To those wondering if the RF signal _always_ looks that bad, check out the same Dragon BASIC running on a TRS-80 Color Computer through the same setup. Not great by any means, but a lot better than what's seen in the unboxing! The machine just needs a little repair work :) i.imgur.com/zRxqLsf.png
If you get an Atari 800XL monochrome (not color) video cable, it will work perfectly as a video cable for the Dragon -- the pinout matches its audio and color composite video outputs.
Dude, could you do me a solid and make like a Blerbs Digest on your main channel every week or so? Just like, a 3 minute video showing the highlights of the more recent videos posted here, but at your main channel, set to the tune of that great Thrifting organ music? I'd enjoy that as crossover promotion! A lot of folks don't know this channel exists and they should! : (
The Dragon 32 was the first computer I ever used. One of my teachers at school had one and brought it in to school. Of course, all the cool kids got to use it (or try to use it) first. No one could even get it to load any software so I was left alone with it for an afternoon. It was one of the most memorable days of my life. Happy memories
If you'd told me in 1980-something that in 2020 I'd be watching a video on my PC of someone taking near pornographic pleasure in unboxing a Dragon computer I wouldn't have believed you. In fact I barely believe I'm not imagining posting this comment.
Honestly. I couldn't imagine back in the day. Think of the monitors consumers had access to back in the day, and imagine watching something like this 😳
But it actually worked. It's a perfectly good method if there's any real chance it could improve or fix something. At least it saved him the trouble of opening the thing, without any further damage.
@@rautamiekka Aivan. Se on hyväksi havaittu ja todettu konsti... etenkin vanhojen kuvaputkitelevisioiden kanssa. 😂 Nice to see other finnish folks here too. 😄
On the uk dragon's the channel select switch at the back is the power on/off switch and the power brick does not have a switch on it. Those sticking keys are caused by a misaligned top half of the case. It's a common problem. The keys are actually touching the case at the sides. Take the top of the case off and realign it
Being a Welsh computer I'm curious if they make the L key spring extra robust. How else could you type real welsh words such as Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch?
"COURIER PILOT was written in DRAGON BASIC by 14 year-old Tyson Sawyer of Jaffery, New Hampshire." Wonder whatever happened to him, and if he's still upset they misspelled Jaffrey.
The first time I ever got paid to write a program, a friend of my father owned a small shop that made custom picture frames, and he wanted a point-of-sale system that would print out receipts and save transactions. He'd bought a Tandy Color Computer from the local Radio Shack, but had no clue what to do with it. So in the summer of '82 (I was 12 years old) I wrote him some software and taught him how to use it. Also taught him BASIC so he could maintain it himself, and make changes as needed. Got paid $50 -- I thought I was *rich!* LOL! $50 for a 12-year-old in 1982 was a ton of money, honestly. That was when I first realized I could turn my fascination with computers into a career. :-)
dude orders a 36 years old compute thay say 26 years in a warehouser, keeps it around for 10 years, suffers moves and stuff, box is still good. i order a genesis mini and a pc engine mini from amazon, box comes like someone was playing soccer with it from their warehouse until it reached new york.... WHAT THE HELL ?
Was that damage to the Amazon box? Here in the UK, they sometimes cheap out and don't bother with the outer box. Just slap a delivery label straight onto the retail box so everyone can see what you bought🤦 Other retailers use just a polymer postal bag which provides little to no protection but at least keeps all the broken bits together in the bag.
@@DavidLee-df888 not the amazon box, the box of the item, both items came inside a bag, just an amazon bag, imagine sending tech in a bag....i wept and wept and wept for days after days, how can they package a collectible piece of tech inside a bag and send it to someone ?
@@hunterjayfilm they sent the items to me in an naylon bag, not a box, not even a padded bag....a gray one with amazon logo on it....that is really messed up from them, sending a very nice piece of collectable tech in a bag...
@@hunterjayfilm That may be the case in the US. Here, the option exists for "no Amazon box". I tried that out in early August for my PC case, and yup it was literally the retail box with an Amazon label on it. Lucky it was a PC case so big and bulky but not too heavy, I think it said 10 kg(22lbs). Not really worth nicking, but still £65🤷
@@EpicLebaneseNerd Yup, that's how some retailers send stuff. A poly mailing bag, to hold all the broken pieces in one place, lol. I had a Seasonic PSU sent that way, lucky they're tough.
@@son3mendo We were also graced with Gun Jesus from Forgotten Weapons giving us an overview of a great light machine gun from the proud mud people of Elbonia.
