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| The South American Remixes: The Drean 16, 64, 64C and 128; DC-320 |
Introduced 1984? (possibly 1986 for 128 and 64C)
Hardware, Graphics and Sound Identical to original model(s) with
PAL-N video. The Drean 64 uses the VIC-II
PAL-N 6572; the 6573 is PAL-M and the 6569 is
PAL-B. For its part, the Drean 128 likely used the PAL-N 8569 VIC-IIe.
Presumably the 16 used a standard 7360/8360 TED with board modifications.
Eventual Fate Released in Argentina.
Comments
Thanks to Pablo Trincavelli for this entry.
Drean, according to Pablo, is an Argentinian company (still in business today, visit their Spanish-language website) that then, as now, made the majority of its revenue on production of home appliances and electronics. Unlike many of the South American clone computers, Drean's line of Commodores was created with the full approval and support of Commodore itself. During the 1980s, Drean and Commodore entered an arrangement to make Commodore computers, and these were produced at Drean's factory in San Luis to obtain the tax bonuses offered by the Argentinian government for manufacturing there. (In reality, they were actually only assembled in San Luis, not manufactured, as Drean simply imported parts and boards from Commodore and then created their own localized cases, shielding, boxes and packaging.) There is no evidence they were further localized except for "ENC." (short for encendido, or "on/ignition" in Spanish) labels for the power LEDs. The reason for Commodore's partnership with Drean seems unclear, but given the unfavourable import climate in other nearby countries, Commodore may have had a similar impetus.
A certain amount of part recycling or interchange must have occurred, as there are Drean 64Cs with the original brown breadbox keyboard, and breadbox 64s (the picture colour of the brown breadbox is a little overexposed) with the grey 64C keyboard, both depicted in Pablo's picture.
Drean 64s and 64Cs are by far the most common now. The 16 was produced in very limited numbers, and the 128s have all but vanished. Interestingly, the 1541 was simply imported directly (but see the DC-320 below), and Drean never created a localized Amiga either. Although Drean still manufactures home appliances, the Commodore experiment in Argentina died as the 64 itself faded, and Drean is not known to have manufactured home computers past 1990.
1541 clone drive, probably based on the Oceanic OC-118 and allies (Excelerator+ and so on). It is unknown how many were sold. On the thumbnail page above, the DC-320 can be seen on the second image.