Hello there. I want to try something a little different when it comes to viewer mail. So today
I'm going to be opening one package. I have been accepting viewer mail for a while and
it comes and goes in different waves of frequency, but for a little while now it's taken me too
long to reasonably hold on to enough mail to make one large interesting video.
So instead I'm going to open up a single package and take a look at it from start to finish which
I don't normally have an opportunity to do when I open a lot of mail. So let's try that out with our
first package today from Jeff, in Washington and I have no idea what is in this. [Music]
Yes, I do not know what is in this and it is open but I still haven't actually looked in it. I was
buying an old computer game and I had it shipped to my PO Box and I mistook this for that at first
and opened it briefly and saw a note and knew that it was not that. So I quickly closed it back up.
um, But Jeff reached out offering something for my Commodore PET and,
while I would normally want to know what it is Commodore PET’s kind of awesome and I really like
having excuses to use it. So I thought it might be fun to just have some mystery. So I do not know
what is in here. I'm gonna try and pull out the note without being able to see and let's take a
look at this. Hi Shelby, sorry for the mystery. I just figured that this close to the holidays
you might enjoy opening a surprise gift. I just finished repairing/restoring my CBM 8032. The
enclosed came out of a badly beat up donor machine that I took the CRT from I thought you could
put it to good use. [Highly Enthusiastically] No way, is this, ah! It's a frame!
Oh man, thank you so much Jeff! Okay so, my Commodore PET alright I bought um really in
rough shape. Okay. I bought it before I started making youtube videos and I'd done some repairs
to it before. um I had to replace some of the keys but one part I could never get my hands on
was the frame. My Commodore PET has a broken piece of the frame right here. Oh man that is so
awesome. I've been looking for one of these for years. Thank you so much. Okay we're definitely
gonna have to install this, uh, right now. That is amazing, wow. I've even tried to buy entire
monitors for PETs off of ebay. I'm just, this has really taken me so long oh man thank you so much.
Let me go grab my PET and uh yeah let's start tearing that thing apart. Oh I'm so excited.
There we go, I'm so glad that this is the first video where I'm opening the mail and
utilizing it in the same video because if I was opening a bunch of mail, I would be going crazy
knowing that I could be working on this. So, I like this format. Alright, this is my PET 4032,
Jeff mentioned he has an 8032,the difference is that the 40 means that it's 40 columns versus 80
columns. And then the 32 is the amount of memory that it was configured with. That's what the model
designation there means but my PET was never in really great condition. So when I bought this
this key was missing and about half of the keyboard didn't work. The entire machine was
disgusting. I still never really got the front faceplate all that clean and you can still see
some [of what] I believe [is] water damage. I think this thing was rained on. um The keyboard
needed to be fully torn apart and clean the carbon pads were all bad. And that actually
continued on when I had to do the video where I did the carbon trace repair with the copper tape.
But I'm pretty sure in addition to the water damage that has happened to this computer
something was dropped on it because there's this rather obvious glaring hole right there.
And I'm pretty sure whatever hit that also hit the keyboard and removed this key. You can tell
this one's different because it's not yellowed like all of the keys that were on this keyboard.
I lucked out very much with that key. And I found someone on ebay who had a massive amount of new
old stock Commodore parts that they bought in bulk from a closing factory for Commodore. So that was
pure luck. I'm so happy to have found that, but I couldn't get the bezel. He didn't have that. And
this one from Jeff looks like it's going to be a perfect match so I am really excited to figure
out how we're going to get to that. Now it does actually kind of look like we could just, uh,
pull it off from the front. So these have little tabs but I would rather
try to see it from the back and maybe push in on these so it doesn't get cracked and just make
sure that everything looks like it's going to line up correctly. But let's start getting into this.
Alright so here is how we get into the monitor. From the rear we can see we have two screws
there. But there's something kind of interesting about the PET um in how it's built because it's
kind of unique from this era and even for an all-in-one system. Now the monitor was
configurable when you purchased the system as either a 9-inch display or a 12-inch display
like this one is. So you could have different types of monitors put on here and the way
that they did this is by making the monitor completely modular to the rest of the system.
