Here it is, the Commodore PET 2001, rescued in a dark garage and
saved it from a sad destiny.
I recognized it by its strange trapezoid monitor form and immediately added to my
collection, after a big clean and general rehabilitation.
This model is the PET 2001-8C (one of the first PETs), with 8Kb
ram, monochrome 9 inches monitor integrated, chiclet keyboard
and tape recorder datassette C2N-1 strongly integrated in the case. Strangely, in the front, the label with
the computer name & the Commodore logo is absent; I think it was removed or is a
conseguence of a war between Commodore and Philips (Philips won), that gave Commodore to
erase the PET logo on its machines.
I immediately opened it, noted the "strange" open system similar to the chest
car opened; motherboard and the power section was in a good state, but covered by a dust
strate (the copyright on the motherboard show 1977 year;
several years of dust...).
With many care I got off the mainboard to clean it, also to clean the transformer and the
big capacitor; after to cleaned the dust on the case floor I climbed on the motherboard.
Now arrived the big moment : POWER ON; IT WORKS!
After a big emotion to see the first Commodore basic screen, immediately I have made to
run an elementar basic program to test the screen display speed,
it was all OK!.
Unfortunately, sometimes at the startup, the screen is rickety or, after some time, the
displayed characters show an "instability"; in general I cannot groan....
After I bought a double floppy drive CBM4040 immediately tested
with the PET but It didn't work (after some time I have know that basic v1 had got some
bugs that stop a correct use of IEEE bus by floppy drive, removed on followed revisions).
I succeed to test the 4040 floppy drive with a Commodore 64 by the DAMS
IEEE-488 interface card, but the only thing I obtained was the directory list of a
floppy formatted by a 1541 drive, without to succeed to load or save something... It's a
sin... but I am happy however! |
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