Pet Alive! - April 24th to May 2nd, 2010

[tezza]

Less than two weeks until PET Alive! comes alive

Less than two weeks until PET Alive! comes alive

Just a reminder to everyone about PET Alive! Less that two weeks to go!

Wake up 'em up, clean 'em up and put them on display. Don't forget to remind anyone who you know who has a PET (or two) about this upcoming event.

I leave you with this curious image. Kudos for anyone who knows who this is and where it came from?

Tez

 

[tezza]

Pets run wild!

Pets run wild!

Just a reminder....About a week to go until the "Pet Alive!" comes alive!

Specific details as to exact times etc. will be posted next week.

Groom those PETs!

Tez

 

[billdeg]

Serial Port for PET

Serial Port for PET

I am looking for a suitable connector to make a serial port on a PET at the moment. I have something complicated, but I'd like a more simple design if I can swing it. anyone have the byte mag Dec 1980...see page 34...I don't have the right connector to make a serial port out of the parallel I/O port. ..working on it...
MORE: http://www.portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=larry:classiccomp:flash_attack:start
bd

 

[tezza]

Multiplayer games on a PET?? I'd never heard of such a thing?! Interesting article Bill. Hope you pull off the mod!

Tez

 

[barythrin]

Well, good news is my 8032 at least powers on into basic 4.0. I typed a few things on it just to look for any oddness and so far so good. So as a tech I'm obliged to fix it still and see how well it does with a car ride to the Amiga group meeting tonight. Then I'll try out that memory tester basic program someone listed here and see if I can get it to test my RAM for me.

I was hunting around for information on how to use the roms in the spacesaver thing. I didn't find the easy enough documentation yet. I have a switch on the right of the pet that I can select 1 of 4 the installed ROMs but I'm not sure if I can do anything with them yet. Would I go into the monitor and set the address and run the rom or are these not usually programs? I did read enough to know that WordStar ROM is just a copyright rom for the software (on disk or tape) to read.

(Hey, on the bright side my RAM count is the same as Erik's so hopefully it's good). I'll try to run to the store during lunch and see if I can find a cassette tape for sale and test out 2 tape drives for it although I'm not holding my breath on them being clean enough or in good magnetic condition to work.

 

[tezza]

Go for it barythrin!

I'm afraid I cheat and use a standard C64 tape drive on my PET (*hangs head in shame*)

Tez

 

[MikeS]

<snip>
I was hunting around for information on how to use the roms in the spacesaver thing. I didn't find the easy enough documentation yet. I have a switch on the right of the pet that I can select 1 of 4 the installed ROMs but I'm not sure if I can do anything with them yet. Would I go into the monitor and set the address and run the rom or are these not usually programs? I did read enough to know that WordStar ROM is just a copyright rom for the software (on disk or tape) to read.

Some are just 'dongles' like the WordPro and Visicalc ROMs, and they may or may not also contain code that's part of the main program; that's where you'd use something like the Spacesaver to switch between WordPro and Visicalc, for example, without having to open the PET and switch the ROMs.

Other ROMs like dave_m's BATPRO, Command-O, NewTim etc. are mainly utilities, monitors, BASIC expanders and the like; these are usually activated with a SYS xxxxx command.

I don't recall: do we know what ROMs you have in your 8032 and if they're already archived or not?

See:

http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/firmware/computers/pet/other/index.html

http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/pet/roms/index.html

Good Luck!!!

mike

 

[tezza]

PETS run amok!

PETS run amok!

A final reminder that the PET Alive! event starts this weekend in the Commodore Forum.

It's an event everyone can be part of...whether you own a PET or not! The only prerequisite is some enthusiasm for these venerable machines.

Although some awards will be given, don't let this put you off showing off YOUR PET. Dead or alive, shabby or groomed..drag it out and take some pics.

Tez

 

[barythrin]

lol..(reading the appropriate commentary on the pictures) ok here you go: http://main.org/ctacs/ A few of us from the Central Texas Amiga Computing Society meeting this last Monday where I brought my Pet and an untested tape drive which amazingly worked when I saved the basic memory test program as memtest (you can see that in the last picture.. you can also see I didn't remember enough to actually ask it to verify the file name the first time). The first issue we had saving the file was the tape drive would spin but the system would never detect the drive. That was me not knowing which was the correct port to plug it into, turned out the back port was correct and it finally wrote then we rewound and verified the saved file. Yay! Don't have to retype the memory testing app, but I should probably rewrite it to test all the memory and correctly output the bad bytes if it finds them.

I know it's ahead of schedule but at least now I can concentrate on testing other tape drives AND my floppy drive unit which I've never tested. Excited to have a good excuse and friends to troubleshoot things with. I have a few pictures trapped on my phone that I'll try getting added to the site once I remember where I put my flash drive or how to get windows mobile to stop sharing the internet and do activestink instead.

Note: you'll never see my face in these pictures I was quite happy that Mark was eager and happy to play with the pet and type out the basic code while we all helped proofread the printout (which printed O's for some of the 0's for whatever reason) and typed text for typos. Some were user error, some were us not hitting the key enough times errors (contacts need to be cleaned). Either way quite a success and everyone was happy to be involved and also gave kudos to the successful advertising of the Pet Alive project (google it.. it's out there!).

 

[tezza]

Lol. Excellent.

I take it now the PET has yawned and stetched it's legs we'll see it again in the Pet Alive! Thread once it's up? No need for a spell in the hospital I think.

Tez