So it's actually constructed completely differently. This is steel, this is also metal but
not steel um I think it's more like a magnesium type thing, but this is plastic. And it's just
kind of weird that's three different materials there but the plastic monitor needed to be formed
strangely. This is for the neck of the CRT actually as we get in there we can see that that's
where all of the pins are for everything and that it's a pretty critical area. Unfortunately I have
seen some PETs where this has been knocked off which means that the tube itself is probably
totally destroyed. Just very unfortunate in that instance but it does do the job to protect it for
the most part. So as we get those loose, this just slides off the back. And there we can see
the innards, which I guess actually have shown on camera before since I filmed this area for the
Killer Poke video. Alright continuing on this is uh steel and then this is plastic. So that's kind
of funny. But we can actually see that the front of the display is mounted with these phillips
screws and I think that I should go ahead and pull that whole thing off. So let me do that.
Okay I wasn't expecting to enjoy this, but this is just, that's really strange. It's
like looking at a bald PET. There's so little there. It's just the tube,
that's a lot of plastic around it to give it its size and shape. [sigh] That's hilarious.
Unfortunately my mic cut out here for a bit so I'm going to be over dubbing this section.
I now have the front frame off and am ready to do the swap. Removing the black bezel was a fair
bit more difficult than I anticipated. On top of the plastic being stiff and not wanting to
break anything more, the casting for the white frame was bad and had a second lip that added
an extra hurdle to removing it. Going slow and thinking it through was the best way to do it.
Comparing my old broken bezel with the new one we can see that they actually have the exact
same part number cast in. They even have the same hand scratched “L” cast in. The new
one appears to be slightly bluer on camera so they may have a different plastic formulation,
but it's clearly the exact same part. It's not too surprising even though it came off of an 8032
because the 4032 was designed afterwards as a cost-reduced version to replace the 2000
series PETs. Installing the new bezel almost went perfectly smoothly. One of the clips turned out
to be broken off. I confirmed with Jeff that it was actually broken before he got it and that it
was damaged inside of his donor machine which was pretty badly mangled. He had attempted to
glue it back on for me but it didn't take. I went ahead and pulled out the super glue and
baking soda trick though which worked well for this. Once that was done I finally realized my
mic wasn't working and I got that fixed so now let's get back to the action as it happened.
Okay there we go, the new bezel is installed and I've repaired that minor issue but that's it and
done and wow does that look so much better. I mean just compare that to my bad one, I mean
wow. I can't wait to see this on the PET itself, that's going to look fantastic. Oh
I really didn't ever think I would get one of these. Okay, uh
yeah. There's nothing left to do here so we can go ahead and put this back on. And after having
dealt with this and especially that little extra ridge in the white piece’s casting,
I would definitely recommend on the very very off chance that anyone else is doing
this that you remove this whole front piece to detach this black frame. Because yeah that,
uh, that is not easy to get out of there. So let's go ahead and reattach this now.
Okay my feline supervisor has signed off on the repair by leaving hair all over.
But that's it! We're good to go and oh oh man. Again I can't I can't get over how much
better it looks without that big hole in it. Wow. Okay let's, uh, let's turn it on here.
It's not going to be exactly a whole lot to go through, because functionally the computer hasn't
changed at all. It's purely a cosmetic repair. But wow, just, that really changes the look
of the computer so much more than I would have thought. It just, it ties it together so much.
Man that is such a fantastic looking sight and again this isn't a position I ever thought I would
be in. This requires such an unfortunate series of events to happen. I need for someone out there
to have a 12 inch PET of the 40 or 80 series, die in such a way that it's not recoverable. And then
part it out, and then make the bezel available separate from the monitor. Which we saw it's not
really all that easy to get to, and even then just the monitors alone aren't really available that
often because usually they're kicked in and people don't think they're worth anything. So man, just
that's crazy. I'm so thankful, yeah, Jeff thank you so much again. I know
I've said it a lot in this video, but just I'm incredibly appreciative.
Well like I said this is entirely a cosmetic change so there's nothing really
to go on demonstrating here. The PET itself works fine, so it's just done and ready to go.
So I'm extremely happy to have that last little problem solved. That again is really something
I never thought would happen. Now I'm a little more inclined to, uh, try and match the paint
here so I can fix up just a couple little issues here and there. Maybe try and deep clean this
badge again because there's some water markings in it like I mentioned. But that's
really it and then it's done. Wow that's, that's crazy. Well
that's it for now I don't have anything else to go into. I will leave you with a slight teaser
for a video I'm going to get to with the PET at some point here. But I want to get to a few other
things first. But that's it for the moment, if you enjoyed this you may want to subscribe, and if you
want to support the channel I am on Patreon. But for now that's it and I'll see you next time.