|  Hardware - Drean Commodore 16 | | Name: | Drean Commodore 16 |
| AKA: | Drean 16 |
| Category: | Computer |
| Introduced: | 1984 |
| Manufactured: | Drean |
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| | About The Drean C16 | Drean was a company in Argentina. More info and pictures of this computer would be appreciated.
TLC/CNS has bought one. This is the analysis he did on the machine, as posted on the forum. He also put several other pictures about the Drean Commodore 16 here. We used some of his own pictures in this page.
Other useful links:
Info on Drean and Drean 64C at lemon64.com
A picture of the computer @ homecomputer.de
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Finally, I managed it to get hold of a Drean Commodore 16... this is the PAL-N version of the C-16, assembled and sold locally in Argentina. I've just got the computer up and running (it was known not to work when it was sold), and will yet have to finish disassembling/cleaning/assembling the physical parts before I could call this deal finished, but here are some details nevertheless.
-- PAL-N is basically normal PAL, with a different (lower) color subcarrier frequency.
-- In the Drean C-16, you can find a 8365 TED instead of the usual 8360.
-- The oscillator runs off a crystal of 14.32822MHz -- a bit faster than NTSC's 14.31818.
-- The motherboard is otherwise a regular NTSC C-16 motherboard, with the usual European Kernal installed.
Speaking of the 8365 -- my first impression is that it's a "regular" 8360, and they only modified one parameter, the constant which is used to divide the oscillator clock to obtain the processor and the dot clocks. To get the CPU single clock in the 8360, in PAL, one would divide the crystal freq by 20, and in NTSC mode, by 16. In the 8365, both dividers are the same, 16.
As consequences:
-- When switching between PAL and NTSC mode on the 8365, one would get visible picture on a PAL/NTSC capable TV, at least in black and white (unlike regular 8360-equipped machines, where either the PAL or the NTSC mode is displayable on regular tv's, but not both).
-- The color subcarrier won't, but the color encoding should change according to the PAL/NTSC bit (subcarrier freq is the same). With an NTSC crystal, the 8365 should also be capable of providing standard NTSC signal.
-- With the PAL-N crystal installed, colors are obviously only seen on PAL-N capable TVs or such PC tuner cards. The color palette for PAL-N mode should be similar to regular PAL colors, but the color resolution is worse, 2 pixels vs. 1.6. (In other words, in this respect PAL-N is NTSC's color resolution with the PAL palette).
The CPU (single) clock of the computer is the highest amongst all known TED based computers; it's about 0.895514Mhz. As a consequence: as it's a "regular" PAL machine with a slightly faster clock, all European C-16 software should work on the PAL-N C-16, but floppy fast-loaders may fail to work. European stuff messing with the PAL/NTSC bit should fail, too (but other tricky stuff, like sideborder-removing should work... I'll yet have to test those, but I don't expect anything irregular...). |
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| | Hardware (owned by members) | | Hardware | Country | Serial Number | Notes |
| TLC |  Argentina | 409 | Slightly broken box. |
| 1 found. |
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| | Keyboard And Power Supply |  |
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