Dragoons were a class of mounted infantry, who used horses for mobility, but dismounted to fight on foot. From the early 18th century onward, dragoons were also employed as conventional cavalry, trained for combat with swords from horseback. Dragoon regiments were established in most European armies during the late 17th and early 18th centuries; the name is derived from a type of firearm, called a "dragon", a handgun version of a blunderbuss, carried by dragoons of the French Army. The title has been retained in modern times by a number of ceremonial mounted regiments; the establishment of dragoons evolved from the practice of sometimes transporting infantry by horse when speed of movement was needed. In 1552 Prince Alexander of Parma mounted several companies of infantry on pack horses to achieve surprise. Another early instance was ordered by Louis of Nassau in 1572 during operations near Mons in Hainaut, when 500 infantry were transported this way, it is suggested the first dragoons were raised by the Marshal de Brissac in 1600.

According to old German literature, dragoons were invented by Count Ernst von Mansfeld, one of the greatest German military commanders, in the early 1620s. There are other instances of mounted infantry predating this; however Mansfeld, who had learned his profession in Hungary and the Netherlands used horses to make his foot troops more mobile, creating what was called an "armée volante". In the 16th century Spanish civil wars in Peru conquistadors fought on horse with arquebuses, prefiguring the origin of European dragoons; the name derives from an early weapon, a short wheellock called a dragon, because the first dragoons raised in France had their carbine's muzzle decorated with a dragon's head. The practice comes from a time when all gunpowder weapons had distinctive names, including the culverin, falcon, etc, it is sometimes claimed a galloping infantryman with his loose coat and the burning match resembled a dragon. It has been suggested that the name derives from the German "tragen" or the Dutch "dragen", both being the verb "to carry" in their respective languages.

Howard Reid claims that the role descend from the Latin Draconarius. Dragoon is used as a verb to mean to subjugate or persecute by the imposition of troops; the term dates from 1689, at a time when dragoons were being used by the French monarchy to persecute Protestants by forcing Protestants to lodge a dragoon in their house to watch over them, at the householder's expense. Early dragoons were not organized in squadrons or troops as were cavalry, but in companies like the infantry: their officers and non-commissioned officers bore infantry ranks. Dragoon regiments used drummers, not buglers; the flexibility of mounted infantry made dragoons a useful arm when employed for what would now be termed "internal security" against smugglers or civil unrest, on line of communication security duties. During the English Civil War dragoons were used for a variety of tasks: providing outposts, holding defiles or bridges in the front or rear of the main army, lining hedges or holding enclosures, providing dismounted musketeers to support regular cavalry..

In the closing stages of the Battle of Naseby Okey's Dragoons, who had started the action as dismounted musketeers, got on their horses and charged the first time this was done. Supplied with inferior horses and more basic equipment, the dragoon regiments were cheaper to recruit and maintain than the expensive regiments of cavalry; when in the 17th century Gustav II Adolf introduced dragoons into the Swedish Army, he provided them with a sabre, an axe and a matchlock musket, utilizing them as "labourers on horseback". Many of the European armies henceforth imitated this all-purpose set of weaponry. A non-military use of dragoons was the 1681 Dragonnades, a policy instituted by Louis XIV to intimidate Huguenot families into either leaving France or re-converting to Catholicism by billeting ill-disciplined dragoons in Protestant households. While other categories of infantry and cavalry were used, the mobility and available numbers of the dragoon regiments made them suitable for repressive work of this nature over a wide area.

In the Spanish Army, Pedro de la Puente organized a body of dragoons in Innsbruck in 1635. In 1640, a tercio of a thousand dragoons armed with the arquebus was created in Spain. By the end of the 17th century, the Spanish Army had three tercios of dragoons in Spain, plus three in the Netherlands and three more in Milan. In 1704, the Spanish dragoons were reorganised into regiments by Philip V, as were the rest of the tercios. Towards the end of 1776, George Washington realized the need for a mounted branch of the American military. In January 1777 four regiments of light dragoons were raised. Short term enlistments were abandoned and the dragoons joined for three years, or "the war", they participated in most of the major engagements of the American War of Independence, including the Battles of White Plains, Princeton, Germantown, Saratoga and Monmouth, as well as the Yorktown campaign. Dragoons were at a disadvantage when engaged against true cavalry, sought to improve their horsemanship and social status.

