Nuts and Volts - September 2015

The Commodore PET 2001 was one of the very first plug-and-play home computers on the market. With its built-in 40-column monochrome screen, cassette deck, keyboard, 6502 processor, and 4K of RAM, it was ready to use right out of the box. Over the years, the PET was incrementally updated, but through its life remained fundamentally the same. It evolved from a hobby machine into a business machine, trading its 40-column screen and tape drive for a more business-friendly 80 columns with dual disk drives and even hard drives.

Commodore’s CEO, Jack Tramiel knew that the future was with the low-end home market, so Commodore started thinking about making a color computer of some kind. They started with the PET as a base and built prototypes along the way using various technologies, but eventually decided to release completely new cost-reduced machines such as the VIC- 20 and C64, using custom designed chips from their MOS semiconductor operation.

Fast forward to today. I’ve become a retro computer collector, re-learning everything about those old machines. I’ve been a computer programmer and IT guy over the years, and I’ve tinkered with hardware and electronics but not seriously. I decided I wanted to get into it more as a hobby, and wanted a project that could combine hardware, software, and my love of retro computers into one. It seemed only natural to pick a project involving the Commodore PET.

I’ve always been fascinated by Commodore’s prototypes and wonder what might have been if Commodore had decided to make a color PET fully

The year was 1977. I was in my early teens, and I happened to be at the mall.

Right there in the department store I saw it ... the Commodore PET 2001. It sat on a counter all by itself with its small built-in screen, keyboard, and tape drive, cursor blinking, just begging to be played with. I pecked at the keys and they magically typed numbers, letters, and strange symbols. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was hooked. That was the exact moment I knew I wanted to be a computer geek. A few years later in high school, our computer room had six PET 4032s and one lone 4040 disk drive. I spent many hours programming and playing games on those machines, and I've been a Commodore fan ever since.