COMMODORE PET2001

 

tot2pwr.jpg (7376 byte)Here it is, the Commodore PET 2001, rescued in a dark garage and saved it from a sad destiny.
I recognized it by its strange trapezoid monitor form and immediately added to my collection, after a big clean and general rehabilitation.
This model is the PET 2001-8C (one of the first PETs), with 8Kb ram, monochrome 9 inches monitor integrated, chiclet keyboard and tape recorder datassette C2N-1 strongly integrated in the case. Strangely, in the front, the label with the computer name & the Commodore logo is absent; I think it was removed or is a conseguence of a war between Commodore and Philips (Philips won), that gave Commodore to erase the PET logo on its machines.
tot1opn.jpg (5898 byte)
I immediately opened it, noted the "strange" open system similar to the chest car opened; motherboard and the power section was in a good state, but covered by a dust strate (the copyright on the motherboard show 1977 year; several years of dust...). 
With many care I got off the mainboard to clean it, also to clean the transformer and the big capacitor; after to cleaned the dust on the case floor I climbed on the motherboard.

prompt.jpg (4366 byte)Now arrived the big moment : POWER ON; IT WORKS!
After a big emotion to see the first Commodore basic screen, immediately I have made to run an elementar basic program to test the screen display speed, it was all OK!.
Unfortunately, sometimes at the startup, the screen is rickety or, after some time, the displayed characters show an "instability"; in general I cannot groan....
After I bought a double floppy drive CBM4040 immediately tested with the PET but It didn't work (after some time I have know that basic v1 had got some bugs that stop a correct use of IEEE bus by floppy drive, removed on followed revisions).
I succeed to test the 4040 floppy drive with a Commodore 64 by the DAMS IEEE-488 interface card, but the only thing I obtained was the directory list of a floppy formatted by a 1541 drive, without to succeed to load or save something... It's a sin... but I am happy however!


 



Rehabilitation list (click on photo to enlarge):

 

1) machine's open: general condition verifying

   tot1ico.jpg (4073 byte)       open1ico.jpg (2935 byte)

2) Effectively there is many dust...

   open4ico.jpg (3647 byte)      open5ico.jpg (4171 byte)

3) Motherboard get off & internal cleaning

   scheda6i.jpg (3200 byte)      dentro1i.jpg (3335 byte)

4) Now the aspect is better than before

   scheda3i.jpg (3198 byte)      power1i.jpg (3682 byte)

5) Climb on all, the big moment arrive: IT WORKS!

   tot1pwi.jpg (3949 byte)      mon7i.jpg

cbmsx.gif (1543 byte)