¶ The computer
The Dragon 32 is a British home computer launched in August 1982 by Dragon Data, a company based in Port Talbot, Wales. Built around a Motorola 6809E and a Microsoft BASIC, it shares a design very close to Tandy's TRS-80 Color Computer, so much so that a large part of the software moves from one machine to the other with little work. The Dragon 64, released the following year, doubles the memory and adds an RS-232 serial port.
The machine sold well in the United Kingdom during the home computer price war, but its limited display — no proper lower-case text mode, a restricted palette inherited from the Motorola 6847 video chip — quickly told against it next to the ZX Spectrum and the Commodore 64. Dragon Data folded in 1984.
The story did not end there: the technology was picked up in Spain by Eurohard, which produced the Dragon 200 and 200-E for the Spanish market, while the Tano Corporation sold a version of the Dragon 64 in the United States as the Tano Dragon. These are the variants found among the models emulated by Recalbox. On the games side, the library is dominated by publisher Microdeal and its Cuthbert series, alongside British classics such as Chuckie Egg.
| Manufacturer | Dragon Data |
| Year | 1982 |
| Type | Computer |
| Keyboard | Mandatory |
| Controller | Optional |
| Mouse | Optional |
📷 Screenshot coming soon:
system-dragon.png
¶ Emulators
The Dragon 32/64 is emulated by a single core, available on every board:
- XRoar — the reference emulator for Motorola 6809 machines (xroar, GPL-2.0 and LGPL licenses).
XRoar emulates four models: the Dragon 64 by default, plus the Dragon 32, the Tano Dragon and the Dragon 200-E. The model is derived from the subfolder the game sits in. Netplay is not available on this system and RetroAchievements are not supported. CRT output is handled, and image smoothing is set from START > IN-GAME SETTINGS > SMOOTH GAMES.
A keyboard is mandatory on this system: the Dragon boots into its BASIC interpreter, and loading a tape or a floppy goes through commands typed on the keyboard.
The Dragon 32/64 guide covers picking the model through subfolders, XRoar's configuration overrides — which do not stack — joystick handling and retrieving printer output.
¶ BIOS
System ROMs are expected in /recalbox/share/bios/dragon/. Five of them are mandatory: without them, the matching machine will not boot.
| File name | Description | MD5 | Mandatory |
|---|---|---|---|
dragon/d32.rom |
Dragon 32 system ROM | 3420b96031078a4ef408cad7bf21a33f | Yes |
dragon/d64rom1.rom |
Dragon 64 system ROM (1) | 5f0bee59710e55f5880e74890912ed78 | Yes |
dragon/d64rom2.rom |
Dragon 64 system ROM (2) | fd91edce7be5e7c2d88e46b76956a8aa | Yes |
dragon/d64tano.rom |
Tano Dragon system ROM (1) | be9bc86ee5eb401d0a40d0377f65fefa | Yes |
dragon/d64tano2.rom |
Tano Dragon system ROM (2) | fd91edce7be5e7c2d88e46b76956a8aa | Yes |
dragon/d200rom1.rom |
Dragon 200-E system ROM (1) | be9bc86ee5eb401d0a40d0377f65fefa | No |
dragon/d200rom2.rom |
Dragon 200-E system ROM (2) | fd91edce7be5e7c2d88e46b76956a8aa | No |
dragon/ddos10.rom |
Dragon DOS 1.0 | 1c965da49b6c5459b8353630aa1482e7 | No |
dragon/ddos11c.rom |
Dragon DOS 1.1 | d8429af1a12f7438a4bf88a5b934cb3a | No |
dragon/ddos12a.rom |
Dragon DOS 1.2 | 55e2535dbbed7f1a26b5f263d7c72c63 | No |
dragon/ddos40.rom |
Dragon DOS 4.0 | 9ddc388632cd3c376b164ba5cfc64329 | No |
dragon/ddos42.rom |
Dragon DOS 4.2 | c956a854cbc4b9d1e69c000f78368668 | No |
dragon/deltados.rom |
Delta DOS | 024eac3db20f1b5cf98c30a0e4743201 | No |
dragon/dplus48.rom |
DOS Plus 4.8 | ee6f24d893a52b8efea9f787855456b5 | No |
dragon/dplus49b.rom |
DOS Plus 4.9 | 56f1b97314e4ca82491c465bb887059e | No |
dragon/dplus50.rom |
DOS Plus 5.0 | 35de5d28da507ebb213a26e04241d940 | No |
dragon/sdose6.rom |
Super DOS E6 | 9d85e6b7133f915c021156f4b9cdb512 | No |
dragon/sdose8.rom |
Super DOS E8 | 167f409b7a4b992faabb784b061ab4c6 | No |
The optional ROMs add extra machines or floppy systems: the d200rom*.rom files unlock the Dragon 200-E, the others correspond to the various floppy controller cards of the era. The BIOS checker shows what is present and what is missing.
¶ Roms
Put your games in:
/recalbox/share/roms/dragon/
Accepted extensions: .cas .wav .bas .asc .dsk .dmk .jvc .vdk .os9 .rom .ccc
A few pointers on these formats:
.casand.wavare tape images, the most common medium on the Dragon;.dsk,.dmk,.jvc,.vdkand.os9are floppy images,.dmkbeing the most faithful for protected disks;.romand.cccare cartridge images;.basand.ascare plain-text BASIC programs, loaded straight into the interpreter.
.ziparchives are not accepted on this system: uncompress your games before copying them over.