My Grail Computer: The Commodore PET 2001
 

Is finally a part of my collection!

Anyone else have experience with these? Mine needs a little work, but boy is this thing beautiful.

http://videokarma.org/attachment.php...0&d=1556718552

I don't have any experience with the PET, but many others in the VCF do. There were several that got fixed up at a prior workshop.

You know the big Vintage Computer Festival is this weekend, right? I'll be there showing off Unix on my Lisas :)

http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintag...festival-east/

-J

I've seen one in an expo, never touched one, but it's awsome looking!

Only one of a few Commodores I don't own. Congrats! These are getting few and far between.

I have the 8K model identical to the unit you have pictured.
I hate it.

https://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a...d_overview.jpg

Linear power supply, slightly bizarre analog video circuitry (but for us it's not TOO complicated ;) ) and many of the IC's are from a time when MOS was not...perfect at chip fabbing. They run hot (see the FLIR above), the nonstandard socket ROMs (and the sockets themselves) fail and the long out of production ram is no better for longetivity. Not long after this they revised the logic board with components that are still a bit more easy to source, otherwise I've found that even one bad RAM chip leaves you either hunting for a hopefully good replacement, or installing one small but expensive PCB that replaces two dozen other parts with a modern substitute.
They do however look pretty, but that's about it. No sound and no graphics outside from PETSCII art. I ended up getting mine nice and clean and working up until literally one or two ROM steps before the system initialized into CBM BASIC and gave up because without another machine to test parts in I was effectively stuck.

That games console it's an original "Atari" 2600 or a clone?

Original is subjective. Atari made them from 1977-the end of 1991 in several cosmetic variants, and also made the Sears badged units IIRC.
The 6-switch models were the first, they ade a number of diffferent but similar 4 switch models and even one that looked like the Atari 7800.

The retro ones that they make now still use the same chip so some people hack a cartridge port on to them so they can play cartridges on a new one.

The old Folsom library was giving these things away back in early 90s. My buddy and I picked up 3 of them one was a Commodore CBM. We could never get it to do anything except for a cursor but we had no idea what they were. What happened to them was a mystery. I dont remember unfortunately.

Same thing around here, back in about 93-94 there was a secondhand store that had about 20 of them. Never did ask the price as they were one of those places with ridiculous prices. They must have been out of a school or something. When I was in school we were using Apple IIe's but they were all numbered like they were out of a classroom.
As first glance I thought the 2001 was some sort cash register. It was the first one that I seen with the chicklet keyboard and the cassette drive, then I figured out it was a computer.
Back at that time information on programing them and any software was scarce.
It was before the internet took off and one's information sources were limited.
Aroung this time a commodore PET was for the most part considered junk to all but the few diehard commodore geeks that were out there. And this was also way before retro-computing was ever a trend.
It was enough of a challange to find information on booting a Commodore 64 that I got a year or so later.
I think back to that time especially when I see the $1000+ dollar prices on ebay and what I ended up spending on the 2 pets that I have now.
It's funny how much times have changed. Back then I asked everyone I knew and could get nowhere. Now within 5 minutes you can find enough information to be writing a program from a printout or test running a program on a emulator. And all the programs that can be downloaded could keep you glued to the screen for months on end.

It's a 1978 "Light Sixer". Authentic Atari 2600, but it's not the launch model. Part of me is tempted to pick up the launch model at some point, but I've had this one since I was 14 or so and have a bit of an attachment to it at this point.

I had a PET one time, picked up at the auction dump I think. It would power up with a screen full of digits and wouldn't do anything else. I never really put any effort to fixing it; this was in the early 90's. I did have a couple 64's around that time that I played with a bit but never found much interesting to do with them. I did use the color monitor (JVC) for many years as a bedroom TV using a VCR tuner. Very nice picture!

There was also a PET in our middle school computer lab, mid-80s, but it was already an unused orphan as we were using the IIe.

Quite nice Dubis :)