Or use a , (comma) instead to tabulate the text. I don’t know for certain if it works on this machine, but it does on the Apple ][ and some other 8-bit micros.
Yeah, absolutely. Without a newline the scrolling pattern is much more mesmerising. (Well there actually *is* a pattern -- otherwise it's just boring.) And it can be a one-liner too, saves on a few keystrokes. Real programmers are lazy. :)
Possible reason for the power switch: the UK has switches on every socket. Computer like the Acorn Atom and Sinclair Spectrum don't have any kind of power switch because you'd just turn it off at the wall. I imagine the same is true for the dragon, so for the USA they just slapped a button on the external brick.
Modern sockets in the UK have a switch. At the time of launch for the Atom, the Spectrum and the Dragon it certainly wasn't common and there are still many, many houses in the UK where you won't find switched sockets - my parents' house for example, which is modern in almost every other way doesn't have a single switched socket.
@@benanderson89 If you had a Spectrum you'd pull the lead out of the computer and plug it back in. Eventually you'd get a loose connection in the barrel plug and have to tape it up securely to hold the connection together until it finally died and you had to manually call every computer shop in the Yellow Pages until you found one that sold new PSUs! The one thing I envied my C64 owning friends was a proper power switch on the computer itself!!
19:10 "Dang it the button doesn't work!" I just 2 days ago visited retro computer exhibition in Yandex Museum in Moscow, and played same looking game! And button on their joatik didn't work too!
I had one of these for my tenth birthday in 1984 (had to share it with my brother). I already had a commodore 64 We had endless novelty fun typing gibberish
Sadly, the flaky operation you are seeing was very typical of the Dragon 32/64 when new back in the 80's, part of the reason they went under. Power supplies were a big problem, so was the cart port, wobbly carts killed the mobo. This coupled to manufacturing issues and QC problems at the factory led to their demise. Strange coincidence I found a pile of old schematics today that included the complete set for a D32, then suddenly this video....
Is there some big tech channel of his besides LGR and Blerbs I am missing? For years now he kept talking about "more involved" videos and "big projects" he has apparantly going, but I feel like we never got to see most of those on those two channels :D
Just about everything on LGR is a big project these days, compared to the zero effort content here on Blerbs. Most scripted LGR videos take at least two weeks and dozens of hours of work to put together, often longer. And many more have been in the works for years but are stalled for one reason or another, usually related to old hardware being finicky :)
One the guys (The Retro Channel) did a Svideo mod for a Coco 1 for SepTandy that maaaay be useful? I know he wanted to see if it worked both on NTSC and a Dragon.
I loved Downland! One of my CoCo favorites. I must defend the 'awful' CoCo joysticks. Although lightly built, they were legitimately quite precise once you got used to them, particularly the non self-centering aspect. It took time, but I grew to love them.
Oh yes, I remember in the Spring of 1982 when my boarding school here at Englandshire was donated two brand new Dragon 32s including new Ferguson portable colour TVs & cassette players with grand plans of introducing computer lessons into the curriculum. Straightaway they both took pride in the corner of the classroom to be admired by us starstruck pupils,, but the reality was that no one - not even the teacher - really knew how to use them and they never came with any software, so they sat left untouched most of the time (apart from the one time when someone did type up a simple Pacman game from a magazine). It was only a few months before they were moved to a small side room no bigger than a broom cupboard to be left forgotten and gathering dust. The Dragon 32 never really got anywhere as much love as the Spectrum 48 and Commodore 64, and to be honest wasn't that of a surprise looking back.
It'd be worth going over everything in it and refreshing the solder joints, replace the caps, stuff like that. Old electrolytics that have been sat for 30odd year do not work at their best haha, that could also contribute to visual noise. The filter caps in the PSU should be changed, too. Just generally give it a bit of a refresh and a bit of attention and it'll be fantastic.
I think the headquarters for Dragon Data was in LLansamlet, Swansea, unless I am getting mixed up with The Sam coupe which I might well be. I live somewhere in the Swansea valley.
So many people didn't realize that the RF modulator on Coco, Atari, Commodore, etc. computers and game systems was simply a 75 Ohm antenna connection. During the last couple of years of the 8-bit era I ditched the "TV/GAME" or "TV/COMP" slide switch adapters, and simply used an F-to-RCA adapter.
