Amin Girasol @fluidlogic@oldbytes.space
Public

Richard of dragondata.co.uk got to spread out across two display tables today, with a collection of unique Dragon prototypes. He was incredibly generous with his time!

I knew the had a lot in common with the , but I'd always assumed that was thanks to some kind of licencing arrangement. That's not the case! Richard describes the Dragon 32 as an "incompatible clone" of the . Yet Tandy chose not to sue, because the CoCo in turn was a copy of the Motorola 6809 reference implementation!

The only working GEC Dragon "The Professional" in the world. There are a handful of other known examples, none of which work. The machine is a sober mid-grey, with the rear part of the case raised to accommodate two full-height 3½ inch floppy disk drives. It looks very serious and professional. Sadly Dragon Data went bust before the machine came to market. This machine, along with related marketing photos and graphics, was donated to Richard by the last managing director of Dragon Data.A very early Dragon 32 prototype in a lighter cream case that the production version. The informational note reads "Pre-production prototype. No serial number. May 1982. Issue 1 mainboard". Richard flipped it upside down for me yesterday to show me the place where the serial number would go; instead, it bears the initials of the designer, Ian somebody, who remains resolutely uncontactable, despite multiple attempts.A Dragon 32 with the top cover off. It's a very neat layout. The 6509 is on the right hand side of the board, to the left of the peripheral bus.A Dragon 32 retail box, with a photo of models posing as the prototypical white middle class family at whom the computer was targeted. In a row, from furthest from the camera to closest, we see a little brown-haired girl who is looking at the computer screen and smiling. She's wearing a tan blouse. Her hands are folded in front of her, elbows on the table. Next to her is mum, with strawberry blonde hair, also smiling and looking at the screen. It's not possible to determine her hair length; she appears to be wearing a cream coloured blouse. Mum has her arm around the little girl's shoulder. Next to her is dad, fortyish, with an executive haircut of the era, smiling and looking at the son's eyeline. Dad is wearing a white shirt open at the collar. In the foreground is son, very blond, wearing a comfy cream sweatshirt with double bands of rusty stripes. He is looking at the screen. His left hand is on the Dragon computer keyboard and his right hand points to the screen. The computer is placed on a wood veneer table; the edge of some framed art is visible on the magnolia wall. The word "DRAGON" has the colour spectrum reversed out of it, with the dragon logo to the left at the red end of the spectrum. The text "The family computer to fire your imagination" appears underneath.
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