Five Dragon multi cartridges for sale

A forum for members to offer for sale any Dragon related items to other members. DO NOT POST LINKS TO AUCTIONS. I will use this forum in the future to offer all my spare games to members of this site before they go on e-bay.
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Rolo
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Five Dragon multi cartridges for sale

Post by Rolo »

I am selling five of my Dragon multi cartridges. I do not need all of the ten existing boards for myself. I would like to sell the boards fully equipped and ready, but with not programmed 27C512 eproms, due to the unknown legal situation of the images. It's very easy to program the eproms for anybody with a programmer. If the buyer does have the original cartridges and if it is ok for the people running this web site, I could help programming the circuits. One multi cartridge can hold 32 rom images (up to 8KB each). A quick calculation showed, that all the components required (plus shipping of those) cost me about 45 euros. Building and testing takes about 1.5 hours. I would like to charge 50 euros plus shipping. So, this is not a commercial project, I'm just trying to cover my expenses. In case of interest send me a PM.
PS: At the moment I have no plans to do a reproduction of the cartridge. There might be a new version in the future, if I find the time. Not sure if and when.
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Rolo
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Four Dragon multi cartridges left

Post by Rolo »

Almost nobody wants to have 32 cartridges in one? Strange...
Too expensive? Well, build one and you'll see...

Well, I must be completely crazy! I go down to 45€ plus shipping. :shock:
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robcfg
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Re: Five Dragon multi cartridges for sale

Post by robcfg »

I'd like one of the cartridges, please send me the details through pm.
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Rolo
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Two Dragon multi cartridges left

Post by Rolo »

:lol:
pser1
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Re: Five Dragon multi cartridges for sale

Post by pser1 »

Hello,
I tried to send a pm to you ordering one of these multi cartridges.
Hope you got it. If it failed, please, count on me for one of them.
best regards
Pere
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Rolo
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Re: Five Dragon multi cartridges for sale

Post by Rolo »

Hi Pere,
I got it. The answer doesn't want to leave my PM-outbox :?: It's stuck somehow...
I switch to email...
Regards,
Rolo
tjewell
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Location: Cambridge, England

Re: Five Dragon multi cartridges for sale

Post by tjewell »

Apologies for being late to this thread! I'm quite tempted by one of these (always a sucker for a new gizmo for my Dragon), but I don't have an eprom programmer, and don't really have the first clue what's involved. However, I'm *also* a sucker for new toys - so maybe I should add a programmer to my Christmas list. Would someone be so kind as to give me an idiot's guide as to what's involved? What do I buy, how does it work? Many thanks in advance!

On a related note, would it be possible to build a cartridge 'emulator' like my HxC floppy emulator? So I fill an SD card with ROM images, pop it into a special cartridge and select an image for the Dragon to use? Just wondering ...

Cheers all, Tony.
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tormod
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Re: Five Dragon multi cartridges for sale

Post by tormod »

Tony, for EPROM burning, see KenH's "shopping list": viewtopic.php?f=8&t=778

The closest thing to your cartridge emulator would be the SuperIDE by http://www.cloud9tech.com It has four slots for ROM images stored in flash memory. It also has SD card storage for use as a virtual disk drive with NitrOS-9 or HDB-DOS. They have also promised a new SuperSD device for Christmas, see viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4232&p=9338#p8724
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Rolo
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Re: Five Dragon multi cartridges for sale

Post by Rolo »

Hi Tony,
welcome on board. You haven’t missed much:)
Well, I guess I’m the right person to answer your questions.
I’m writing all of this for the second time, because the phpBB-system simply knocked me out, when I hit the Preview-Button :roll: and all was lost!

What’s involved?
Not too much. You get a cheap Chinese copy of the „Willem Programmer (PCB5.0)“ on ebay for 35€ and an UV-eprom eraser box for about 20€. Plus shipping. That’s it. Downside: You need an „old“ PC or Laptop with a genuine parallel port, sitting on the genuine „IBM-PC“ IO-addresses. The somewhat rudimentary programmer software (it has to be downloaded) needs it. I did not manage with an USB-to-parallel adapter or a PCI-interface card. Maybe I’m just too dumb. Anybody else here who could? Or you buy a better programmer. There was a discussion going on somewhere else on this board.
The eraser box is a simple plastic box with mechanical timer and „UV light bulb/tube“. It comes with an American power plug, but made for 230 VAC. I’m using a travel adapter.
After some investigation, my setup now is working reliably and well. Very simply and fast. No problems.

The programmer is able to program all kinds of components. By the way, the USB connector is just serving as power supply not for reading or writing any data. I’m using a standard AC/DC adapter instead. The included Centronics cable is used for data transmission.

Should I do that?
If you just want to burn four eproms for the multi cartridge, it probably does not make sense to buy all that stuff. I can help you out.
But if you are interested in that archaic method of data storage, or if you want to build something with a simple memory and no busses and so on, then parallel eproms probably are the simplest components you can find.

How does it work?
When you have made up your mind, I can tell you the necessary steps to burn the eproms for the cartridge. It’s really simple and straight forward. Just concatenate 8k rom images to a binary resembling the size of the eprom, burn that binary with the help of the burner’s software. If there is an error, put the eprom into the eraser box for 30 minutes or so, check whether it is completely blank, burn again.

SD-cartridge emulator?
Of course, it can be built, we simply need a volunteer who does that.
Like you, I’m using the marvelous HxC-floppy emulator for disk programs. The multi cartridge is supposed to fill the gap for the (Dragon and Tandy) rom images. It simply is a „32 roms in one“-device. Some people describe software tools that convert rom-images to disk files. I never did that and I do not know, whether that works well. Probably better on a Dragon 64, than on a Dragon 32, where the programs have to be relocated to the lower bank. Manual analyzing and changing might be required?! But then, the HxC could do it all.
For the moment, I think the two devices solution (HxC for floppies and multi cartridge for roms) is ok.

Best regards,
Rolo
Rink
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Re: Five Dragon multi cartridges for sale

Post by Rink »

tjewell wrote: On a related note, would it be possible to build a cartridge 'emulator' like my HxC floppy emulator? So I fill an SD card with ROM images, pop it into a special cartridge and select an image for the Dragon to use? Just wondering ...
Certainly doable, but (and this is a personal opinion) probably not worth doing. The number of cartridges released for the Dragon really wasn't that great. For ROMs, I think Rolo's solution is excellent.

When not using that, I use a RAM expansion in the cartridge slot - which means you can load cartridge roms from a tape file (on the iPhone) into that RAM area, and they don't know that they're not carts anymore. But having 32 available at the touch of a button is just so much easier.

@Rolo, I don't think anyone has ever got an EEPROM programmer working through a USB-to-parallel adapter. They were primarily designed for printers and, whilst I don't see how it can be so damn difficult to build a proper one, it seems no one ever has. There could be a decent sized market for a box like that actually - I see people having similar problems all the bloody time.
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