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Hi

I recently bought a Tano Dragon from CA Digital in the USA after finding out about the Dragon through this forum in particular. Never an original owner of a Dragon, I only stumbled across this amazing little machine through a similar interest in the Tandy TRS-80 and Coco. I only got as far as emulators with these, but tracking, receiving and opening a boxed factory new Tano from 30 years ago is highly recommended. Cost plus delivery through a US forwarding service (much cheaper than CA Digital's price) wasn't too bad considering how much infrequent Coco 2's go for on eBay here in Australia. Looking forward to learning how to program assembly and connect a Drivewire, in no small part through the expertise on this forum. I built a composite cable but the biggest snag so far has been the NTSC signal from the Tano onto my VGA monitor + TV card. A few signal convertors from eBay later, I have found that a standard composite input on a modern LCD TV in the family room works but none of the convertors do. I should probably pick up a cheap supermarket 18" TV - is this extravagent for the Dragon? Xroar is fantastic until then. Thanks for a great community.

devo

Hi, and welcome to the Archive!

I didn't own a Dragon back in the days, but got one from a friend long ago. When I started programming the machine, I realized how much unused potential it still have, so I bought also a Tano from CA, and I buy software that isn't on the archive to complete the list and preserve it.

Cheers,
Rob

I wouldn't go for any widescreen monitor as I don't like the waste of space on it.

Try any LCD monitor that has composite input, like Dell 2001FP and others. Despite your TV they will support NTSC.

Or you can go even more retro and buy a sony PVM like mine one:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/1071 ... 1894024305

Since TV producers are goind all to HDTV you can find those monitors for cheap. They also support Coco3's analog RGB.

Since I looked around for a while before I found a second hand monitor with composite input, I ended up with a list of monitors. I wanted a small one but ended up with a 17". On the other hand the older 15" monitors often had frames as large as this one anyway . Feel free to fill in other models or your experiences with them in the list.

What's about a converter box?

composite to VGA: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_ ... 20to%20vga

composite to HDMI: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_nos ... te+to+HDMI

There are cheaper than a complete new TFT...

Jedie,

Do you have any experience to share for any of these converters? I'm using Grand Video Console from Grandtec with decent results (composite to VGA). I've also tried other solutions, but some of them introduce a latency close to one second. Suitable for video playback, but not for interactive computer use.

-- Rolf

No, i have no experience with such a box. Hope that someon here can tell if it is a good solution...

Geir did a nice writeup on the Grandtec device a while ago
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=518

-- Rolf

devo wrote:Looking forward to learning how to program assembly and connect a Drivewire, in no small part through the expertise on this forum.

Inside the Dragon is a great book for learning 6809 assembly as well as more specific Dragon internals (PDFs around). I was lucky to find a paper copy on Amazon for a few pounds recently (currently one is listed at £1,948.44!?). If I had a time machine I would have sent it back to my childhood. Wonder what the world would have looked like then :p

I built a composite cable but the biggest snag so far has been the NTSC signal from the Tano onto my VGA monitor + TV card. A few signal convertors from eBay later, I have found that a standard composite input on a modern LCD TV in the family room works but none of the convertors do. I should probably pick up a cheap supermarket 18" TV - is this extravagent for the Dragon? Xroar is fantastic until then. Thanks for a great community.

Does anyone have experiences with the small "car rear view camera" LCD monitors? Like http://www.ebay.com/itm/7-TFT-LCD-Headr ... 0619972019 There are 3.5" and 4.3" screens around too, but I think 7" is getting towards pretty usable. If the power consumption would be low enough to power it from the Dragon it would be neat. But I wonder if the pixel mismatch at such low resolutions is too annoying. This one is only 480*234 but there might be some at 800x480 (like all the cheap tablets).

Thanks for the recommendations on monitors, I shall see what turns up. The GrandTec is another possibility.

Others might find my tests with two adapters useful:

Target equipment: Dragon by Tano - NTSC output
Monitor - Hyundai L19T including PAL TV tuner, inputs: Composite, S-Video, VGA, RF and audio L & R
(works really well with Atari STe hires mono VGA, Atari 130XLE s-video, Raspberry Pi through HDMI>VGA convertor).

1) PAL <-> NTSC Composite & Audio Adapter
Works but image is blurry and text display poor.
for example at http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll ... AQ:AU:1123

2) Composite & S-Video to VGA Adapter - claims PAL and NTSC compatible
Stable image but only mono, some colour artefacting visible around edges of some characters and edges. All resolutions and colour adjustments including Hue have no effect.
Some PAL sources like N64 display colour but PAL Ataris only display mono b/w.
for example at http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/High-Resolut ... 53f9f5f8b6

This Arduino-related site has some interesting displays but once the resolution goes up to useful so does the price.
http://www.adafruit.com/category/63

BTW - the Lego construction in the photos houses the Raspberry Pi running RISC OS