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Curious to know if any serial peripherals made use of the +12V/-12V supply pins on this port?

And that basically stems from wondering if a MAX232 based circuit could massively simplify things - it wouldn't need the +/-12 for its own purposes...

When I was interfacing things using RS232, not Dragon 64 specifically, the +12 and -12 voltages could be used as signals when devices on 25 pin connectors needed particular pins to be high or low. I don't think I came across anything that was actually powered from the serial port.

I expect the MAX232 has +12v and -12v on the pins where the charge pump capacitors go. I expect that would be sufficient for the socket because they'd only be used as static signals. Try it.