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DragonMMC Announcement.

Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2017 10:38 am
by prime
Hi All,

It is with great pleaseure that I would like to announce the availability of the DragonMMC board.

Details of the facilities provided by this board can be found on the Wiki Page here :

http://archive.worldofdragon.org/index. ... MMC_SDCard

The cost of the board will be £55 + postage which in the UK will be around £6.

If you would like to obtain one then please contact me at :

dragonmmc _AT_ ramoth _DOT_ org _DOT_ uk

I have initially built a batch of the boards once these are sold I will continue building boards as needed, but as I do this as a hobby it may take a little while to get round to you....

Cheers.

Phill.

Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2017 11:09 am
by pser1
Hi,
That's great news, Phill!
Congratulations for having craeted such a beautiful 'monster' able to work with any kind of file
and even adding lots of very interesting functions!
I will pm you because I am really interested on this module.

cheers
pere

Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2017 11:18 am
by robcfg
I already ordered mine! :mrgreen:

I find the ability to use tape, disk and rom images very useful.

Great work!

Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 9:23 am
by Commodore
This is something that I'm probably quite interested in, I do have a few questions though.

Firstly, is the product still available?
Secondly, is it easy to use?
Does it only work with certain SD cards?
Is it available as a unit fitted inside the cartridge case? I would pay a bit extra if needed for this advantage.
Is it reliable?
Can it kill my Dragon 32?

The reason for some of these questions is that I have previous bad experiences with a roughly equivalent device for ZX Spectrum. In the end I sold it and went back to tapes.
It led me to believe that if a device for an old computer seemed too good to be true, then it probably was.
It has to be said though that I have an SD2iec for my VIC 20 and Commodore 64 and that has been excellent, so that has changed my mind again.

Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 1:15 pm
by prime
Commodore wrote:This is something that I'm probably quite interested in, I do have a few questions though.

Firstly, is the product still available?
Yep :)
Secondly, is it easy to use?
Does it only work with certain SD cards?
Is it available as a unit fitted inside the cartridge case? I would pay a bit extra if needed for this advantage.
Reasonably easy to use, there is a manual available on the Wiki page if you go and take a look. We've not really found any SD (or MMC) cards that don't work with it, but we of course have not tried every brand available.
The board is designed to fit inside the DragonDos cartridge case but beyond this there is currently not a case available for it.
Is it reliable?
Can it kill my Dragon 32?
Within it's operational parameters it is reliable, there are some (older) CAS files that won't work, but can be fixed by running them through Xroar, and getting it to re-write them. There are also a couple of cas files that will absolutely not work as they first load a custom loader into RAM and then don't use the ROM tape routines. But as far as we can tell that's only two titles.

We've not had any reports of the board breaking anyone's Dragons, obviously you should avoid plugging it in / unplugging it with the power on. Though generally i have found the Dragon much hardier in this respect than the Spectrum (for example).
The reason for some of these questions is that I have previous bad experiences with a roughly equivalent device for ZX Spectrum. In the end I sold it and went back to tapes.
It led me to believe that if a device for an old computer seemed too good to be true, then it probably was.
It has to be said though that I have an SD2iec for my VIC 20 and Commodore 64 and that has been excellent, so that has changed my mind again.
What was the Spectrum interface if you don't mind me asking?

If you are on the Dragon32 group on facebook, then there are some people on there who now have their interfaces and seem quite pleased with them.

Cheers.

Phill.

Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 10:12 pm
by Commodore
Well that's good to know, thanks.
I probably wouldn't want one quite yet, maybe for Christmas, I'll see what the boss says!
Spectrums are ridiculously fragile. I don't remember the name of the interface, it was quite some years ago.

Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 11:21 pm
by robcfg
Could it be the DivIDE?

Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Posted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 7:29 am
by prime
robcfg wrote:Could it be the DivIDE?
Though I have a DivIDE and have not had a problem with it.

But yes Spectrums do seem somewhat more fragile than Dragons.

Cheers.

Phill.

Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Posted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 1:51 pm
by Commodore
Ah! I think it was DivIDE+.

I just found it a headache and never lived up to the hype.
To be fair though, the biggest problem is the spectrum and that crappy edge connector.
I've had at least 2 busted boards caused by that thing.

The DragonMMC will definitely have to wait until Christmas at the earliest, as i have just bought a BBC Micro.

I'm in trouble now!

Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Posted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 9:33 pm
by prime
Commodore wrote:Ah! I think it was DivIDE+.
The DragonMMC will definitely have to wait until Christmas at the earliest, as i have just bought a BBC Micro.
If you havn't found it already, be sure to head over to stardot and say hello there.

Cheers.

Phill.