[Python] Problems opening DBF files in python

I am trying to open en transform several DBF files to a dataframe. Most of them worked fine, but for one of the files I receive the error: "UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xf6 in position 15: invalid start byte"

I have read this error on some other topics such as opening csv and xlsx and other files. The proposed solution was to include encoding = 'utf-8' in the reading the file part. I haven't found a solution for DBF files unfortunately and I have very limited knowledge on DBF files.

What I have tried so far:

1)

from dbfread import DBF
dbf = DBF('file.DBF')
dbf = pd.DataFrame(dbf)

UnicodeDecodeError: 'charmap' codec can't decode byte 0x81 in position 8: character maps to <undefined>


2)

from simpledbf import Dbf5
dbf = Dbf5('file.DBF')
dbf = dbf.to_dataframe()

UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xf6 in position 15: invalid start byte


3)

# this block of code copied from https://gist.github.com/ryan-hill/f90b1c68f60d12baea81
import pysal as ps

def dbf2DF(dbfile, upper=True): #Reads in DBF files and returns Pandas DF
db = ps.table(dbfile) #Pysal to open DBF
d = {col: db.by_col(col) for col in db.header} #Convert dbf to dictionary
#pandasDF = pd.DataFrame(db[:]) #Convert to Pandas DF
pandasDF = pd.DataFrame(d) #Convert to Pandas DF
if upper == True: #Make columns uppercase if wanted
pandasDF.columns = map(str.upper, db.header)
db.close()
return pandasDF

dfb = dbf2DF('file.DBF')

AttributeError: module 'pysal' has no attribute 'open'


And last, if I try to install the dbfpy module, I receive: SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Any suggestions on how to solve this?

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