The Swedish Remixes: 3032, PET 200, VIC-20, 64/64C, 610, PET 700 (720), 128, 128D, 128DCR

Peter Karlsson's Commodore Machines
Anders Carlsson's Home Page

Commodore Sweden's history is unusual considering for some time Commodore as a corporate entity was practically non-existent there in the business sense. (If that made sense to you, you have a future in redactory science.) According to Anders Carlsson, Handic Computers AB, originally a state enterprise but became privately incorporated a few years before the Commodores' rise, was the sales conduit for Commodore computers in Sweden up until the demise of the VIC-20; not only did they sell the hardware and peripherals, but also distributed and wrote software for the platforms as well. Around 1984, Handic's parent company, Datatronic, decided to divest Handic of the hardware portion of their business and put it under the purview of the parent enterprise, leaving Handic to sell the software solely. Datatronic itself folded around 1986, at which point Commodore finally took over the reins, opened Commodore Sweden and started selling their products directly.

The Swedish PET 3032 (2001-32N)

Introduced ?
Hardware Identical to the original 3032 with only character set modifications and new keycaps (unmodified Kernal).
Graphics and Sound Identical to the original 3032.
Eventual Fate Known released.

Comments
Not much here except for true printed keys and character set modifications to support Ä, Ö and Å. The actual key mappings were not changed, so no Kernal differences were required.

The BASIC Editor Expander is a Swedish enhancement ROM, and is also shown in the mainboard picture.

The Swedish PET 200 (8032-SK)

Introduced 1979
Hardware Identical to the standard PET 200 (8032-SK), altered keyboard, extra Char ROM, altered Kernal, rebadged case.
Graphics and Sound Identical to the original PET 200.
Eventual Fate Released in Sweden and Finland.

Comments
The PET 200 is unfortunately very similar to the PET 700, also on this page. See the PET Breeds page for general information on the PET 200.

This Swedish-localized version also included the same characters as the 3032, although unlike the 3032, Anders states that there were Kernal changes made as well of uncertain import (the localized ROMs in this unit are marked with "S").

There is also an 8096-SK and an 8296-SK, but Handic didn't sell them under that name; see the PET 700 below.

The Swedish VIC-20

Comments
The Swedish VIC-20 was sold with the standard English (International) keyboard and ROMs, so it wasn't really "Swedish" out of the box. An expansion kit modified the [, £, and ] keys to print, respectively, the diacriticised characters Ä, Ö, and Å, but this required alterations to the Kernal decoding tables, the keycaps and the Char ROM; these changes obviously messed with programs using the brackets and £ symbols, and also, because the new keyboard mapping obliterated the graphic characters on the @ key, made it just about impossible to type in certain programs. Peter Karlsson says that the Swedish characters were added after the Z (in both lower and upper case modes) in the order defined by ISO 646-10, rather unhelpful because the ISO order is not alphabetical and so simple ASCII sorting didn't work correctly. Some graphics symbols also got altered when shifting to upper/lowercase mode.

There were two VIC-20 models sold, the model with the two pin power supply and 6561E (none of the chips are directly soldered, all socketed); and the newer model with the 5-pin DIN power supply (all chips soldered). Both had the English/International keyboard. It should be noted that the 6561E does not seem specific to the Swedish VIC-20 and does appear in non-internationalised models as well.

The Swedish 64, 64C

aka VIC-64, VIC-64S
Introduced 1983?
Hardware Identical to the breadbox 64; modified Kernal and Char ROM for extra characters (see Comments).
Graphics and Sound Identical to the breadbox 64.
Eventual Fate Released in Sweden and Finland. Early on, all Swedish and Finnish models had the modified ROM release; later models were all English (International) models and required the expansion kit.

Comments
The expansion kit for the 64 did the same thing to the 64 as the VIC-20's expansion kit did to the VIC-20, viz., move keycaps and redefine the [, £, and ] keys in the Char ROM and Kernal keyboard decode table. As stated above, the first batch or so of Swedish/Finnish 64s all had the modification in place out of the factory, but Commodore costcutting nixed the idea, reverting to the English (International) models and requiring the expansion kit in later manufacturing lots.

