Help -possible broken dragon

[Basherbishuk]

Hi all, hope someone can help or advise

I purchased a dragon 32 off eBay in a desperate attempt to retrace my youth

Everything seems to work as I remember, I can get a working normal video and audio signal from the monitor socket on the rear of the unit, i can write and run basic programs, the sound and play command works fine and the motor command triggers the relay

However, I can't seem to cload\m any wma based software from a PC\imac\mp3 via the standard tape lead, I don't get any audible sound input at all. I've also tried the audio on command to listen to any input, but nothing

I also constructed my own 5 pin din to stereo jack lead, but again no sound

I've also multimeter tested all leads and all connections are fine

I don't have an old cassette player or cassettes to test as originally designed and only want to go down the cas\wma file route via vlc\player & audacity

Am I going mad?, should the original tape lead work on any modern ear\aux sockets or am I doing something wrong, polarity voltage etc????

Hope someone can help and thanks in advance

[Rink]

Chances are good that your Dragon is fine., and that your problems are either with your file, the delivery vehicle (e.g. PC) or the cable.

The standard cable should work but obviously, if it's been broken inside in the last 30 years then it won't.

Avoid any compressed audio files just to be on the safe side. MP3 compression etc can, in theory, damage the pure signal that the Dragon needs since those compression methods are destructive and not really designed with data transfer in mind. In practice, I haven't had a problem using MP4s but that's besides the point.

Work from a wav that you can download from the WoD archive, and that you can verify it work in Xroar.

Try across the volume range of your playing device. The Dragon has better tape circuitry than many machines of that era, but it still needs a fairly strong signal. Start quiet and work up. A modern PC is usually pretty loud from the headphone socket, and the later iDevices have decent output but earlier ones can struggle. Headphone socket is usually a safe choice from a PC - mainly because you can plug headphones in and confirm that your setup is actually playing the file.

No idea about audio on (never tried it) so can't say much there. If it does what you think it does then the lack of sound suggests problems with your player or cable.

[Basherbishuk]

Thanks alot for the reply Rink, and your advice

Based on what you said I finaly got it working (at 2am in the morning) with the original tape lead, a PC, WAV files and Windows Media Player. As youve more than likely assumed the problem was down to connections and volume

It brought back many happy memories of how fickle and fragile loading a game used to be, happy days!!!!

Thanks again and regards

[Rink]

Hahahah. If you enjoyed that, get yourself a ZX81.

Glad to hear you're sorted. I vaguely remember being up at a similar hour with the same problem a year or so ago.

[Alastair]

Check out Audacity if you ever have problems with Windows Media Player, or want to record from your Dragon.