ability to define DB_CHARSET in v1.3.9?

[DivaVocals]

Choosing your character set is *your* job, not Zen Cart's job. The zc_install upgrade process DOES NOT change your character set. That's up to you.

okay.. got it... I will run the database upgrade script I used before..

If your existing database is NOT in utf-8 then you'll need to change your Zen Cart language files and configure.php to use whatever character set you're using with your database.

understood..

For new installs, it's best to use utf-8 because it's generally more globally compatible and most hosts use it by default now, so a new store should also use it by default. That's why the Zen Cart distribution files are set to use utf-8 by default.
Again, if *you* can't or don't want to use utf8 for whatever reason (including because you're upgrading a store whose data is NOT already utf8) then you need to change the Zen Cart code/files/etc to NOT use utf8.

understood..