RACE Electronics Peripherals

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Rolo
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Re: RACE Electronics Peripherals

Post by Rolo »

Yes, I'm a happy man :D.
The boards have been lying around for some months. I sold a few in the beginning, then the demand was satisfied. Well, I'm using them for my own projects from time to time. That was the real reason I made them.
Cheers,
Rolo
munkeyboy
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Re: RACE Electronics Peripherals

Post by munkeyboy »

tjewell wrote: So, does anyone know more about the peripherals? I got in touch with the seller, who said, of the cage - "I live not far from where RACE Electronics was based in south wales. Maybe I bought it directly from them or maybe I bought it from Cumana." If I remember rightly, didn't Race actually build some (all?) of the Dragons? Were these tools that were used internally, or were they for wider sale? I don't remember seeing any of them in the magazines at the time. The fact they weren't in the Wiki until last week makes me think they're quite unique.

Anyone flesh out any history for us here?

Thanks, Tony!
I don't know if these particular units are internal to Race, but there is a review of an EPROM programmer in the January 1985 edition of Dragon User which says that the board inside has the Race logo. The other adverts I found after a quick scan in Dragon User was August 1986 with an advert from Compusense showing that they had 4-way expansions, EPROM programmers and sideways ROMs for sale, there was also an advert in the November 1986 DU again from Compusense that states that the EPROM programmer was from Race.
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robcfg
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Re: RACE Electronics Peripherals

Post by robcfg »

I've seen several RACE peripherals reviews on DU magazines, so I'll be uploading them to their wiki pages as soon as I have a little time.
tjewell
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Re: RACE Electronics Peripherals

Post by tjewell »

Ah, that could explain why I don't know much about it - I kinda dropped out of the Dragon scene in 84/85 when I went to college and got distracted! (although I did get my machine in 1982, so I'd had a busy few years). I must have a look on eBay for some of the later issues of Dragon User and see what I missed!
munkeyboy
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Re: RACE Electronics Peripherals

Post by munkeyboy »

I prefer a hard copy of any type of literature (my eyes get tired very quickly these days from looking at a screen, probably all those nights back in the 80's squinting at a green screen for too long) but the whole set of Dragon Users are available in the downloads section of this site.
tjewell
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Re: RACE Electronics Peripherals

Post by tjewell »

Okay, at long last I've had a chance to plug the multi-cartridge case into my Dragon. As far as I can tell, it works - if a cartridge is in slot one, it will boot when I turn the Dragon on. Unlike the Tandy MPC, there's no switch (that I can find) to set a different cart slot to be the default. Now I need to stick a couple games in it and see if I can work out the pokes to select one or the other.

I've attached two slightly shaky camera phone pictures of the cartridge and the cage itself. If anyone wants more details, I'll get a tripod and some better lighting later.
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IMG_20160108_165101.jpg (3.03 MiB) Viewed 8681 times
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robcfg
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Re: RACE Electronics Peripherals

Post by robcfg »

Hi!

Thanks for the pictures!

I'm quite surprised that it doesn't have any software on rom whatsoever.

It would be nice if you could take better pictures (no hurry), as there are chips I cannot read. Also, if you don't mind, it would be nice to have pictures from the solder side of both boards.

Cheers,
Rob
tjewell
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Re: RACE Electronics Peripherals

Post by tjewell »

Hi all! Okay, it took me a while, but I have some high resolution images loaded into the wiki - http://archive.worldofdragon.org/index. ... nsion_Cage.

Now, the next task is to make it work. The original owner apparently lost the photocopied instructions some 20 years ago - all he could remember was that it wasn't the same as the Tandy MPI (and I can confirm that those pokes don't work) and that "pokes at addresses in the range $FFD0-FFDF. $FFDA and $FFDC do seem to ring a bell".

So, any ideas where I start trying to work out how it works? I'm going to presume it's in working order - if I start it with a cartridge in the first slots, the Dragon boots using it.

Cheers! Tony.
sorchard
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Re: RACE Electronics Peripherals

Post by sorchard »

Nice bit of kit you've got there!

There's a review on p13 of the March 85 Dragon User. It says poke &HFEFF with 0-3.
Stew
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robcfg
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Re: RACE Electronics Peripherals

Post by robcfg »

Awesome pictures, thanks so much!
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