Re: C16/Plus4

On 11/01/2011 06:09 PM, Didier Derny wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In France i was unthinkable to sell a professional computer without
> A French keyboard and printers able to print the accents.
>
>
> Yes SECAM was too complicated to be integrated due to the delay lines.
> I think that Commodore tried to evaluate if a VIC II SECAM was possible
> But apparently they gave up when the saw that they had to integrate delay lines.

If I understand that right it would have meant some additional memory in 
the VIC-II. You don't need to use an analog delay line, you can use a 
digital one as well. But it would have meant a major design change (plus 
validation and testing) compared to NTSC and PAL.

Obviously they thought it was not worth the effort.

  Gerrit




>
> -----Message d'origine-----
> De : owner-cbm-hackers@musoftware.de [mailto:owner-cbm-hackers@musoftware.de] De la part de Gerrit Heitsch
> Envoyé : mardi 1 novembre 2011 14:42
> À : cbm-hackers@musoftware.de
> Objet : 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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>
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>


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