Dragon. A legendary creature, typically scaled
or fire-spewing, with serpentine, reptilian or avian traits. A mythical beast, rarely
seen, but often talked about in folklore and tales of heroism. To all intents and purposes, the story isn't
much different for the Dragon 32 home computer. Announced by Dragon Data in June and launched
in August 1982, poised and ready to compete with other micros in the booming UK computing
industry. A welsh entrant into an area dense with Cambridge and Oxford based micro industries.
The pride of it's origin is clear in the name of both the company and the machine born from
it. Before we delve into the details of this almost
mythical machine, let's set the scene, starting with the fledgling home micro era of the early
'80s. This was a time of excitement. A time of innovation,
and this was no more apparent than with the Sinclair ZX80 and ZX81 computers. Produced
by Clive Sinclair, these machines were designed to weave their way into homes throughout and
country and establish the home computer as a necessity, rather than an obscurity. The
root to this was to piggy back on the excitement of the new technology whilst offering a price
many could afford. The machines did their job and sold in reasonable numbers, but the
landscape was evolving at a significant rate. Over in the United States, machines like Tandy's
TRS-80 were sapping up the market, along with Commodore's Vic-20 and on the wind was a whispering
of a new 64KB machine straight from Jack Tramiel's drawing board. Sinclair needed to innovate, both to improve
on earlier technology and stave off competition from the likes of Acorn's BBC Micro and the
plethora of other home micro companies wanting a slice of digital pie. Unveiled in April
1982, the Sinclair Spectrum did just that. Offering a "full colour" home micro for less
than £150 and with the scope for advanced software and games alike. But Sinclair wasn't
known for fast shipping, and it would take a good 6 months for the Spectrum to start
shipping out at an acceptable rate. In these early technological days, 6 months
was a lifetime, and several machines would emerge whilst customers were still waiting
for their Spectrums to arrive. These included the Grundy NewBrain, Jupiter Ace and Dragon
32 in the UK alone. Whilst the Commodore 64 and Franklin ACE stepped out in the States
and the Sharp X1 and Fujitsu FM-7 in Japan. There was still a lot to play for. With each new machine that popped up, there
was a company behind it pushing their talents, eager to make a mark, and Dragon Data were
no different. The original Dragon 32 plan had been laid out by Swansea based Mettoy.
Mettoy had been founded in 1933 by Philip Ullman. Originally, he founded a German tin-plate
toy company called Tip & Co but escaped to the UK during the rise of the Nazis and used
cash owed to him by Marks & Spencer to setup the new organisation. Originally located in
Northampton, it relocated to Wales in the 50s and began distribution of railway construction
and model kits. During the 70s it was large enough to expand out into the new world of
computing and setup an offshoot called Dragon Data, established to help process data for
smaller companies. Noticing customers frustration at the slow pace of delivery from computer
manufacturers in the early 80s, Dragon Data saw an opportunity to launch it's own micro
and set to work in early 1982. As 1982 progressed Dragon Data were optimistic
about their new machine. Sinclair's Spectrums were shipping at a very slow rate, and Dragon
had already agreed astute terms to stock their micros in Boots chemist stores, throughout
the country. The system was based around very similar technology found in the TRS-80 Colour
Computer - affectionately known as The CoCo. This meant that development could be swift
and the machine's announcement in June, to launch time in August was completed in just
2 months. The specifications for this Welsh beauty weren't ground breaking, but they were
still more sophisticated than a lot of the then competition. Consisting of; A Motorola MC6809E clocked at .89MHz. This
was an 8 bit CPU, but it contained many 16 bit design elements and could beat off machines
based on the MOS 6502 in terms of raw computational power.
An MC6847 chip generated the video display of 256 pixels by 192 lines in monochrome or
up to 128x192 with 4 on screen colours. With a nine colour palette, it's responsible for
the garish colours seen on the Micros it inhabits Sound is served up with 1 voice and 5 octaves
in BASIC and 4 voices with 7 octaves via. machine code
32KB of RAM was provided - this was initially 16kb, but after getting wind of Sinclair's
proposed 48k Spectrum, was upped to 32. 16KB of ROM housed Microsoft Extended BASIC Port wise, the machine has a number of quirks.
First it features an analogue joystick port, allowing for versatility, and light pen adoption.
