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Posted By
JamesC
on 2004-02-23
17:08:06
|  Re: Anyone seen one of these before?
Looks like the standard US-built Commodore 16, with maybe a different name badge to reflect the local distributor. The photo does not give me enough detail of the name badge to tell exactly what it says.
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Posted By
MIK
on 2004-02-23
18:26:20
 | Re: Anyone seen one of these before?
Wow very cool.
Love those cream coloured keys 
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Posted By
TLC
on 2004-02-23
19:31:26
| Re: Anyone seen one of these before?
I once talked with a guy from Argentina about these computers... Never seen one Drean C=s, though.
I guess I'm better quoting text from a site I've just found (http://www.lemon64.com/museum/view.php?id=282&genre=manualmisc )
"Drean was a very important Argentine company, which manufactured home electric equipment like for example, laundry machines. Drean is still operating but it does not have the importance that it once did.
By the middle of the eighties decade Argentina was recovering democracy after seven years of suffering a fascist military dictatorship. The social democrat government decided to promote the Argentine industry and behind the "Industrial Promotional System", corporations did not have to pay taxes while imports where under heavy taxes. The only way you could get a computer was through import paying a ridiculous price or by smuggling which was not an option for everyone.
Government decided to promote the production of computers and there is where Argentine electric and electronic corporations began to sell computers.
Drean produced the Commodore C=64C, Zserweny produced the ZX Spectrum and Nec produced the Talent MSX. Those were the local options in home personal computing.
I use the term "produced" because that what it says in the owner papers but actually computers were assembled with imported components. Maybe the plastic cases were injected here."
...
"One difference I can point out with the American model is that Argentine C64C used the PAL-N video norm, which is a PAL B local variation. In addition, another difference is that power supply was produced here according to the national standard, which are 220 Volts and 50 Hz."
The guy mentions one important point: Argentina uses PAL-N which is basically 625 lines @ 25Hz and PAL color encoding like regular PAL-B, but with NTSC color-subcarrier frequency (a very weird combination IMHO). I'm not going into speculations in the C64's case since the VIC-II allows pretty flexible combinations of crystal frequency (thus color subcarrier) and TV screen organization, but in the Plus/4's case, I can't think of any other possibility but either 1.) using a dedicated PAL-N TED version (if it ever existed), or 2.) equipping the computer with a PAL-B to PAL-N transcoder inside. Either should be interesting enough for a check  .
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2004-02-23
21:14:41
| Re: Anyone seen one of these before?
I am on the wrong computer right now to reference pages I have bookmarked, but somewhere on the 'net there is an online Commodore Parts List. There *is* (*was*) a TED for PAL-N but I did not know where it was used. I think it was MOS 7365.
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Posted By
TLC
on 2004-02-24
03:31:27
| Re: Anyone seen one of these before?
I also do remember documents mentioning these (VIC-II and TED variants for relatively rare television standards), I'm just not convinced if those _really_ got into production (if producing say, a few 1000's PAL-N TED's was a good enough reason to start manufacturing them ).
AFAIK the French national versions (those that _really_ supported the national TV standard) were simple PAL machines with a built-in PAL to SECAM transcoder. (But on the other hand, I don't think that Commodore even started designing SECAM-capable video-controllers, so the French isn't really a good example).
So... If you ever happen to own a Drean C-16 (or a C-64C for that matter =) ), don't forget checking if it _really_ has a native PAL-N TED (VIC-II) .
BTW, the Brazilian C= computers should be also interesting (PAL-M = 525 lines @ 30Hz with PAL color encoding...). AFAIK most Brazilians used simple NTSC C64s instead, with either no color, or with an NTSC-capable display.
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Posted By
Ulysses777
on 2004-02-24
08:38:51
| Re: Anyone seen one of these before?
According to this page, there are PAL-N and PAL-M TED's. They are 8365 and 8366 respectively.
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Posted By
TLC
on 2004-02-26
10:39:44
| A quick search on mercadolibre.com.ar
Hmmm... May I ask if someone told me which magic words to use to insert URLs, smilies, etc? >-[
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Posted By
Gaia
on 2004-02-26
11:14:02
| Re: Anyone seen one of these before?
Just the normal way (a href, etc... you get the idea ). The brackets work only for "internal" links. I have corrected your link and was stunned to see the result :-o
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Posted By
MC
on 2004-02-27
04:34:56
 | Re: Anyone seen one of these before?
A bit expensive aren't they?
We should seriously consider exporting some hardware there :D
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Posted By
dw
on 2004-03-16
19:01:13
| Re: Anyone seen one of these before?
http://retrocomputing.netpandora.com/specs.php?model=Drean-Commodore64
Check out the white C64!
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