Dragon Data Ltd. was a

Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...

producer of home computers during the early 1980s. These computers, the Dragon 32 and Dragon 64, strongly resembled the Tandy

TRS-80 Color Computer The RadioShack TRS-80 Color Computer, later marketed as the Tandy Color Computer and sometimes nicknamed the CoCo, is a line of home computers developed and sold by Tandy Corporation. Despite sharing a name with the earlier TRS-80, the Color Co ...

("CoCo")—both followed a standard Motorola datasheet configuration for the three key components (CPU, SAM and VDG). The machines came in both 32KB and (later) 64KB versions.

History

The history of Dragon Data in the period 1982–84 was a checkered one. The company was originally set up by toy company

Mettoy Mettoy (an abbreviation of "Metal Toy") was a British manufacturing company founded in 1933 by German émigré Philip Ullmann, who was later joined by South African-born German Arthur Katz who had previously worked for Ullmann at his toy company T ...

, and after initial good sales looked to have a bright future. At its high point it entered negotiations with Rexnord's Tano Corporation to form a North American branch. Mettoy then suffered financial difficulties, casting a shadow on the future of Dragon Data before it was spun off as a separate company. However, a number of circumstances (the delay in introducing the 64K model, poor colour support with a maximum of 4 colours displayable in "graphics mode" and only 2 colours in the highest 256 × 192 pixel mode, the late introduction of the external disk unit and of the supporting OS9-based software) caused the company to lose market share. To combat this, under the control of GEC, Dragon Data worked on the next generation of Dragon computers; the Dragon Alpha (or Professional) and Beta (or 128). These systems only made it to the prototype stage before the business went into receivership and was sold on to the Spanish startup Eurohard in 1984. Eurohard also suffered financial problems and went into receivership a couple of years later after the release of the Dragon 200. In addition to the Dragon 32 and 64, an

MSX MSX is a standardized home computer architecture, announced by Microsoft and ASCII Corporation on June 16, 1983. It was initially conceived by Microsoft as a product for the Eastern sector, and jointly marketed by Kazuhiko Nishi, then vice-p ...

-compatible machine, the

Dragon MSX The Dragon MSX MSX 1 home computer was designed by Radofin (the creators of the Mattel Aquarius) for Dragon Data, which were well known for their Dragon 64 home computer, a clone of the TRS-80 Color Computer. Only a few prototypes were ever ...

reached the prototype stage.

References

* Smeed, D. & Sommerville, I. (1983). ''Inside the Dragon''. Addison-Wesley.

External links

A Slayed Beast - History of the Dragon computer
– From The DRAGON Archive
Dedicated DRAGON wiki
Defunct computer hardware companies Defunct computer companies of the United Kingdom Defunct companies of Wales Home computer hardware companies Computer companies established in 1982 Computer companies disestablished in 1984 1982 establishments in Wales 1984 disestablishments in Wales Manufacturing companies of Wales {{ict-company-stub