Second, unusually for this era, there's a monitor out, providing a composite image,
which can be used with modern LCD screens. There's also a tape connector, ROM cartridge
input and scope for an additional accessory called the "Dragon's Claw", allowing you to
use BBC Micro peripherals with your Dragon machine. To differentiate the machine from the CoCo
and avoid legal action, a number of improvements were also made; the first was the increase
in memory; base CoCos only shipped with 4KB of RAM, with machines only accommodating a
cut down Microsoft BASIC, however, the Dragon could pack the powerful extended Microsoft
BASIC from the go in it's spacious 32KB of RAM. The monitor port and full parallel port
was also included, allowing fast, standardised printer communication, and something of a
rarity among 8 bit machines. When you first boot the Dragon, you'll see the the initials
DNS, these were added by it's programmer Duncan Smeed to the somewhat borrowed Tandy ROM.
The Dragon was based on a reference design from Motorola, produced as an example of the
MC6809E's capabilities, but Motorola were more than happy to help, knowing they'd get
more sales from the leak of information. The machine also has a power switch and reset
button, features often omitted on machines of the time, with many regarding the power
socket switch as a suitable current eliminator. Like the TRS-80, CoCo and indeed other machines
such as the Texas TI99, the limitations of the ROM meant the machine was unable to display
lower case characters. This wasn't a problem for gaming use, but it severely impacted their
penetration into educational and business markets, which was a shame given some of the
more suitable technical quirks. Still, as standards of the day went, it was a reasonable
machine. It's August launch date and almost immediate
availability in high street shops attracted a spike of interest, with several independent
software developers jumping on board including Microdeal who had experience with Tandy's
CoCo. The magazine, Dragon User also emerged quite quickly providing promise for the Welsh
machine. As this was an era where new machines could appear and disappear with hardly a recognising
nod, these early signs bode well for Dragon. As well as selling well among Welsh inhabitants,
the Dragon 32 fitted into an area of the market that was cheaper than the BBC Micro, but not
too overpriced that it put off potential Sinclair customers, selling for a reasonable £175.
It also possessed the rugged look of Acorn's BBC machine, with a real keyboard and large
plastic case capable of supporting a monitor or small television. If you were looking for
a well built machine with room for expansion, then the Dragon seemed a good direction to
go in. Pushed on by favourable reviews, Personal Computer News charted the machine as the 3rd
best seller on September 15th 1982 and it would go on to sell over 40,000 units before
1982 was out. Supply was outstripping production. However as 1982 drew to a close, Mettoy's
financial situation was looking dire. It's core toy business had been losing money at
an increasingly frantic pace and this was affecting Dragon Data's finances. Despite
the Dragon 32's success, banks were unwilling to provide finance admist an increasingly
saturated micro market. Managing director Tony Clark began discussions with various
companies and institutions for re-financing options. The Welsh Development agency bought
a 23% stake, and Pru-tech, the high-tech investment arm of Prudential Insurance snapped up 42%
and the controlling stake. Mettoy were left with just a 15.5% share, but this enabled
Dragon Data to continue development and contract out Race Electronics to assist with delivery
demand. Part of the deal with the Welsh Development Agency was also to move to a larger manufacturing
premises at Kenfig, near Port Talbot. Of course this made sense, but large overheads are only
good when large demand is present. The input of investment shifted Dragon Data
to become the largest privately owned company in Wales and the increased production allowed
chains such as Dixons and Comet to begin stocking the popular machines. 10,000 Dragon machines
were being produced per week, with Dragon Data foreseeing no drop off in their fortune,
even in the wake of the Sinclair Spectrum and Commodore 64 now entering the high street
in chains such as WH Smith and John Menzies. However, there were problems in wait. Some
foreseeable, others not. The first was the specification. The CPU was
pretty powerful compared to the Z80 and 6502 chips found in Spectrum and Commodore machines,
but it wasn't mainstream. We all know that success often lies with third party development,
and due to the painful process of having to re-write games from other platforms from scratch,
many didn't bother, with exceptions like Memotech already having a line of software for the
virtually identical CoCo. Talking of platforms, other machines had better graphic and text
support, with the Dragon built on hardware that was now, some 3 years old. In high resolution
mode, the Dragon could only display 2 colours, and only 4 on screen in standard resolutions,
coupled with this, it couldn't combine text and graphical modes, further adding to development
woes. Other contenders had also began to pop with with the likes of the Oric-1 and Memotech
MTX. This led to increased market saturation with the Commodore 64 and Spectrum emerging
as the dominant force, the latter now selling 16KB models for under £100! Suddenly, combined
with the summer lull those 10,000 units being produced per week started to stack up in warehouses.
