Technology | Nostalgia | 1980s
Remembering the Dragon 32
Facts, opinions, and personal memories of a computer I used briefly in the 80s, and again several years ago
This is an updated version of an article I wrote for some of my now-defunct blogs.
Invisible Dragon
Like the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the Dragon 32 was released in 1982. However, I don’t recall it having a very high profile — at least in my circles.
Once I heard about the Dragon, I was curious about it and wondered how it compared to machines more familiar to me, such as the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Apple II, and BBC Micro.
General Features
The Dragon 32 was related to the Tandy / Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer, also known as CoCo.
As you might expect, the Dragon 32 had 32 KB of RAM. The following year, there was a 64 model with — you guessed it — twice as much.
The 6809 processor sounded quite impressive — until you noticed its clock speed of 0.89 MHz! That’s one of the lowest I’ve heard of from that era.
Despite the low clock speed, the 6809 was quite powerful for an 8-bit microprocessor, having some 16-bit…
