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Have you got a PET at home?


CatPix

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Ah memories... "Have you got a PET at home?" is the sentance that my English teacher used to introduce us to the word "pet". Hilarity ensued; in French PET litteraly mean "fart".

 

Anyway, now I can say that yes, I have a PET at home; of course, the kind with chips, not fleas (lost in translation joke : both "flea" and "chips" translate as "puce" in French...)

 

Long story short, I saw an add for a CBM 4016; I offered 75€uros for it, and the seller accepted... if I drove to pick it up, since shipping such a fragile old beast is pretty much out of question.

 

While this guy is certainly a retrogamer, his main focus are consoles. So (probably because of his wife :P ) he showed me more machines, and sold them for a ridiculous price.

 

 

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Yaay, grey plastic to the rescue!

 

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The Mac Classic need no introduction.

 

The Amstrad 6128 Plus is an upgrade over the 464/6128 series. More colors, a better chip arrangement that allowed for smoother operation, and a cart port.

The Amstrad PC1512 is a nice IBM-PC compatible. It feature some nice options, such as being provided with a mouse, a volume knob for the PC speaker, a joystick port on the keyboard.

The Joystick port on the keyboard is wired on unused character from the keyboard, allowing to use a joystick on any PC game that allow you to use your own keys.

This is why we liked Amstrad.

On the other hand, the mouse is an Amstrad standard so neither IBM PC COM mouses, Atari or Commodore mouses work on it, and some software wouldn't recognize it.

Also, the power supply is located in the display, not in the unit. It make it amazingly light, but meant that you couldn't upgrade your display easily unless you acquired a separate power supply or an Amstrad monitor. It's one reason Amstrad ultimately failed to stay in the PC market...

 

 

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Two untested Amiga A500, of different generation.

The whiter one is more recent, or so I believe (a sticker in it says that it was made/tested in 1987). Does this explain why it remained white?

The mouses that come with them are from Malaysia and Hong Kong, so there is a difference there.

 

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The white one feature a "Commodore France" stickers, that I rarely see. But like the yellowed one, it was "made in West-Germany".

 

 

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An original RGB TTL video cable, and a modified one with SCART. Note that the European (French?) Commodore 1084 screen come with a SCART input so both cables can be used on it, but the SCART one can connect to a regular TV.

 

And of course, the main reason why I got all of this :

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Ready? Sure I am!

Edited by CatPix
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So I did a bit of job today while I had some time - cleaning the Amigas (hello fluff) and opneing the CBM to investigate that "extra RAM" thing.

And it bring more question than answer. Well, for sure, this CBM was in the hand of a guy that had some knowledge and wanted to fiddle with his machine.

 

Opening the hood (stupid me, I didn't see the hinge... Hah)

 

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DUUUUUSSSSTT

 

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I'VE GOT TEH POWER

 

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Yep, that's definitively dust.

 

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From what I read, Commodore had sealed the holes for the extra RAM on the 4016. It does looks like that somebody here painstakingly removed the extra solder and added those tube supports to insert the extra RAM.

 

 

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Still from what I read, those chips are where the 80 colums chips of the 8000 series should be. Does it mean that my 4016 is a sort of 8032 Frankenstein machine? Or were those chips used for something else? Apparently in later PETs, this is where controllers for floppy drives would be found. The blue one does looks like a homemade thing for sure.

 

 

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Ribbon cables... No idea what they are for. Maybe the owner pulled them out of the box and had his own 8" or 5"1/4 drives connected on them?

 

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The motherboard says 80 colums, but from what I read, Commodore used the same motherboard for the 4000 and 8000 series and simply removed the support for 80 colums mode in the 4000 series, so this doesn't mean much. Or maybe someone that know best will be able to say something about it.

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It's what I read, but I don't know how to donfirm the use of 40 or 80 colums or both modes being available on the PET.

 

After researches, the EDEX is an additionnal BASIC chip, apparently, as I found on a PDF :

 

EDEX is an extension to BASIC which considerably enhances the potentialities of the Commodore PET/CBM
It consists in a 4K-BYTE ROM which installs inside the PET/CBM.
EDEX is compatible with Commodore disk devices as well as with the DOS Support Program.
EDEX operation is fully transparent towards the Microsoft Basic Interpreter
EDEX is fully compatible with prior programs written without EDEX.

 

 

Apparently, EDEX chips were installed on all CBM 8000 by Procep, the French importer of Commodore computers.

I assume that they also provided chips for the 4000 series as well.

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I'm not entirely sure, but I think the universal boards can be jumpered for 40/80 columns and change of ROMs to justify that.

 

I have a PET that I picked up over 20 years ago for the grand total of $5.00. It's labeled as a 4032. There are two switches, some additional ROM chips and a ton of wires attached to the motherboard. Toggling both switches with the power off allows you to switch between 40 and 80 column modes.

 

I need to get the poor thing working again. It was stored for the last 15 years in my basement. Powers up no problem. When I first pulled it out about 6 months ago most of the keys were unresponsive. I took the keyboard apart (lots of screws) and have most of the keys working. There are a few that still don't work. I need to try again.

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