My first computer was the Dragon 32 and I still have it, remember my family unboxing it back in 1983 so this was an interesting video for me as those early experiences slowly entering 'type ins' from magazines and writing silly Basic programs lead to a career in software including a degree in computer science & AI and a while working as a video game developer followed by 20 years of professional software development. I don't have the power supply anymore though and don't fancy wiring one up, they don't come up often on Ebay :( I recall being a bit jealous of Spectrum/C64 owners though however in retrospect the Dragon/Tandy does have a respectable Motorolla CPU 6809 but wasn't very capable at graphics especially in the UK where our TVs couldn't do the artifact tricks to create more colours.
You could do the colour artifacts on some TV's. All you had to do was open up the Dragon, and on the modulator there is a screw buried that is used to tune/detune. I was able to get brown and blue quite easily, however the cost was image quality. In the monochrome games it was ok but in actual colour on on any kind of text it was awful. Needless to say the top of my case stayed off so I could retune the modulator often.
...also, I'd not turn on a device *that* old withouth replacing the caps first. If there's one really bad, it might take out some chips too. That's why I always do the caps first, tryout later :)
Would like to see a CoCo arcade knock-off retrospective. Galagon, Cubix, Lunar Rover Patrol, Lancer, Donkey King, Guardian, Colorpede, Ms. Pac Attack, Mr. Dig, Jr's Revenge, Color Pac Attack, Buzzard Bait, SO many others.
also, they was never really "a thing in the uk" more a flash in the pan, like so many other models at the time. the early eighties in the uk was quite an exciting and dynamic time, with the explosion of the micro computer becoming a thing back then.
Here in Denmark, we also followed the situation closely via magazines like "Your Computer", and I remember my friend and I joking about "which new computer will they write about _this_ month?"
Really the Dragon was little more than a cynical cash-in by a near-bankrupt toy company desperate to get into the computer thing, so unlike Sinclair, Acorn, Oric etc who put in years of expensive engineering research to build entirely new machines, Mettoy just bought an off-the-shelf, two year old design and built it in an under-utilised factory in Wales. The kids saw right through it. It's a competent enough computer but was never really cut out for games.
@@BertGrink You obviously didn't get "New Computer Express" which was published weekly in order to be up to date :-) Your Computer was a good magazine though as it covered lots of different machines. Later specialist magazines like Your Spectrum came out. I used to get MSX User which was the only way to find out what was happening in the small world of UK MSX then ST USer when I switched to that machine. By coincidence one of the rarest home computer of all time is the Dragon MSX.
@@jasejj I don't think "Years of Engineering expertise" went in any of the computers you list :-) . O.K Two Years at the most. The Japanese MSX machines probably did incorporate years of experience which is why they were almost out of date before they hit the market. The reason the Dragon and Tandy Color Computer are so similar is that they were both based on a design Motorola published in order to try and sell more 6809 processors.
@@MrDuncl You are right, i never saw New Computer Express in my small Danish town; only the biggest magazines came our way, unfortunately. It is only in recent years that I've become aware of those weekly magazines, in a large part thanks to Jim Grimwood's "The Type Fantastic" webpages that cover type-ins for the Sinclair machines. :)
oh man! that graphics grid...I TOTALLY remember drawing jets firing lasers and tanks and other SH...tuff on those back in 6th grade so I could program them in BASIC. WOW! Why I love this channel...it's like digging up old memories I didn't even remember I had...lol...great stuff
4 года назад
My very first computer! The Dragon 32! OF course, made in Wales by DragonData, U.K. which is where we got our from back in 1982! Actually, all our first 4 computers were made in Britain! Dragon 32, ZX Spectrum Amstrad CPC 464 and The Amiga. OK, 3! I loved the Dragon 32, even though it was a pile of crap! I actually even loved it more than the Speccy!
I watched at 1.5x speed....and still felt the pacing was too damn slow. I get that RU-vid algorithm loves longer videos, but god damn'it if these unboxing videos aren't too long...
13 Sept 2020, and this video still produces the "Your browser does not currently recognize any of the video formats available." error message, despite having already watched the latest videos from *Techmoan,* *Pixelmusement,* *Technology Connections,* and *The 8-Bit Guy* the same day. EDIT: The video now plays. I don't know if this directly because of my comment, or technical issues with RU-vid's junk advert system.