The shine was again starting to look rather grim and Dragon's advertising pretty much
telling buyers to leave the coding to experts didn't help matters. Not in their nature to be pessimistic, Dragon
Data continued planning out a line of expansions. The first was a 5 1/4" DragonDOS based disk
drive, the second was a new OS-9 Operating System licenced from Microware Systems and
the third was a 64KB RAM upgrade and subsequent standalone system. The disk drives were planned
for April, but arrived in September at £275 or £475 for twin drives, unfortunately not
before a third party, Premier Delta had launched their own. It seems the delay was costly as
the Delta operating system was generally deemed superior to DragonDOS and took a greater market
share. The 64KB RAM upgrade, which was initially
announced as a single board swap for £75 was advertised as a £100 whole lower case
swap by May, offering an additional RS232 interface and second BASIC ROM, essentially
converting 32 systems to the same specifications as the anticipated Dragon 64. The second ROM
allowed booting in 64KB mode by shifting the BASIC to occupy the upper 16KB of RAM, but
oddly meant the disk drive functionality was unavailable as it mapped into the cartridge
port's RAM space. However 32 owners wouldn't see any such upgrades this year. Dragon also announced the new Dragon 64 would
arrive on US shores, distributed and ultimately manufactured by Tano Corporation. Dealers
were anxious about the price war between Commodore, Atari and Texas in the states and it was believed
a robust, reliable system like the Dragon could deliver higher profit margins, therefore
spiking interest in retailers. Launching before the UK on 26th August at $399 it also bundled
with a spreadsheet, mail-merge and wordprocessor. Dragon announced that two further systems
were in the pipeline, the first being a direct competitor for the higher end BBC model B
hardware and the second a full blown business system aimed to compete with the IBM PC. It
seems an amalgamation of these was prototyped the following year, featuring two MC6809E
processors, a numeric keypad, 128KB or 256KB of RAM and the new OS-9 but it never made
it to market. Back in the UK, the US deal didn't help managing
Director Tony Clarke. Now sitting on a mountain of unsold Dragon 32s, shareholders gave a
helping nudge and Tony left the company for "personal reasons". On September 12th, Prutech,
who also held the major share in General Electric Company asked Brian Moore, the GEC deputy
director to take over the reigns at Dragon Data along with a £2.5 million investment
to keep the company moving forward, this saw GEC effectively take over control of Dragon,
working out perfectly, as GEC were keen to enter the home micro market themselves by
now. With 80,000 Dragon 32s sold to date, it was hoped the Christmas period would shift
most of the excess stock. But before Christmas would arrive, Mettoy,
the instigator of the Dragon, and still a 15% shareholder had to call in the receivers.
It's overall toy line just wasn't performing and a management buy out led to the formation
of Corgi Toys Limited. Prutech upped it's shares to 49% at this point and made sure
to push the message home that Mettoy's demise would not effect the ongoing operation of
Dragon Data and it's expanding computer line. Ever keen to push forward, the grey Dragon
64s appeared in November with more pleasing keyboard aesthetics, sporting a smaller font
(Although still lacking a lower case mode). Also it was just in time for Christmas, priced
at £225, and poised to demonstrate that the Dragon brand was still strong and going places.
The 64 was well received over this period, both in the UK and US operations after being
promoted at the Color Computer Expo in Pasadena. The French arm of Dragon was also in it's
infancy at this point and by Christmas 1983, had shipped 20k Dragon 32s themselves. As 1984 rolled around, the 64KB upgrade for
32 owners was still not in sight, but a new plan was put into motion. Users could exchange
their 32s for 64s, eliminating the need for modifications or costly technical work, but
with the trade in cost set at £140, many users preferred the option of selling their
current 32 models and simply buying a Commodore 64, whilst still having cash to spare. It
had also become apparent that some software would no longer function on later revisions
of the 32. Coders had cunningly found a "speed up Poke" early on which allowed overclocking
of the processor to a whopping 1.8MHz, however newer machines seemed to have lower tolerances,
possibly due to lower quality components which would not operate with this poke. Games such
as "Up Periscope" and "Flight Simulation" just refused to work. Consumer patience was
being tested and allegiances were falling stray with even more machines entering the
market. Owners of Disk Drives would be graced with
the somewhat late arrival of OS-9 by March offering multi tasking, resource sharing over
networks, file ownership and even the possibility of a graphical user interface. For £40 you
got the single 5 1/4" floppy and a manual with additional applications such as the Stylograph
word processor, Dynacalc spreadsheet and RMS database available for between £55 and £80.
