[typing]
The year is 1975
and Commodore Business Machines had been successfully designing
and selling calculators for half a decade.
But there was a problem:
Texas Instruments, who provided the chips that powered Commodore's calculators
wanted in on that hot mathematical action.
So they increased the price of the chips to exorbitant levels, which meant
that Commodore and other companies were forced out of competition practically overnight.
Meanwhile, MOS Technology,
another company heavily invested in the calculator market at the time,
was developing a promising new CPU to compete with the Motorola 6800.
Chuck Peddle, in particular, was key to the company's current direction,
and he could see the writing was on the wall for the calculator market.
However, the hobbyist personal computer market was looking hugely promising,
and the new MOS CPU was perfect for the task.
Dubbed the 6502, this processor was first used in the KIM-1,
a single-board personal computer designed by Peddle
and manufactured by MOS Technology in 1976.
This got Commodore's attention,
and wanting to avoid another TI fiasco, bought MOS outright
to make sure that they had their own chip manufacturer.
And after seeing an early demonstration of Steve Wozniak's Apple II in 1976,
Commodore and MOS decided to take action.
Jack Tramiel, the founder and head of Commodore,
gave the green light to Peddle and his team to work immediately on a 6502-based computer,
set to debut in just six months at the 1977 Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago.
It had a chassis made of wood
and its display was a black-and-white TV from a local hardware store,
and Chuck Peddle only got it working just hours before the show.
Nonetheless, it struck a cord with potential buyers
with the production version finalized as the PET 2001,
going on sale in October of 1977 at an initial price of $495.
It went on to be a notable success for Commodore,
fighting neck on neck against the Radio Shack TRS-80 and the Apple II,
and winning over significant portions of the education and business markets
throughout the remainder of the 1970s,
before being eclipsed in sales by their own VIC-20.
As the competition gained increasing market share,
the PET continued to evolve with a multitude of revisions.
The original PET 2001 series with its awkward calculator-inspired keyboard
and 9-inch display was soon supplanted by the PET 4000 series,
featuring a 12-inch display and a proper keyboard.
Note that in Europe, these never used the "PET" moniker because of an existing trademark by Philips,
so there, they instead went under the name CBM, standing for Commodore Business Machines.
The CBM name was eventually used in the US as well, with things like the 8000 series,
which upgraded the old 40-column text display to a more modern 80-column display.
There were also some unique machines like the cleverly named Teachers' PET,
which Commodore donated to schools in order to gain a foothold in the education market,
and the SuperPET 9000,
sounding like something straight out of Buck Rogers,
featuring a coprocessor and 96KB of RAM.
Also of note are the later PET-based machines like the CBM 8096,
featuring a less angular, rounded case design
similar to Commodore's CBM 2 computers, which are another thing entirely.
For the rest of this video, we'll be looking at the CBM 8032 model from 1981,
which I got in 2012 for the price of $79.
A pretty good deal at the time,
but nowadays that would be an absolute steal!
Expect to pay at least twice that for one that doesn't even work,
anywhere from $250 to $400 for one that does,
and well beyond that for one of the earlier models or those outside of the US.
Now let's go ahead and get this out of the way:
this is a computer for more serious collectors,
and because of its immense historic value, it's highly sought after.
Commodore is a company that was legendary for its ruthless rise to power
and its pathetic self-implosion.
And seeing as this was its first computer, it's no wonder that its prices just keep going up.
Not only that, but the look of these things is astonishing, even today.
It looks wonderfully retro and yet wildly futuristic at the same time.
That cream-on-black color scheme.
Those hard angles and subtle bevels.
The proportion of the display to the main chassis–
Mmm... yes!
Plus the fact that it's built using thick sheet metal.
None of that injection molded plastic fluff,
which also means the thing weighs a hefty 40 pounds.
This sturdy, all-in-one case design was a big selling point for the computer back when it launched,
since its main competitors, the Apple II and TRS-80 Model I,
both required an external display.
Not so with the PET,
making it feel more like an appliance designed with clear purpose
rather than just a box that you connect to your TV.
In fact, depending on who you ask,
this is the first true personal computer for the mainstream,
especially the PET 2001 with its built-in cassette drive.
Even the name, "PET,"
invokes a friendly nature,
and invited comparisons to the pet rock fad of the late-1970s,
although officially it was an acronym that stood for Personal Electronic Transactor,
a far more business-like and stuffy name indeed.
[click and hum]
[beeping]
But even with all this in its favor,
the number of things you could actually do with its monochrome text display was limited.
This version features a 12-inch green phosphor display
capable of showing up to 80 columns of text at once,
which met the basic requirements for doing any serious work with spreadsheets and documents.
