Commodore History Part 1: The Commodore Pet

I have one of these! It was my first computer. I got the 8k model, but it had the chiclet keyboard.

Eventually I got a full-sized keyboard for it, but it was made by a third party and connected to the motherboard via a flat ribbon cable.

I programmed my own text adventure for it from scratch, but I ran out of ram after the game had only three rooms in it. It may have been the smallest adventure game ever, but it worked!

To this day, I still see PET computers in old science fiction movies and in recent TV shows and movies that take place in the late 70s or early 80s. It was definitely the coolest looking personal computer of its time.

My dad had one of these, it was stored in the attic because it was already hopelessly outdated, until little me found it. I found the various graphical characters pretty interesting (that was before I could read, let alone read English BASIC commands) and started to "draw" stuff with it on the screen. Eventually I figured out very simple programs, like printing the same repeatable pattern over and over on the screen like a chain, and how to store those on a cassette and load them again later. And that was around the same time that I got an upgrade to my dad's old C64 - which again was already pretty dated when I got it, but that didn't really matter back then, because I had a big collection of pirated floppy disks with programs and games to sift through and even more curiosity to learn everything about this weird machine.

I like modern computers and find them quite amazing and useful, but if the truth be told vintage computers (from micros to minis to mainframes) hold equal if not greater fascination and fun for me.

Even beyond some imagined nostalgia for a bygone era that probably never was, there seems to be much to love about these pioneering machines in spite of – and perhaps because of – their quirkiness and extreme limitations.

This was the machine that kicked it all off for me, too. My school had one of the 4016 models when I was in fifth grade. Upon seeing how enamored I was with it, my teacher let me take it home for the summer. I couldn't believe how lucky I was! But little did I know! Later that year, my mom and dad got me an Atari 800 for my birthday! I was truly spoiled.

I think I've posted this link on HN before, but it bears repeating. The PET in our classroom had a tape drive and a cassette with the Andromeda demo. We were positively transfixed by it as kids in 1981! If you haven't seen it before, and have a little patience, it's good for a chuckle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElLt7Dm8F9M

In the early 80s (I think 83?) I did a week long summer computer camp at a local community college, and it was all on the PET. I recall having to do an interview because I was too young for the camp so my parents had to get special permission. We had just bought a VIC-20 at home, so I was even able to bring my cassette drive in and save the BASIC programs I wrote at school and run them at home.

The thing that impressed me the most was we got to run the classic Colossal Caves "Adventure" on the machine. Spent hours playing it at camp.

I still have 3 of these in a closet here, my 2001, 4032 (purple screen!), and a SuperPET 9000 (I think 9001 was the model number - Edit, nope, was a 9000)

Got the 2001 first at the age of 12 and taught myself to code by looking at listings of games then buying magazines. Machines like this made the barrier of entry to coding very low and appealing. The rest as they say is history and started a long career at the keyboard.

> What they’re doing here is using some critical timing to reset the video chip every scan line so that it only displays the top line of every character.

Excellent! I've always thought you could do "racing the beam"/Atari 2600 type graphics on early micros - is this working on actual hardware or just in emulation?

Many years ago, my father and I went to look at a used Commodore PET, with the rectangular layout, and I really liked it! The buttons were so colorful. My dad wasn't into it, and we didn't buy it.

So glad we didn't as we eventually bought a Vic-20! I still love the 'PETscii' graphics to this day.

This was the first computer I used. We had one in our 3rd or 4th grade classroom, circa 1978 ish, at Montclair Elementary School in Oakland, California.

I remember learning basic and also playing some type of lunar lander game.

Went from that to an Atari 400, to VIC-20 and then to the C64. Loved every memory from those years.

The PET was the first personal computer I used: it was a common choice in the UK in the period before the BBC Micro was introduced.

Oddly, I feel it has more of an Apple feel to it than the Apple II. Striking and futuristic design and a closed box seems now like a precursor of the Jobs era Apple designs.

The keyboard was what it was because it was a cash register keyboard, following the Tramiel philosophy of using what was on hand (a philosophy whose true tour de force was the Commodore VIC-20).

I'll bet that keyboard on the left machine was maddening :)

I think it worth mentioning that that the PET, with its trapezoidal frame, has more or less become the iconic image of a first gen personal computer.

This was the first computer I used and learned to program on starting in my third grade enrichment class. Lots of fond memories.

The iPhone vs. PET comparison shows exactly how far we have (not) come since 1977 in terms of usable keyboards.

Great memories. My first programming experience, and my first computer.