Re: C16/Plus4

On 11/01/2011 02:16 PM, Anders Carlsson wrote:

>
> Hm, interesting. Over here in Sweden, almost all PET/CBM and CBM-II were
> localized with Swedish keyboards, I suppose custom installed by
> Datatronic. There were both full keycap replacements and just stickers,
> used interchangedly depending on availability I think. They went on with
> selling both pre-localized and DIY kits for the VIC-20 and C64, and for
> a long time it has been known as one of relatively few markets where
> Commodore officially sold keyboard localized machines. The character and
> Kernal ROMs had to be replaced to match the keyboard layout, but no
> translation of Basic error messages or other silly things.

The problem was that with a localized keyboard came a localized char ROM 
and that meant that some of the graphics characters got replaced by 
special characters. Some programs started to look funny if they relied 
on the included char set for ASCII graphics.

That's the main reason why I didn't bother with a localized system on 8 
Bit Commodore systems. Still, all the 8 Bit Commodore I have have a US 
keyboard and charset. Later, on the Amiga, it didn't matter anymore.

I still find it curious that MOS made at least 4 difference VIC-II 
versions for the C64, the 6567 (NTSC), 6569 (PAL-B), 6572 (PAL-N) and 
the 6573 (PAL-M) but none for SECAM. Would it have meant such a big 
redesign that they just didn't think it worthwhile?

  Gerrit


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