computer (www.smalltalk.org.br/fotos/casa1.jpg) used the ARM2 chipset but wasn't an Acorn Archimedes clone either. But it can be very hard to tell in these cases.
Hi, I’ve had a Dragon for a long time. Let me know if you want any pics. Books, software, copied games??
Can you share some pictures of the keycaps and switches on the keyboard? The caps look really nice.
"Let's take it to the lab." How awesome was it to say that for the first time on camera? :-)
I may have done a little dance
8:17 So, how come you didn't put the -5V regulator onto the heat sink. It was the one that failed after all, connector shenanigans aside...