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from Wikipedia:

The Dragon 32 and Dragon 64 are home computers that were built in the 1980s. The Dragons are very similar to the TRS-80 Color Computer (CoCo), and were produced for the European market by Dragon Data, Ltd., in Port Talbot, Wales, and for the US market by Tano of New Orleans, Louisiana. The model numbers reflect the primary difference between the two machines, which have 32 and 64 kilobytes of RAM, respectively.

In the early 1980s, the British home computer market was booming. New machines were released almost monthly. In August 1982, Dragon Data joined the fray with the Dragon 32; the Dragon 64 followed a year later. The computers sold quite well initially and attracted the interest of several independent software developers, most notably Microdeal. A magazine, Dragon User also began publication shortly after the machine’s launch.

In the private home computer market, where games were a significant driver, the Dragon suffered due to its graphical capabilities, which were inferior to contemporary machines such as the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro.

The Dragon was also unable to display lower-case letters easily. Some more sophisticated applications would synthesise them using high-resolution graphics modes (in the same way that user-defined characters would be designed for purely graphical applications such as games). Simpler programs just managed without lower case. This effectively locked it out of the then-blooming educational market.

As a result of these limitations, the Dragon was not a commercial success, and Dragon Data collapsed in June 1984.

Video of Chuckie Egg game for Dragon 64:

source: wikipedia archive.worldofdragon.org

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from Wikipedia:

The Sega Pico, also known as Kids Computer Pico (キッズコンピューター・ピコ Kizzu Konpyūtā Piko?), is an electronic toy by Sega. The aim of creating the Pico was to get more young children (specifically, ages 2–8) to use video game systems. The Pico was the first Sega-branded console to carry an officially licensed game from former competitor Nintendo.

The Pico was released in 1993 in Japan and 1994 in North America and Europe. In Japan, the system was a huge success and games were developed until 2005. In North America and Europe, however, the Pico was less successful and games were only developed until 1997. The Pico was also released in South Korea, and it seems to be more successful unlike the west. To celebrate its 10th anniversary in 2003 in Japan, Sega re-released some of the Pico games. As of April 2005, 3.4 million Pico consoles and 11.2 million software cartridges had been sold.

The Sega Pico’s slogan was: “The computer that thinks it’s a toy.”

The ROM cartridges were called “Storyware,” and were book shaped. Each time a player turned the page of the cartridge the screen changed to replicate the image in the book. The games were controlled by a “magic” pen and buttons. The last page of each book features a freehand drawing mode, where the player can also insert stamps of characters shown previously in the game. All software released for the Pico received a rating from either the V.R.C. or the ESRB.

source: wikipedia

Recovered a Commodore 128 in good conditions with manuals/software and a Tape Recorder.

ST-Paint is a Drawing program that lets you make Atari St picture on Windows based PC.

ST-Paint is still in a beta phase and it’s made by Peter Jørgensen same author of the program Ym2149 Tracker.

Note from the author:

• Normal full screen is finish.
• Add a second full screen mode, an oldstyle edit mode.
• Full screen view.
• Quick save.
• Quick Load.
• Recent file list (remember the last 10 files loaded / saved)
• Change the plane view window.
• On Screen Display.
• Save default startup palette for low/mid res.
• Load/Save most Degas over/under scan picture.
• Load/Save Neo over/under scan picture. (Neochrome file header had reserved space for width and height, i don’t know if they was ever used, but they are now)
• Some error fixing.

Note:

• In this beta only the first 3 screen is open, and the clipboard can only hold 15 clip.

Download: ST-Paint Beta (27/01/2013) (978)

source: fedepede04.dk

Javatari is a multiplayer Atari 2600 emulator written in pure Java with no external libs.

Features:

• Unique Client-Server multiplayer mode. Runs great in low-latency networks such as LANs.
• Cheat and turn off Collisions. Finally discover the ending of River Raid!
• Complete Save State/Load State functions.
• Scanlines and TV screen emulation modes.
• Real Atari console user interface.

Changelog;

• Many accuracy improvements.
• Better performance.
• Added support for all major ROM formats/bankswitching schemes:
  • Format selectable in the Settings Dialog.
  • Cycle through compatible options in realtime with ALT + B
  • DPC support, with enhanced audio option.
  • Adjustable DPC audio clock (ALT + HOME, ALT + END)
  • Several homebrew ROMs now work correctly.

