Commodorians Part 1
This was one of the three mega exhibits for the 40th anniversary of the big three appliance computers launched in 1977. Anthony Becker, Jeffrey Brace, Chris Fala, Todd George (captain), & Bill Winters combined their skills, collection, and love for Commodore equipment to showcase the PET-2001′s family tree.
Before Commodore Business Machines was making computers, they were making office equipment, namely typewriters. They got into the game of manufacturing adding machines, followed by calculators which were constantly decreasing in size while improving their capabilities. During the calculator wars, Texas Instruments had an upper hand in the market by being a main source of calculator integrated circuits. In an attempt to subvert TI’s control, Commodore purchased MOS Technology so they could produce their own semiconductors in house.
It just so happened that MOS had a microprocessor, the now famous 6502, which they were using in the KIM-1 trainer./demonstrator. Commodore continued selling the KIM-1 with their own branding, and one was on display acting as a clock.
However, the 6502 really shined in their first home computer, the PET-2001, available initially in an 8K version and a short lived 4K version. The PET was unique compared to its contemporary appliance home computers (the Apple II and TRS-80 Model I) in that it included a monitor and tape drive all in the same chassis. You’ll also note that the case of the 2001 is made from metal, not plastic like the competition. In true Commodore fashion, this was a money saving move -- they re-purposed their file cabinet manufacturing arm to make cases for the PET line resulting in very sturdy cases. The keyboards were re-purposed from cash registers, resulting in an incredibly clunky and uncomfortable design that didn’t last long.
I made it a personal mission to sit down at the PET-2001-8, just as I had at my first VCF East a decade ago, and program something. I tweaked the existing random character generator program on screen to use different PETSCII graphics than the demonstrator they had set up. This is an early blue bezel model, which makes up for the terrible chiclet keyboard.
The PET-2001 was succeeded by the 4000 and 8000 series machines, boasting larger screen options, a proper full travel QWERTY keyboard, more memory, better external interfaces, and more advanced versions of Microsoft BASIC. The IEEE-488 interface was fully implemented by this point, and was used with larger storage mediums like the 4040 and 8050 dual floppy drives, and rare CBM D9090 hard disk drive. The real oddity here is the very late SFD1001 drive, which uses the IEEE-488 parallel interface, but crams it into the case of a later 1541 drive more synonymous with the C64.