Drive owners were keen to snap the software up, providing the machine some added life
with various programming languages available for the operating system. It would later transpire
that Dragon, now known as GEC Dragon, never actually paid a licencing fee to Microware,
likely due to the troubles on the horizon. Over the next couple of months GEC would push
more professional advertising out for the Dragon machines with double page spreads selling
the perks of the computer with potential promised printers, monitors and cassette decks on the
way, and new machines even promised. The first was a transportable 64K machine expected to
include a modem, 3.5" Sony disk drive and reported to be compatible with previous Dragon
hardware. This machine was called Project Alpha and demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics
Trade Exhibition in May. The 3.5" drive also seems to point at GECs desire to launch an
MSX compatible system in the UK. MSX was an attempt to standardise 8 bit home computers,
emerging in Japan (you can watch my MSX video to find out more), and as part of that standard
the new Sony 3.5" disk drives had taken precedent over Hitatchi's 3" drives. It seems likely
that this Alpha system was a middle step on the road to MSX. The other new machine, called
the Beta machine, was the souped up amalgamation of the systems announced the prior year. However, at the same time these machines were
being exhibited. Dragon Data had some problems. A month prior BHS had slashed the prices of
it's Dragon 32 stock to £87.50, as they cleared shelves to stock a competitor machine. Boots
had also cut prices and announced they would stop stocking the 32. In reality they were
looking to stock the Dragon 64 instead, but it sent a negative message out to the public,
and in any case, many saw the 64 as just a slightly expanded 32 in the face of other,
more capable machines. In wake of declining sales, GEC Dragon went
into administration during the spring of 1984, with Tano over in America also stopping support
for the dwindling machine. Dixons quickly slashed the price of their stock to £79.99
with a bundle of free software. Dragon 64s were lowered to £169.99 and disk drives for
less than £100. As with all price cuts, this actually formed a new wave of users who, unaware
of compatibility or ongoing support snapped up the discounted equipment and entered into
the new digital age. 100 machines were also given to Weetabix who ran a promotion offering
a pretty substantial prize including a Dragon 64, television, disk drive, cassette deck
and space invaders type game. To be honest, I'm tempted to try and enter myself, even
now! Software houses like Salamander Software began
to re-evaluate and quickly entered talks with Tandy to see if they could sell titles to
the American market. Something you question why they didn't do earlier, especially with
a massive market available overseas which required very little work to adapt Dragon
software to, given the CoCo's some 95% compatibility following a few address tweaks. Still they
needn't have worried too much as the UK Dragon user count was over 200,000 at this point.
Dragon wasn't quite dead yet and several bidders would queue up to grab themselves a bargain.
