Dragon Computers  Dragon 200
drag_dragon200

The Dragon 200 - Repackaged Dragon 64

The Dragon 200 is functionally and technically the same as the Dragon 64. The difference is purely cosmetic. The Dragon computer was now owned by Eurohard, and the company decided to change the branding and the look of the Dragon line. The Dragon 200 was very popular in Spain and widely used for educational purposes.

Motorola MC6847 Video Display Generator

The MC6847 is a video display generator (VDG) first introduced by Motorola and used in the following machines (this is not a full list):

  • TRS-80 Color Computer
  • Dragon 32/64
  • Laser 200
  • TRS-80 MC-10/Matra Alice
  • NEC PC-6000 series
  • Acorn Atom
  • APF Imagination Machine

The VDG is a relatively simple display generator compared to other display chips of the time. It is capable of displaying alphanumeric text, semigraphics and raster graphics contained within a roughly square display matrix 256 pixels wide by 192 lines high.

The ROM includes a 5 x 7 pixel font, compatible with 6-bit ASCII. Effects such as inverse video or colored text (green on dark green; orange on dark orange) are possible.

The MC6847 is capable of displaying nine colors:

  • black
  • green
  • yellow
  • blue
  • red
  • buff (almost-but-not-quite white)
  • cyan
  • magenta
  • and orange
Two extra colors, dark green and dark orange, are only possible as backgrounds for alphanumeric text modes.

Motorola 6809 CPU

The Motorola 6809 is an 8-bit microprocessor with some 16-bit features. It was designed by Motorola's Terry Ritter and Joel Boney and introduced in 1978. Although source compatible with the earlier Motorola 6800, the 6809 offered significant improvements over it and 8-bit contemporaries like the MOS Technology 6502, including a hardware multiplication instruction, 16-bit arithmetic, system and user stack registers allowing re-entrant code, improved interrupts, position-independent code and an orthogonal instruction set architecture with a comprehensive set of addressing modes.

Released 1984 Country United Kingdom Brand Type DRAG Name Dragon 200 CPU Class 6502 CPU Motorola 6809E@0.89MHz Memory 64kB RAM Sound Chip none Sound 1-bit speaker Display Chip MC6847 Video Display Generator Display 64x192 semi-graphics 4 color
256x192 Mono graphics
Sprites none System OS Microsoft BASIC Original Price unknown
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Wikipedia: Motorola 6809 CPU
Wikipage about the Motorola 6809 CPU and compatibles