[Coco] The CoCo outside of the U.S.

[Torsten Dittel]

Boisy,

your post reminds me that I promised some pictures long time ago, but my 
collection is still boxed (family and job keep me busy...).

However, let me summarize some things I remember:

In Europe, we had "Tandy Computer Stores" (selling TRS-80 items, but not 
everything found in the US-Catalogs) and Tandy stores (selling the "toys", 
Realistic stuff etc.), at least in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands 
(don't know for sure about France and the UK, but I assume as well).

Any CoCo version has been sold as 240V 50Hz PAL version beside the CoCo3 
(that was only available in Australia), that means silver CoCo1 (all 
boards), CoCo1B (the big white case), CoCo2 and CoCo2B (TANDY logo, 
lowercase VDG - however the latter were hard to find because Tandy closed 
the Computer shops at the time they came out). All types of Multipak 
Interfaces were available with 240V 50Hz and most CoCo1/2 ROM Paks, 
joysticks, mice etc. as well as all types of disk controllers, floppy 
drives and printers.

I have seen all the manuals (Color BASIC, Extendend Color BASIC, Disk BASIC 
etc.) in German, English, Dutch and French.

PAL versions were different between the countries (see a previous post of 
mine regarding that topic, I guess it's available at CoCopedia too).

The PAL CoCos I've seen were made in the US (early models) and Korea (CoCo2 
& 2B). Would have to look at the French models to see were they come from 
(they were possibly made in France - they had a special RGB board and an 
AZERTY keyboard. That's what happened with the RGB MC-10 as well because 
foreign computers were banned from import as far as I know - at least they 
couldn't be bought by public schools during an IT educational program run 
by the French government in these times) 

Another Tandy licensed CoCo2 clone was called "Misedo 85" and made by 
Montex Ivangrad (Berane) in Montenegro (former Yugoslavia):
 
http://pc.pcpress.rs/pcmuzej/images/galerija/misedo85_big.jpg

If you need proves for some of the information above, I might be able to 
provide more internet findings and some pictures I already made (will not 
promise again I can take new pictures in time...).

Regards,
Torsten