One of these was Tandy, who, failing to capture the UK market with their own computers (which
were twice the price as Dragon's offering) saw an easy route in with a largely compatible
machine. However they were put off by existing liabilities and outstanding stock, and their
bid was rejected by the receivers. This is when the Spanish company Eurohard SA stepped
in, offering £1million and securing the company and a portion of it's existing stock. Eurohard had actually been in talks with Dragon
before they went under seeking to licence the machines for sale in Spain, and so a cheap
buy-out made perfect sense. The buy-out agreement meant GEC would continue marketing in the
UK, and a new company, Touchmaster, backed again by Pru-tech, would provide after sales
support. Touchmaster took up residence at Dragon's site in Port Talbort, consisting
of mostly the same employees. A new deal was then forged with Comet to take existing stock
and Dragon 64s were soon selling for just £130. This swelled the user base, further
sparking a resurgence that would last for the next few years. The mid decade based year of 1985 was looming
and over in Spain Eurohard had embarked on a BBC Micro inspired idea, with the assistance
of the Spanish government, to sell their newly named Dragon 100 and Dragon 200 machines alongside
an educational television show that would air in schools and would introduce the country
to the wonderful world of 8 bit computing. Eurohard had purchased 13,000 Dragons as part
of their takeover and were selling at £200 for the 100 and £300 for the 20 model, they
also began production at their own plant in Caceres. Keen to expand on Dragon's MSX ideas they
also signed an agreement with Microsoft to be one of the first distributors of MSX machines
in the West, producing the Dragon MSX prototypes in May 1985. Based around the MSX architecture,
these were of course, incompatible with the earlier Dragon machines, however on selling
only 17,000 standard Dragon machines in the Spanish home market - less than anticipated
- and giving away another 20,000 to schools and institutes through the Government subsidy
programme, Eurohard were unable to expand further and production of the new MSX range
ceased. Back in the UK, Eurohard had appointed Compusense
to try and shift further Dragon units from their own stocks, but the software market
was starting to crumble. Websters, one of the biggest distributors had ceased handling
Dragon software whist the long-standing Dragon User magazine was forced to switch to subscription
only from June 1986. In May 1987 Eurohard closed up it's Dragon operations and in January
1988, Microdeal, the original main supporter of the Dragon announced they were pulling
out of the market. This didn't leave much left for Dragon owners,
with the committed Dragon User magazine finally giving up the ghost in January 1989 after
being run by Bob Harris for the last 7 issues from his own pocket. Bob had been running
Harris Micro Software, one of the most avid and final supporters of the hardware. The
last Dragon show was held in September 1994 at a school in Liverpool on the same day as
their Autumn fare. Marking the end of this ferocious, mythical beast. But let's not end on a depressing note. For
although the Dragon led a short life, it was a firey one, if a rather vivid green fire
at that, but with an admirable collection of games and software. Here are some of my
favourite titles on the Welsh machine; Phantom Slayer is an incredibly early First
person shooter. One of the earliest, and the eerie stalking Phantoms, incite a definite
feeling of dread. Jet Set Willy 64 is a great conversion of
the classic Spectrum game, although displayed in monochrome form due to high resolution
requirements. Chuckie egg, another classic and unmistakably
green here. Donkey King is a garish incarnation of the
arcade classic. I dunno. There's just something I love about the garish palette. Airball sees us in an isometric perspective
and it's a giant leap forward over a lot of previous Dragon games. Later ported to the
Amiga, Atari ST and even Gameboy Advance. Rommel's Revenge does a grand job of imitating
vector graphics, again using high resolution mode, but the alternative and distinctly green
monochrome variant. Funnily enough, the Dragon doesn't actually have black, it's just a very
dark green. So much green. BackTrack, again I love the colours here.
This is a maze game where you have to guide your chappy through various rooms, seeking
keys. Marvelous. and last, is Leggit. Again bright, but using
distinctly different hues. I sometimes think that a restrictive palette can bring out the
best in a screen. The premise here is to jump through the gaps whilst avoiding enemies and
it works beautifully. So there we go. That was, and indeed is, the
Dragon series of computers. The computer that inspired it's user base, gave us green induced
eyestrain, albeit in a pleasing fashion, brought us all a little closer to Welsh rooted micros
and reminded us that it's possible just to hang on in there, despite soaring competition
and the waves of obstacles telling us otherwise. The Dragon legacy lives on through it's committed
fan base, with newer games such as The Glove, a Gauntlet clone, released a few years back.
Apparently a company called California Digital bought the remaning Tano Dragon stock and
since 2009, you can buy them for $49. Brand new! Although shipping to the UK is about
$90. Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed this
look into a little known computer of the past. Please give it a thumbs up if you liked it,
or down if you hated it. Click a video below, subscribe for more or contribute to my Patreon
to support me. In any case, thank you very much for watching and as always, have a good
night. I'd like to take this moment to give a big
thanks to John from StigsWorld for helping me with some footage of Dragon machines. I
sold one of my machines a while back, so it was a a big help. Please visit his channel
at the link below. Also big thanks to the Dragon Archive for allowing me to borrow some
content. If you're after a vast selection of Dragon internet things, then head to (worldofdragon.org). Most of the backing music in this video is
by Snowkitten. You can pick up the greatest hits album at (snowkitten.bandcamp.com) Massive,
massive thank you to every single one of my patrons for making this channel possible.
Some of whom's names are now scrolling across the screen. God speed, and I'll see you on
the next video.
