UK PAL ColecoVision - Internal Photos

[Ikrananka]

I've seen very few photos of the internals of UK PAL ColecoVision units.  Today, I had to dismantle one of mine to take some readings from the VDP for another project and so decided to take a bunch of photos in case anyone was interested.  It's really quite interesting that they decided to locate the RF module in a completely different location to NTSC units and to have a captive RF cable.  In fact they even created a different mold for the ColecoVision bottom shell.  There are clear differences between this units bottom shell and that of NTSC units.  There are also a few subtle differences to the RF shield covering the motherboard.

 

Sorry for the quality of the photos, I don't have anywhere with decent controllable lighting.  If there are any other photos you'd like to see just let me know.

 

I wonder if this Rev.D motherboard is in step with the NTSC Rev.D motherboard of if it had it's own revision history.

[Falonn]

Is it just me or does the top half of the PAL case come off a lot easier than on an NTSC system?  I've only done it a couple times, but it feels like that part was redesigned to just slide forward a bit and come right off without applying any force (or removing the front sticker).

[Ikrananka]

Well, I did find it quite easy to get the case halves apart, but still had to do the levering trick to prise the front panel off the bottom half of the case.  But that might have been just muscle memory making me do that rather than trying to simply slide it off!!!  When I come to reassemble I'll have to see if sliding works.

 

I didn't look at the top half of the case too closely but it looked to be identical to the NTSC version.  But, as I mentioned above, the bottom half of the case is definitely a redesign for PAL and so I guess there may well be some changes that make it easier to separate from the top half.  It's hard for me to tell now that I've opened so many CVs such that I don't find any of them that difficult to open anymore.  Quite different to when I tried to open a CV for the first time and struggled for ages.