Description :

We're back for the weekend! 28th/29th - You don't have to be a Dragon owner - or even know much about Dragons - to come to this celebration of the classic Welsh home computer.

This small but active user group have been collecting, restoring, developing and expanding their machines for over 35 years.

The Dragon was always a programmer's machine. With a proper keyboard, a good basic and a great processor (the 6809), plus a simple architecture, the Dragon was the introduction into programming for many a bedroom coder.

We'll be showing Dragon 32s running games - both old and new. We'll be showing Dragon 64s running Flex and OS/9, the two professional operating systems available in the 80s, as well as 80 column Dragon Plus systems to show the machine's true potential. We even hope to be running a version of multi-user Unix!

Of course, it's not all about the past. The Dragon is still a simple machine to program, and new software is being produced all the time. Come meet the people who still develop new games and utilities and see the very latest software. We'll also have a chance to win prizes by getting the high scores on some of the latest games!

We'll have plenty of hardware on show. There'll be VGA, RGB and 80 Column upgrades, and a chance to see the Sprite board too (Dragon meets MSX!).

Hopefully we'll have some Dragon prototypes, the Thorn EMI Liberator and other exotic Dragons and peripherals from the last 35 years.

 We'll also have a collection of other 6809 machines from all over the world (well, Japan and France!) to show you the versitility of this amazing 8-bit processor.

 If you have a Dragon or other 6809 machine you'd like to bring or some software you'd like to demonstrate, please drop a line to tony@computinghistory.org.uk - we'd love to hear from you.

Time: 10.30am - 4pm on Saturday and Sunday.