Download: Javatari JAR v3.00 (Needs Java 6) (897)

source: javatari.org

Keep your system in top condition when it’s not in use. Custom vinyl covers fit snugly over the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1.

Some new games (Cracked / Trained or Unrealeased) for Commodore 64 have been released from your favorites groups: Hokuto Force, Antarctica, Nostalgia, Genesis Project and Max Hall.

Download:

• Cosmic Ark C64 Remake (BETA 1) (1024)
• Hydrax 101% &DS (1141)
• Black Gold 101% +9DFIR [ntsc/pal] & Easyflash (1116)
• Mister Tooth +2D (986)
• Excaliba +5PD (970)
• All Games in One Archive (2377)

source: csdb.dk

NAV, is a new file browser for the C64. NAV can use a mouse in Port 1, joystick in Port 2, or the keyboard. NAV can work with up to five drives and has been tested with the following drive types:

1541, 1571, 1581, uIEC, IDE64

Browsing through directories and disks is just point and click! Drives like the uIEC that can store gigabytes of software can be tedious and frustrating to navigate. NAV lets you easily work with D64/D71/D81/DNP/M2I disk images as well as “real” Commodore disks and the IDE64. Up to five drives at a time!

Just click a drive to browse it!Pressing the “@” key brings up a command line that acts just like the good ol’ DOS Wedge. In addition, there are a few additional commands that can be entered on the command line. Just type “@HELP” to get the complete list.

Download: NAV v9.2 (D64) (1543)

source: commodoreserver.com

NAV, is a new file browser for the C64. NAV can use a mouse in Port 1, joystick in Port 2, or the keyboard. NAV can work with up to five drives and has been tested with the following drive types:

1541, 1571, 1581, uIEC, IDE64

Browsing through directories and disks is just point and click! Drives like the uIEC that can store gigabytes of software can be tedious and frustrating to navigate. NAV lets you easily work with D64/D71/D81/DNP/M2I disk images as well as “real” Commodore disks and the IDE64. Up to five drives at a time!

Just click a drive to browse it!Pressing the “@” key brings up a command line that acts just like the good ol’ DOS Wedge. In addition, there are a few additional commands that can be entered on the command line. Just type “@HELP” to get the complete list.

Download: NAV v9.1 (D64) (874)

source: commodoreserver.com

Powerup and Testing my Sinclair Spectrum 128k (RGB with Bright MOD) after a long time.

Video:

It was released a new OS Update for the Everdrive N64 Flash Cartridge (Nintendo 64) by Krikzz. The upgrade instructions can be found here.

Changelog:

• Allows to load/save controller pak to file. Please use any .mpk file and c-down button. It works only if controller pak plugged into joy port1. /ED64/dummy.mpk file can be used for exchange.
• Ability to force default save type.
• Ability to force M-PAL TV mode. Not sure if it work properly, cuz i don’t have PAL-M system for tests.
• Os can run Banjo-Tooie U without manual patching.

Download: Everdrive N64 - OS Update v1.29 (1611)

source: krikzz.com

AspeQt is a cross-platform, free and open source Atari 8-bit serial peripheral emulator. The name is an acronym for Atari serial peripheral emulator for Qt, Qt being the cross-platform application development framework used by AspeQt.

AspeQt emulates various Atari 8-bit peripherals like disk drives and printers via an SIO-2-PC cable. If you are familiar with software like Sio2Pc, APE, Atari810, AtariSIO etc., you probably won’t have any problems getting used to AspeQt.

Even though AspeQt is not fully mature yet, it is easy to use and, despite its shortcomings, has many features that you may find useful, the highlights being:

• Up to 15 disk drive emulation.
• Up to 6x SIO speed (125,000bps)
• Support for ATR, XFD, PRO and ATX (preliminary) disk images.
• Mount folders as emulated disks.
• Disk image explorer.
• Directly boot Atari executables.
• Text only printer emulation with PC print, save, and ATASCII font support.
• Cassette image playback.
• Multilingual GUI (English, Polish, Slovak, German, Turkish and Russian)
• AspeQt client module (AspeCl) for Atari, communicates with the server and performs a variety of remote operations.

