Returning member (Lancashire)

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johnha
Posts: 20
Joined: Sun Feb 17, 2013 8:20 pm

Returning member (Lancashire)

Post by johnha »

Hi All,

I'm a returning member from Lancashire - I grew up with a Dragon 32 in the '80s and have various other bits of 8-bit kit. I have recently been clearing out the loft and discovered various Dragon related artefacts. It's great to see the community is still around and active and I'm interested in any recent avenues for remodelling the old hardware.

Most of memories relate to gaming or programming in BASIC and simple machine code routines, although I did have information of a couple of hardware projects somewhere in the past.

John.
sixxie
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Re: Returning member (Lancashire)

Post by sixxie »

Happy Lancashire Day (apparently)!
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robcfg
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Re: Returning member (Lancashire)

Post by robcfg »

Welcome to the Archive!

You have a lot to catch up to on the Dragon side of things :mrgreen:
Commodore
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Re: Returning member (Lancashire)

Post by Commodore »

Welcome johnha. Always nice to see members that actually owned a Dragon in the 80s; I never did. VIC 20 in our household, followed by a Spectrum +3, which was supposed to have been an upgrade, not so sure about that one really...

I remember the Dragon line of computers from 82/83, and then they seemed to literally disappear in 84. To my 12 year old eyes they seemed like a really decent computer, and I think they are even today. If they had just spent a few pounds more and put in lower case and done something to sort the colours/graphics out this woud have been a very decent machine and could have put the heat on the big 3 (Acorn, Commodore, Sinclair), and denied market share to Amstrad.
johnha
Posts: 20
Joined: Sun Feb 17, 2013 8:20 pm

Re: Returning member (Lancashire)

Post by johnha »

sixxie wrote: Fri Nov 27, 2020 4:44 pm Happy Lancashire Day (apparently)!
Thanks sixxie like many (most?) in Lancashire, I missed this.
robcfg wrote: Fri Nov 27, 2020 8:04 pm You have a lot to catch up to on the Dragon side of things :mrgreen:
About 30 years - doesn't seem that long...
Commodore wrote: Sat Nov 28, 2020 11:09 am Welcome johnha.
I remember the Dragon line of computers from 82/83, and then they seemed to literally disappear in 84. To my 12 year old eyes they seemed like a really decent computer, and I think they are even today. If they had just spent a few pounds more and put in lower case and done something to sort the colours/graphics out this woud have been a very decent machine and could have put the heat on the big 3 (Acorn, Commodore, Sinclair), and denied market share to Amstrad.
Recalling the time, I don't think lower case was much of a problem (having recently dug my BBC Master out it's a huge pain fighting with CAPS/SHIFT LOCK). The bigger problems were the lack of games commonly available on other platforms (Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy, Horrace etc) and the poor resolution for coloured graphics. The games available were good (if offbeat) but sometimes hard to find - Planet Invasion in black & white was as fast and furious as you'd want.

As time went on, the Dragon didn't move away from a 'bunch of boxes connected with wires' or have a dedicated/in-built cassette player - always having to fiddle with the volume setting...

Disk drives were really expensive and originally you needed a 64 (at least the belief at the time), games on cassette were hard enough to find - I never saw any on disk.

For programming it was a dream with the keyboard compared to a ZX81 or Spectrum (or some of the other horrors) and a lot of fairly good games were written in BASIC.
Commodore
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Re: Returning member (Lancashire)

Post by Commodore »

Yes, I've only had my Dragon for about 5 years, my Brother in Law gave it to me. I've always enjoyed using it though, and I think it's a much underrated machine.
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