As the light beamed through its polythene packaging, the Dragon was so excited. 40 years sitting in the dark without being opened, and now, finally, it was going to be able to stretch its silicon with a computational calculation. What problems would it be able to solve? What marvels would it discover? And then the owner entered the code for it to run: 10 PRINT "FARTS" 20 GOTO 10
The Dragon 32 is basically the same thing as a Coco 1 but with a different ROM (almost identical to Extended Color Basic), the wires in the keyboard connector rearranged, and a parallel port instead of a serial port. You can make it Coco compatible by changing the ROM and making an adapter to put the keyboard wires in a different order. The Dragon's often regarded as a clone of the Coco, but it's fairer to say that they're both implementations of the same Motorola reference design from the datasheets for the chipset (6809 CPU, 6847 VDG and 6883 SAM).
I never heard of this computer, and I was a major computer nerd (albeit in elementary school) at the time... [Serial number 003936] Well, that explains it-they basically never sold any of these if New Old Stock models (which probably were the last made) had serial numbers that low. For reference, the computer my family had, the Commodore 64, sold somewhere around 10-20 million units. Looks like the UK version might have been more common but these barely (or never?) sold in the US.
The Dragon32 was my second computer, after the ZX81... It was one the nicer looking home computers at the time, looked like a PROPER computer. Sadly the case and keyboard was the only good points, just about the Everything from that point was a disappointment, the terrible colours that made your eyeballs melt resulted in awful looking games. The joysticks were just awful, as you saw. Then my neighbour got a C64 and that just made things even worse.... all I wanted form that point on was a C64,
I live in the town in Wales where this machine was manufactured. In fact my mother lives about half a mile away from where the Dragon factory once stood :D
IIRC, in the UK these were sold as the Dragon 32 and Dragon 64 with 32k and 64k RAM respectively. The Dragon 32 case was beige, and the Dragon 64 was light grey.
Great unboxing! Maybe a revisit for you, notice the black knurled knob on the 1-12? selector of the Panasonic monitor/television. If you slide that inward, you can fine tune channel 3. That might improve the signal. Things from my childhood. Keep up the awesome work! I am a huge LGR fan. (It's like a safety cap on prescription medicine. It prevents you from spinning it accidentally. So if you push it inward and spin at the same time, it makes contact with a gear within the tuning mechanism.)
Ah, the Dragon 32 was the first computer I ever used and the my first gaming experience. My Dad picked one up cheap in the mid-eighties with a bunch of software. Over time Dragon 64s and all manner of peripherals, including disk drives were added. They were used for running the membership database of the local sailing club until the mid nineties. In many ways I feel nostalgic about it, but I'm not about to say it was ever a particularly good machine. Truly awful keyboard, cheap feeling case, and lacking the colour mode of the Coco (what colour there is is extremely limited). The best thing about it was the decent library of games courtesy of the Coco - even if you were stuck playing it monochrome for the most part (or one of the migrane-inducing colour modes). There were lots of 'bootleg' versions of arcade classics, like 'Donkey King' and 'Cosmic Invaders'. You've probably played most of the best games, like Downland and Time Bandit, on the Coco. They're the same on the Dragon but just look worse. Probably my favourite game on the system was 'Cashman', a really inventive 2 player platformer with tons of screens - up there with Bubble Bobble for me, although technically more primitive of course. If you can find a copy of that somewhere then it's well worth a look. Played a lot of that back in the day. I think it was a Coco game but I've never heard of it on any other platform. I'm probably the only person who remembers it. lol.
Just thinking here; but if that's from '84, then it may be liquidated stock from when Dragon Data went bankrupt in '84. All they'd need to do was swap in an NTSC video chip and maybe a clock oscillators and/or set a few jumpers at most.
Please tell me you were referencing Steve1989 from MRE reviews when you said “nice..” after commenting about the bag being of high quality almost as if it were an MRE bag.. cause that would be legendary. Love the content man. You are appreciated.
Most British micros up until the Amstrad era, with the exception of the more expensive Acorn machines like the BBC Micro, all followed the pattern of external power supplies with no switch on the machine itself. I have no idea why this is the case. CORRECTION: The UK Dragon does have a power switch in the place where the channel switch is in yours. I'd just never used it because our sockets usually have switches.
I've never had anything this nice in my life. Every time I try to buy anything like this it's either freshly sold out or just out of my price range. I've finally decided to build a Commodore 64 from scratch because the individual components are the only thing I can afford. I figure it will take about a year. Buy the time it's done I imagine that the prices on the ororiginal will be even higher, placing one permanent beyond my reach. I've asked people (relatives and friends) in three states to keep an eye on yard sales for Commodore and Tandy machines in my price range but so far no luck. Back in 2008 when the Tandy Dragon was $40 I was unemployed. Now that I've been to school and am a certified pharmacy technician, the things are $300.
