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WHEN YOU
step into a taxi
outside
Port Talbot railway
station,
the driver says: ‘You
must want
Dragon Data.” A lot
of people
want the Welsh
company
at the moment, both
at home
and in the US, as it
expands
the range of
machines
it offers.
By this
time next year Dra-
gon Data
plans to be market-
ing four
microcomputers, mov-
ing up
gradually to attack the
business
market. The first
step is
the smallest one: a
CPU swap
for the Dragon 32
giving
users 64K of RAM. But
after
that the steps get bigger
and
bigger: the Dragon 64 will
be
followed by a £400
machine
and a £2,000 busi-
ness
model next year.
The
guiding force behind
these
moves is managing
director
Tony Clarke — stand-
ing about
6 foot 4 inches tall
he
expects to be able to take
them all
in his stride. A computer
enthusiast
as well
as a
businessman
One of the other striking
things
about Dragon Datas
managing
director is that he is
an
enthusiast as well as a
successful
businessman.
While
promoting the merits of
the
company’s disk drive sys-
tem he
extols in detail the
Western
Digital controller chip
it uses.
Similarly conversation
about the
£400 machine
moves
into discussion of the
NEC 7220
GDC.
And this
enthusiasm
spreads
further than semicon-
ductors.
Talking of the busi-
ness
market, Tony describes
network
configurations and
procedures to provide
the
automated office of
the future.
This
includes Mumps, a little
known
operating system
which
began life, as its name
suggests, with medical
ap-
plications but has
moved into
the
business market on such
machines
as Digital Equip-
~ment
minis.
Also
covered are the virtues
of easy
to use systems such
as
Apple’s Lisa and Xerox’s
Star
incorporating mouse de-
vices.
These are desktop con-
trollers
which can be used to
move
items displayed on a
screen.
Microsoft, whose Ex-
tended
Colour Basic is used
on the
Dragon 32, has recent-
ly
introduced a mouse for use
on its
Multi-Tool word proces-
sing
system.
And in
the office outside his
own sits
a range of machines
which he
will take apart and
examine.
Elsewhere in the
company
various models —
including micros, minis and
computer-aided design
sys-
tems
— are being put through
their
paces in practical ap-
plications.
As far
as the business goes,
Tony has
a personal stake in
the
success of Dragon Data.
The
company began life as a
subsidiary of Mettoy
in the
spring
of 1982. In November a
consortium, including
Tony,
was
formed to purchase the
firm
which moved to a new
factory
in south Wales. Since
then
Dragon Data has be-
come the
largest privately
owned
company in Wales,
and is
set to grow even faster
as the
new products are laun-
ched and
new markets are
attacked.
The
summer launches—the
CPU swap
and the disk drive
system
— immediately move
the
Dragon 32 into new mar-
kets as
they introduce the
0S9
Unix-like operating sys-
tem from
American software
house
Microware.
This is
a multi-user, multi-
tasking
system for small busi-
ness
users which has a very
high
reputation in the US — so
high
that some observers
have
suggested, tongue-in-
cheek,
that it is “too good” for
home
computers such as the
Dragon.
This hasn’t prevented
other
micro manufacturers,
such as
Tandy and various
Japanese
firms, choosing it.
Another
British company,
Positron, uses it on
its
£1 ,000+
9000 system.
As a
newer operating sys-
tem it
has less applications
software
available for it than
more
established systems
such as
CP/M, but a lot of
languages are
already
around,
including Basic, Pas-
cal and
Cobol. C compilers
are also
available which pro-
vide a
high degree of software
portability across
different lan-
guages.
Microware says that
“0S9
combines the same friendly
system
interfaces found in Bell
Laboratories’ Unix
operating
system
with an efficient, mod-
ular
design that is eminently
practical for use with
an adv-
anced
8-bit processor.” And it
adds:
“In the future, there will
be
upward-compatible ver-
sions
for the Motorola 68000
processor.”
Dragon’s
giant
strides
Tony Clarke talks to Graham Cunningham
about
Dragon
Data’s future as the company prepares to
attack
new markets at home and abroad.
Tony
Clarke — introducing 0S9 on the
new Dragon Data disk drive system, and heading west
22 Dragon
User July 1983
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