Dragon Computers  Dragon 200-E
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Dragon 200E for the Spanish Market

The Dragon 200E is functionally and technically the same as the Dragon 200. The Dragon 200E (Espana) had a piggiback board that sits on the 6847 VDG socket and contains the VDG and a new character ROM that changed the lowercase characters to spanish language characters with accents and other symbols.

The piggyback board with the video chip and the new character ROM

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.

Technical Details
Released 1984 Brand Eurohard S.A. Type Dragon Computers Name Dragon 200-E CPU Class 6800 CPU Motorola 6809E@0.89MHz Memory RAM: 64kB
ROM: 16kB
Sound Chip none Sound 1-bit sound Display Chip MC6847 Video Display Generator Display 64x192 semi-graphics 4 color
256x192 Mono graphics
Best Text 32x22 Best Color 8 colors Best Graphics 256x192 in 2 colors Sprites none System OS Microsoft Extended BASIC
Related Systems
 
Dragon Computers
» 
Dragon  200-E (1984)
Related Media
 
TRS80
Books for the TRS80 and CoCo Computers
 
TRS80 Portable
Books on the TRS-80 Portable computers
 
Dragon User
Dragon User Magazine
 
Micro
The 6502/6809 Journal
 
Rainbow Magazine
Monthly magazine by the Tandy Corporation
World Wide Web Links
 

 
WikiPedia: Motorola MC6847 Display Chip

The MC6847 is a Video Display Generator (VDG) first introduced by Motorola in 1978

 
Wikipedia: Motorola 6809 CPU
Wikipage about the Motorola 6809 CPU and compatibles