pet Anyone else PET crazy?

[Mirage]

[bennybingo]

I have always wanted one...mostly to see what they are all about. For me, every opportunity in which I have come across a PET in the wild, it was too expensive for me to blindly give it a try. Is there anything extraordinary about these machines that sets them apart from their successors? I am still on the fence at this point, but I am interested to hear more about these.

[Mirage]

Well, they aren't that expensive, other than what some sellers on ebay are asking for them (not getting). Not counting the 9" 4032 on the left that I got for free (long story), I have under $150 SHIPPED into each of the other two (8032 and 4016, both from ebay, just gotta be patient), and both fully working and in great shape. Thanks to the PETvet and PETdisk, it really doesn't matter how much RAM or what ROM a PET has, because the PETvet makes any of them 32K and whatever ROM you want.

 

Anything that sets them apart from their successors? Well... hmmm... they are one of the trinity of '77, so everything before that is pretty basic comparatively. But compared to something like a C64 or A8, they are pretty primitive. In stock form, there is no hi-res graphics, no color (obviously), primitive sound (at best, earlier versions have none), and no programmable character set. BUT... they're still pretty cool machines.

 

I have to admit, I am completely colored by nostalgia as these were the computers I used in elementary school and pretty much cut my teeth on. It's hard for me to see them from the point of view of someone who never used one. But they sure do look cool!

 

At any rate, mine are from L to R: 9" 4032, 12" 8032, 12" 4016.

Edited July 27, 2013 by Mirage

[Cebus Capucinis]

Ooh, Footloose album underneath!

[Mirage]

Ooh, Footloose album underneath!

 

Yep, and Beverly Hills Cop is the one to the left of that that you can just see the corner of!

[20ohm20]

I had a 4032 and a SFD-1001, but ended up selling them in the late 90's since they sat in storage for 3+ years without being turned on and I didn't want to move them across the country. I still have a few QD floppies around somewhere that have BASIC programs on them.

 

I wouldn't mind having a 2001 with a chiclet keyboard, if the price was right.

Edited July 28, 2013 by 20ohm20

[Mirage]

Yeah, I have no interest in having a 2001 with the regular keyboard, but would like to have a chicklet-keyboard 2001, like you, if the price was right. Not interested in paying what most ask. That's 100% pure nostalgia though, since some of the ones in my elementary school were the chicklet keyboard models, but since I'm more into actually USING them, I'm perfectly fine with the 3 that I have. They're probably overall the most practical models to have.

[+Gemintronic]

My experience is similar to Mirage. Pretty much these were the school computers when I was growing up. It was just natural to save and load programs on a PET. It's the only system I can truly tolerate cassettes on.

[akator]

Nice photo, Mirage.

 

I love the PET machines for their aesthetics, especially the 2001. These are what the future was supposed to look like. You know, like those flying cars and domed moon cities we were supposed to have by now

[boxpressed]

I used PETs in 7th grade. Space Invaders. And then this space game where you had to solve an arithmetic problem before a missile reached the left side of the screen. Wish I could remember the name...

[Osgeld]

the pet was a terminal that had enough brains to act as a computer, other than historic fact and ciroisty I have never felt the need to own one, though they were plentiful in the 90's

[Mirage]

That sort of makes sense looking back from a modern perspective, but at the time they were released, they were every bit a "computer" within the context of the time they were released.

 

And yes, they were plentiful in the '90s. I passed by the opportunity to pick up quite a few when schools were practically giving away pallets of them. I just didn't have the space for them, or the means to go get them. That's okay, I have all I need now.

Edited July 28, 2013 by Mirage

[carlsson]

Right now I only have one working 4032, plus a broken 3032, a broken 8296 minus keyboard and a CBM 700 that actually works but also without keyboard. I used to have plenty more after I went to visit a former PET reseller in the years 2006-2011. I traded away a lot, and some friends from the continent came to pick up all the remaining PETs.

 

They're generally nice to play with, but take a lot of space so it is a challenge to find a place to even have one machine up, the rest in storage. As mentioned, technically they really don't do anything that latter systems can't do multiple times over, in particular when connected to a sharp monochrome monitor.

[Mirage]

Yeah, I keep the 4016 at the far right end of the bar, right where it is in the pic. The other two, I keep back behind the bar for now. One isn't too bad, but once you get 2 or 3, they do suck up some good space.

[awhite2600]

I have a PET 4032 that I picked up years ago at a surplus store for $5.00. It actually has some switches inside that toggle between 4032 and 8032 configuration. The PET will always be near and dear to me as it's the first computer that I ever used.

[Mirage]

Yep, you can do that with the later boards. They were really all the same board, just a few mods necessary to make a later 4032 an 80-column machine also. Cool that yours already had the mod when you got it!

[Chuck D. Head]

They just look so damn cool, I have to get one someday.

[Mirage]

Yeah, now if I could just get my hands on one of those 8296's! :lust:

[high voltage]

Pet softs:

 

[Mirage]

Oh wow! I have quite a few dozen original educational cassettes, but nothing like those.

[Bill Loguidice]

I have three PETs, the 2001-8 with the chiclet keyboard and two SuperPETs, though one of the SuperPETs is missing the second CPU. I love the look and feel of all-in-one computers from this era, but I must admit that I don't use these as much as other systems in my collection. I have a decent selection of boxed software, though that's weighted heavily towards Avalon Hill stuff, since that has always been the easiest to find.

[tep392]

I never got to use one of these machines. I only ever saw them in the mall computer shop I would visit looking for Apple II and Atari s/w. It just looked like a business machine to me. The first computer I ever used was it's competitor, the TRS-80. Now, I would like to have one for my little collection because of it's asthetics and it would be interesting to play around with.

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

Pretty sure some version of these machines is the first thing I actually "loaded" a program to, using a cassette tape. It was a "game" of some educational content but I cannot recall details. Oh and it was in our classroom, I just remember thinking how cool this big machine looked and how "futuristic" at least in my mind at the time as it reminded me of computers I had seen in SciFi movies.

Edited July 30, 2013 by OldSchoolRetroGamer

[krslam]

I've got 3 pets: 8032, 4032, and 2001-8 chicklet. Two from garage sales and the other from Goodwill. Much as I love the look of them, they don't get much use as my desktop space is limited.

[high voltage]

Pretty sure some version of these machines is the first thing I actually "loaded" a program to, using a cassette tape. It was a "game" of some educational content but I cannot recall details. Oh and it was in our classroom, I just remember thinking how cool this big machine looked and how "futuristic" at least in my mind at the time as it reminded me of computers I had seen in SciFi movies.

 

They did feature in Battlestar Galactica (original)