Changelog:

• Updated the English language manual.
• Minor re-grouping of drive slot buttons.
• Added directory print capability to image explorer window (Ray Ataergin)
• Added boot capability from a Folder Image. Simply copy the DOS.SYS and DUP.SYS files from a DOS diskette to a PC Folder, mount the PC folder to drive slot#:1 as a Folder Image and boot your Atari. Currently only Atari DOS has a built-in support. MyDos will be supported on the next release. (Ray Ataergin)
• Dropped ApeTime support from AspeQt. AspeCL is now the only supported Time/Date client
• Remote Control software for AspeQt (see AspeQt documentation for more info) (Ray Ataergin)
• Implemented auto-commit remote toggle capability to AspeCL, it was previously documented as “in development feature” (Ray Ataergin)
• Implemented remote image file creating/mounting capability to AspeCL, it was previously documented as “in development feature” (Ray Ataergin)
• Implemented remote image file mounting capability to AspeCL, it was previously documented  as “in development feature” (Ray Ataergin)
• Tested and fixed AspeCL client SpartaDos X date/time handling (this was not previously tested as I did not have SDX back then) (Ray Ataergin)
• Updated AspeCL client code to accomodate SDX drives 9-15 (Ray Ataergin)
• Updated AspeCL server code in AspeQt to accomodate SDX drives 9-15 (Ray Ataergin)

Download:

• AspeQt v0.8.6 (Windows) (2991)
• AspeQt v0.8.6 Changelog (1264)
• AspeQt v0.8.5 Manual (English/German) (1625)

source: aspeqt.sourceforge.net

The Atari++ Emulator is a Unix based emulator of the Atari eight bit computers, namely the Atari 400 and 800, the Atari 400XL, 800XL and 130XE, and the Atari 5200 game console.

The emulator is auto-configurable and will compile on a variety of systems (Linux, Solaris, Irix).

Download:

• Atari ++ v1.71 (Linux) (1217)
• Atari ++ v1.71 (Win32) (1470)

source: xl-project.com

I received this computer to be repaired for a friend some days ago. The computer displays only a black screen and some times a random character without any sound beep at the startup boot.

I have replaced the PLA IC 324745-01 (UE5) and 324744-01 (UE6) with two EPROM 27C512 70ns (suitably programmed), the Universal PLA adapter was kindly donated by Manosoft.

The computer also had another defect, apparently the fault was not only in the two PLA. The computer starts with the classic beep but the screen remain black, the faulty is the IC 6545 (CRTC) and that was replaced.

This model uses a ROM daughterboard instead of a single 23128 ROM (EPROM 27C128 pinout compatible). I have made an adapter to preserve the original state of 8296 and allow the insertion of the daughterboard after the replacement of the two PLA that are different (in size) to the original one.

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from Wikipedia:

The Commodore PET (Personal Electronic Transactor) was a home/personal computer produced from 1977 by Commodore International. A top-seller in the Canadian and United States educational markets, it was Commodore’s first full-featured computer, and formed the basis for their entire 8-bit product line.

The PET 2001 was announced at the Winter CES in January 1977 and the first 100 units were shipped later that year in October. However, the PET was back-ordered for months and to ease deliveries, early in 1978 Commodore decided to cancel the 4 kB version.

Although the machine was fairly successful, there were frequent complaints about the tiny calculator-like keyboard, often referred to as a “chiclet keyboard” because the keys resembled the gum candy. This was addressed in upgraded “dash N” and “dash B” versions of the 2001, which put the cassette tape recorder outside the case, and included a much larger keyboard with a full stroke motion. Internally a newer motherboard was used, along with an upgrade from static RAM to dynamic RAM and 8, 16, or 32 KB, known as the 2001-N-8, 2001-N-16 or 2001-N-32, respectively.

Sales of the newer machines were strong, and Commodore then introduced the models to Europe. The result was the CBM 3000 series (‘CBM’ standing for Commodore Business Machines), which included the 3008, 3016 and 3032 models. Like the 2001-N-8, the 3008 was quickly dropped.

The final version of what could be thought of as the “classic” PET was the PET 4000 series. This was essentially the later model 2000 series, but with a larger black-and-green monitor and a newer version of Commodore’s BASIC programming language.

Commodore tried to update the PET line with a new redesign called the CBM-II series (also known as the B series). These were not as successful and were ultimately abandoned. However, due to demand, the original PET machines were revived and the CBM-II case style was retained. These were known as the SK’s (due to the separated keyboard). They also had a swivel monitor. Originally, standard 8032 boards were retrofitted into these cases. Later the SK models got a new mainboard that already included the 64 kB extension directly on the board and were sold as 8296 or, with a built-in 8250 dual disk drive, as 8296-D.

source: wikipedia