By the Seven Years' War the primary role of dragoons in most European armies had progressed from that of mounted infantry to that of heavy cavalry. Earlier dragoon responsibilities for scouting and picket duty had passed to hussars and similar light cavalry corps in the French, Austrian and other armies. In the Imperial Russ

Ngarap Ka Nuan Nikal Pulai meaning "I hope you will come back" is a song recorded by Sarawak rock band Masterpiece. It was released in January 2015 as the lead single of their fourth album Ngarap Ka Nuan Nikal Pulai; the song was released by Do Records Entertainment while the entire Ngarap Ka Nuan Nikal Pulai album was produced by Panggau Buluh Pengerindu Records on 12 March 2016. On 2 September 2016, "Ngarap Ka Nuan Nikal Pulai" has won the "Best Song" award at the ACSJ 2016 Sarawak Music Awards and the album has received the "Album of The Year" award at the AMD 2016 Sarawak Music Awards ceremony on October 29. "Ngarap Ka Nuan Nikal Pulai" - 5:08 "Ngarap Ka Nuan Nikal Pulai" - 4:44 The first version of the music video was filmed in Bintulu, Sarawak, by Brodie William, director of Do Records Entertainment while the Album version was filmed and directed by Cosmas Moses from Panggau Buluh Pengerindu Records in Sibu, Sarawak. Lyrics of this song on Lirik Lagu Iban Guitar chord of this song on Ultimate guitar

Sam460ex is a line of modular motherboards produced by the Italian company ACube Systems Srl. The machine can run AmigaOS 4, MorphOS, or Debian GNU/Linux; the Sam460ex made its debut at the Vintage Computer Festival at Bletchley Park in the UK on 19 June 2010, where it was demonstrated to the public running AmigaOS 4.1 along with the Timberwolf web browser, a port of the Mozilla Firefox for the AmigaOS 4. Its hardware features were showcased, with its SIM card slot and aerial, its ability to boot AmigaOS from SD card. In September 2011, Acube Systems introduced AmigaOne 500 based on Sam460ex mainboard. FlexATX form factor AMCC 460ex SoC – passively cooled PowerPC 440 core up to 1.15 GHz and including a double precision floating point unit Cache L1/L2: 32KB/256KB max 2 GB DDR2 SDRAM – 200-pin SODIMM up to 533 MHz Silicon Motion SM502 embedded MoC max 64MB video memory Audio 5.1 Realtek ALC655 codec PCI-express 4× lanes slot PCI-express 1× lane slot PCI slot, 32 bit, 66/33 MHz, 3.3V 1× SATA2 port 6× USB2 EHCI/OHCI ports 2× 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports SD card reader Serial portThe SATA2 port and the PCI-e 1× slot are mutually exclusive, only one of them can be used at a time.

The specifications are the same as for the Sam460ex, except for: AMCC 460ex SoC clocked at 1 GHz Cache L1/L2: 32KB/256KB 512 MB DDR2 RAM The specifications are the same as for the Sam460ex, except for: Absence of Silicon Motion SM502 embedded MoC Audio 5.1 Realtek ALC655 codec Mutually exclusive 1× SATA2 portUsers are expected to use graphics and Sata interface cards with this model. Amiga Power magazine saw PCIe expansion for modern graphics cards, silent fan-less CPU operation, plenty of RAM and USB 2.0 as main advantages of the new Sam460ex board. However, the same review mentioned among weak points CPU speed, problems with audio on some motherboards and lack of 3D drivers for Radeon HD cards under AmigaOS. Reviewing AmigaOne 500, Amiga Future magazine highlighted supplied 2 GB RAM and overall system performance comparable to older Pegasos II computer, but criticized weak built in graphics chip recommending customers to buy dedicated graphics card. Sam440ep AmigaOne AmigaOne X1000 Pegasos Sam4x0 Home page ACube Systems Srl