Dragon Beta m/co

[Jules Richardson]

woodelf wrote:
> Jules Richardson wrote:
> 
>>
>> Whoo! I remember Rich being all excited and bringing it to the museum 
>> last year, so it's great to hear that it's now running. (Reminds me 
>> that I think he was after another couple of 3.5" FH floppy drives for 
>> it...)
>>
>> cheers 
> 
> Great now I want a  Dragon II for the Yule Tide!
> So are there any odd chips on the board? It looks
> like all the chips are still easy to come by.
> Ben alias Woodelf.
> PS It looks like the product was a finaly a nice UK computer
> that could go places.

It certainly seemed feature-rich, well designed, and way ahead of much of the 
competition.

Problem is it would have suffered the same way as the BBC micro: too expensive 
on the domestic market for most mere mortals, and unlikely to be able to 
compete in non-UK markets (particularly the US) due to lack of marketing 
budget and consumers already having long-established ties with existing 
manufacturers (e.g. Apple, Commodore etc.)

Computing history seems littered with technically superior unsuccessful 
machines :)

(not that the BBC wasn't a huge success in the UK, primarily through 
widespread education use, but globally it didn't do as well)

cheers

Jules