NEWBIE questions Dragon / Coco

[lucifershalo]

Hello, more into 8 bits consoles (atari, coleco, vectrex, intellivision,...)
I decided to investigate and collect 8 bits computers with cartridge ports

I learned that the Dragon is a "nearly" clone of the Coco
but is it "clone" enough that the Coco carts are compatible on a Dragon,
I suppose not, that would be too good

so, on a gamecarts point of view (number of games and their qualities)
is it to collect a Dragon or a Cococ?

thanks

[sixxie]

Well both machines had more software released on tape than in cartridge form, but if you're really only going for cartridges, the CoCo had more game carts specifically for it than the Dragon.

On the other hand, most CoCo carts do work well on the Dragon, where most Dragon-specific carts won't work with the CoCo (it's down to how they make ROM calls).

[lucifershalo]

thanks for your answer


so a COCO cart has a good chance of working on a Dragon
a Dragon 32? 64? or both?

so it is better to buy a Dragon to use Coco AND Dragon carts....

also is there a way of tranferrring rom files from a PC to a Dragon/Coco via a serial cable or a flashcart or something like that?

and finally is the Dragon UK exclusive or was it distributed in other european countries? Germany? Holland? France?

[sixxie]

Well, I'd offer no guarantees that they'd *all* work in a Dragon, and some will doubtless work but with keyboard map oddness. Usually fine though, in my experience. 32 or 64 both fine for this sort of thing.

Not sure anyone has built a simple game ROM flash cart, though there are more complex things available from coco3.com, including one that lets you access disk images from a micro SD card. That's going to be quite coco-only, and would need ordering from America.

[admin]

I know that at least one of our members on here has built his own multi-select cart, complete with front end menu - maybe he might share the schematics and code?

The RAW rom dump images on here can be burnt to the correct EPROMS using a programmer connected to a PC and then put into a cart - I think coco3.com sell blank cart boards etc.

But as others have said, you are looking at a very low number of carts across both CoCo and Dragon - Most software was tape based with disk coming a close second - in the later years some of the cart based software was re-released on tape.

[lucifershalo]

ok, so how most of you are playing on your Dragon nowadays?
just in the good old times, with tapes and and a tape player or another way?

[sixxie]

Well for me, mostly under emulation - and then mostly on the DS on train journeys (Buzzard Bait never gets old! And some of the analogue joystick games work well with the touch screen). When I fire up a real Dragon, I usually play WAVs of tapes out from a PC. If I ever get a separate desk set up for such things, I'd probably go back to using a disk system, and look into a DriveWire-esque serial link to the PC.

[admin]

PCShare exists for OS9 - wouldn't be too hard to code a boot rom for the DragonDOS side of things...

http://www.onastick.clara.co.uk/pcshare1.htm

[Alastair]

and finally is the Dragon UK exclusive or was it distributed in other european countries? Germany? Holland? France?

With Dragon Data Ltd. facing collapse a Spanish company called Eurohard SA bought the assets, so Dragons were available in Spain though I have no idea if they were popular. As for the rest of Europe, they were available in Scandinavia as some of the forum members will attest, elsewhere I do not know.