But the video address generator it uses only outputs text
and built-in hardware characters from the PETSCII character ROM,
and couldn't generate graphics like, say, the Apple II.
However, this wasn't exactly meant for the home user
so much as it was for businesses and education,
which makes sense when you look at this keyboard.
Gone are the tiny chiclet keys from the earlier models.
In is this full travel keyboard,
much like what you'd find on the later Commodore VIC-20 and 64.
And due to the metal case design and key press mechanisms,
it sounds thunderous and chunky to type on,
which I can't help but love.
[thunderous and chunky typing]
There's more to love around back, too,
with edge connectors for hooking in data cassette decks, parallel printers
and general purpose IEEE-488-compatible devices.
Getting inside the case is another one of my favorite things about the PET.
All you do is simply lift the front of the case below the keyboard
and pop the hood, so to speak,
letting you get to all its naughty bits with no screws required.
You've got 32KB of RAM in this model,
alongside a 20KB ROM, including the CBM KERNAL, character set and BASIC version 4.0.
There's also the MOS 6545 video chip,
outputting either a 40x25 or 80x25 character monochrome display,
as well as single Piezo Beeper
for single-voice square wave sound output.
And of course, at the heart of the machine
beats an MOS 6502 CPU running at 1MHz,
although you'll notice that mine isn't plugged into the motherboard itself.
Mine is plugged into a PETVet,
a custom-made board designed and sold by bitfixer,
which replaces both the RAM and the ROM of the machine.
When I got this 8032, the RAM had gone bad.
And since I also wanted the ability to run custom ROMs
and have an overall more reliable machine,
the PETVet was the perfect option for me.
There's also one seriously menacing power supply,
a technological beast that scares me into a fetal position every time I dare look at it.
Loading software into the PET can be accomplished in a few ways.
First is typing in a program yourself,
but that's slow and takes more time than I have anymore.
Second is using a Commodore tape drive
like one of these earlier models here,
or you could even use the later ones that were made for the VIC-20 and the 64.
Third is by use of floppy disks,
although this wasn't as common,
and requires something like the 8050 dual floppy drive, which I've never owned.
There's also a fourth option nowadays
with things like the PETdisk, also by bitfixer,
which allows you to use micro SD cards to load files through a boot loader.
Now, this is normally the part of the video where I talk about games and show some boxes but,
well, this was never a gamer's machine.
However, people still wrote hundreds of games for it,
making clever use of the limited graphics
that resulted in stuff like this:
Finally, if you don't wanna go through the copious cost and customization to get a working PET system,
emulation is an ever-present option for the curious and the enthusiast alike.
VICE and MESS are the two major options,
though I would highly recommend VICE for its ease of use
and more focused options regarding Commodore machines.
So that is the Commodore PET,
or at least the 8032 version,
although most of them are gonna be the same basic experience.
Although with this one,
it does have some other issues that I didn't touch on,
which I probably should have and I will now.
That a lot of the programs that I showed won't run on it because it's
got a different display and some other features that aren't compatible
with the 4000 series and further back, so
you're gonna have to do a little bit of tinkering to get those things to work.
With that said, I mean why in the world am I interested in this? Or why would anybody?
I mean it's hard to find,
it's expensive when you do find it,
it barely does anything worthwhile,
and yet I can't help but friggin' love this thing.
I seriously just adore this computer.
I love the way it feels
and the way it looks and
sounds, the green screen monitor, just
everything about it is awesome!
I love this thing! It's really cool!
It just doesn't do much. [laughs]
And I don't use it very much either, but
I do like the fact that
when you do finally get one, you can make it work a little better
with things like the PETVet and the PETdisk
and those things are incredibly useful
for just ease of use, but...
You know, what are you gonna do with it otherwise?
Other than just kind of treat it as a piece of art and
that's what I like to do.
I really just do adore this thing and it sparks conversation
anytime anybody sees it.
They're like, Whoa, that looks like something out of "2001,"
And yes, yes it does.
The movie, not the year.
Uh...
Anyway.
Well, that is all for this particular hardware review.
If you enjoyed this video on the Commodore PET,
then perhaps you would like to take a look at some of my others.
I reviewed the MSX2 recently,
and I've reviewed other Commodore machines in the past, and there's gonna be some more
in the future, of course.
As well as ton of other videos on a ton of other subjects, retro and otherwise,
so subscribing or just looking through my channel is recommended if you liked this.
There's also Twitter and Facebook, which I feel compelled to mention
since there are icons here in the annotations,
as well as Patreon, which really helps out.
So if you *really* like the show, then *really* do consider it, please.
It'll also get you some extra perks like being able to see videos earlier than anywhere else.
And as always, thank you very much for watching.