The 64's kit, according to Peter's description, sounds rather chintzy. It involved slapping stickers (!! -- see the picture above) on the keycaps, swapping Char ROMs, and had the BASIC and Kernal ROMs exchanged with different EPROMs. The first released set of EPROMs, according to Anders C., were also 24-pin but his Char ROM seems to need to be plugged into a miniature daughterboard for the right mainboard pin assignments. However, the second release inexplicably used an oversized 28-pin version and because the new EPROMs were so large, one of their pins had to be directly connected to the 6510's address bus for proper address decoding. Anders also notes that early adopters could also find custom pre-printed keycaps, possibly leftovers from the first generation of Swedish units, but later in the unit's life stickers were the only choice (and the only choice for the later Swedish 64C).

Anders also needs to invest in a duster. :)

The Swedish 610

Introduced ?
Hardware Identical to the original 610, with new keycaps or stickers and altered Char ROM.
Graphics and Sound Identical to original unit.
Eventual Fate Released.

Comments
It is unclear if the Swedish 610 was sold as a conversion kit for the stock 610, or if it was only sold localized.

See the PET 700 Comments for additional commentary on both systems.

The Swedish PET 700 (720)

Introduced ?
Hardware Identical to the original 720, with new keycaps or stickers and altered Char ROM.
Graphics and Sound Identical to original unit.
Eventual Fate Released.

Comments
Despite the keycap stickers, there are no other reported PET 700s, so it is entirely possible that it was only available in localized form. The use of the name "PET 700" is extremely ill-conceived and confusing, especially given things like the PET 200 itself, which is of course a significantly incompatible system with an unfortunately strong resemblance. Datatronic-Handic made this worse by selling a "PET 700 excluding monitor" in their price list (provided by Anders); these are, of course, just 600s. On their March 1984 price list, these monitor-less 700s were substantially cheaper than the actual "PET 600" they were selling; that's because that "PET 600" is actually their name for the 8296-SK!

So far, these units (possibly the entire line) are the only country-localized B/P series systems; there are no other versions for other countries that are known. Either unit can have the stickers or the keycaps, according to Anders who has seen both; his belief is that the keycaps (which are interchangeable) were manufactured initially, and then the stickers were introduced, which were cheaper and easier to make. In this case, it is amusing that Anders' "upscale" high profile unit would have the stickers, but the "lowbrow" low profile unit has new keycaps.

The Swedish 128, 128D, 128DCR

Introduced 1986?
Hardware Identical to the 128 (D, DCR), with altered keyboard, extra Char ROM (both English and Swedish/Finnish Char ROMs), altered Kernal.
Graphics and Sound Identical to the 128 (D, DCR).
Eventual Fate Released in Sweden and Finland.

Comments
No grotty stickers this time -- the Swedish/Finnish 128 keyboard does have the Swedish layout actually printed on it, but it is imprinted over the original so both appear (a la the the German 128). The Swedish 128 still lacked some symbols, and in 128 mode had slightly different graphic characters than in 64 mode (which was the same as the VIC-64S), but the design of the 128 allowed for some flexibility. In 128 mode, the user could switch between the two Char ROMs and Kernal keymaps with the ASCII/CC key, the renamed CAPS LOCK (in the Swedish 128 and 128D a wire connects ASCII/CC to the character generator; a jumper does the same in the DCR); in 80 column mode this triggered a routine to load the new character set into the VDC, which might be troublesome if a program managed to garble it. This was the same localization scheme used in the German model, and for that matter, just about every other internationalized 128. In 64 mode, however, the Swedish 128 only changes the characters -- not the keyboard layout -- when ASCII/CC is down.

Stefan Sandinge notes that the internationalisation support makes it possible to run a SCPU on a Swedish 128; the SuperCPU will automagically adapt itself to the Swedish settings. The difference in Kernals was the root cause for JiffyDOS' problems with Swedish Commodores, as JDOS is only aware of the English (International) Kernal version.