Draco Cube

[blakespot]

Wow. I just ran across this.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/DRACO-CUBE-CLASSIC-AMIGA-CLONE-68060-50MHz-4MB-ChipRAM-128MB-FastRAM-2GB-HD-/221184613207?pt=Klassische_Computer&hash=item337fa15b57




bp

[yssing]

Its very cool, but the price is a bit to high for me.

[Djole]

I think the price is a bit too high, but Draco is cool for running RTG software.

[Ral-Clan]

Yeah, the Draco was cool....and they got the styling right too.  But of course it's missing all the custom chips (I guess this is how they got around copyright issues with Commodore) so you can only run RTG software.

EDIT: I notice on the showconfig screen on that auction that the Draco has a AGA Alice and Lisa - so I guess that Draco / MacroSystems was buying some MOS/CSG chips from Commodore.

Yes, it's very expensive, but the Draco was always sold as a professional video editing workstation, not to consumers.  So it was originally more expensive.  I also think that because of this machine's rarity the buyer will get what he's asking for (heck, even a Commodore-made machine with 68060 and RTG card would probably fetch near that nowadays).

[haywirepc]

Since I never did video on amiga, I never saw the appeal. I'd rather have an amiga 4000 with 68060 and rtg card.

[polyp2000]

I notice that it has 4mb Chip Ram.

How did they manage to get around the 2mb limit ?

Perhaps it would be worth finding out how they achieve this to allow
additional expansion on other amigas

N.

[videofx]

It is cool but I decided to get a 4000T instead

[bloodline]

I notice that it has 4mb Chip Ram.

How did they manage to get around the 2mb limit ?

Perhaps it would be worth finding out how they achieve this to allow
additional expansion on other amigas

N.

Probably not a real Alice in there, just something (FPGA) that reports looks just enough like an Alice chip to get the OS to boot... The ram therefore is just regular ram tagged as chipram...

[nicholas]

I had a chance to buy one for about £400 nine or ten years ago but bought a BPPC/040 for £250 instead.

Wish I'd have bought the Draco now tbh.

[Djole]

I used to have 2 big tower Draco machines. Sold them 5-6 years ago for 300 euro both I belive.

[Tripitaka]

Probably not a real Alice in there, just something (FPGA) that reports looks just enough like an Alice chip to get the OS to boot... The ram therefore is just regular ram tagged as chipram...

The chipram reported is the memory on the RTG card (a modified retina 3). The DraCo booted from an A3000 kickstart ROM with a load of patching done at boot.

It contained no real custom miggy chips.

[Tripitaka]

I had a chance to buy one for about £400 nine or ten years ago but bought a BPPC/040 for £250 instead.

Wish I'd have bought the Draco now tbh.

Why? Seriously, I see no reason to own one.

[Nostalgiac]

I'l love one but cannot justify the cost

On a funny note: look at the serial number... they seem to have sold 600+ million of them :p

Tom UK

[nicholas]

Why? Seriously, I see no reason to own one.

I would say the same about the BPPC too.  I sold mine as it was pretty useless.

[Gulliver]

I have two DraCos. They are really great.

They run AmigaOS friendly software like a breeze, and can run E-UAE 68k for hardware banging stuff.

From an engineering point of view, they are a very advanced 68k computer architecture. MacroSystem took the Amiga platform concept and modernized it by adding some interesting features.

They are really good as servers (thanks to NetBSD).

It is very cool to edit home video footage with MovieShop on them.

I only regret that nowadays I have little spare time to play with them.