PET Alive! - The Event Thread!

[carlsson]

Does the TV/video interface work well? As I mentioned before, I have something very much alike, except mine has a metal case around the circuit board. I suppose if I open it up, I might find a circuit board very much alike yours. Previously I tried mine both with 40 and 80 column PETs without getting any decent RF signal, but the board might be b0rken.

 

[fachat]

carlsson: Very cool Anders. I didn't know you could hook hard drives up to a PET.

In fact, Commodore sold hard drives for the PET too! Look out for D9090 and D9060 drives. I actually have one myself. Internally a DOS board similar to the 8x50 drives, but the FDC controller actually is a SASI controller - the SCSI predecessor - and the SASI drive controller itself connected to an MFM disk.

André

 

[fachat]

Now you're just teasing . Ok, I'll bite. What is it?

Tez

The left part is an adapter. You put it "under" the 6502 CPU, and the connector to the right is for CS/A65 cards, my own selfbuilt computer. I used it for example to connect an RS232 interface to the PET, or a SCSI hard disk (but only with my selfbuilt OS)

The right one is an Ethernet board I am currently developing - as you can see no parts soldered in yet. So this would make the PET be able to do Ethernet.

Only after the post I found out that the adapter is missing the 3.3V required by the Ethernet controller, but that can be fixed too

André

 

[sjgray]

Very nice, but I was kinda hoping for a closer look at some of your many other goodies ;-)

It would have been nice to try to fire up my MTU graphics PET, but probably wouldn't have made it in time anyway.

But I suppose that aside from the awards etc. these threads will still be around after the deadline...

I pulled out my 8032-SK and tried installing the commodore HSG graphics board but the machine wouldn't power on. It was working when last put away so not sure what is going on there. Sorry about the MTU manual. Not enough time to scan it. I'm not sure what else you want to see.... if there is something specific let me know.

Steve

 

[sjgray]

Some accessories for the well-equipped PET (I posted them before, but what the heck...)

View attachment 3519
Homebrew PET speech synthesizer and a resistor-ladder DAC & CB2 sound and music adapter.

Does that speech board use an SPO-256 chip? I made something similar for my B128 machine. I also have a composite video adapter just like the one used on that tv show. Got it from John at one of the TPUG meetings.

Steve

 

[carlsson]

the SASI drive controller itself connected to an MFM disk.

From what I remember looking inside that Corvus drive, it has a ST-xxx type disk (not sure if it does MFM or RLL) as well. I suppose it is natural, as it might've been the only kind of hard disk interface suitable for personal computing back then? I am sure to have seen at least one or two more 3rd party hard drive solutions for PET computers, and suppose the same technology was utilized for all those TRS, Apple and other business oriented systems of the very early 1980's.

 

[MikeS]

I pulled out my 8032-SK and tried installing the commodore HSG graphics board but the machine wouldn't power on. It was working when last put away so not sure what is going on there. Sorry about the MTU manual. Not enough time to scan it. I'm not sure what else you want to see.... if there is something specific let me know.

Steve

Sorry, Steve, didn't mean to sound like I was complaining; like I said I could pick up the docs any time but I wouldn't have had the time to play around getting the board to work. Sounds like we're both in the same boat; maybe by the next time we'll both have graphic PETs to show off ;-)

Also just teasing ya about showing more; I'm sure you could have spent several weeks just digging out stuff and taking pictures ;-)

 

[MikeS]

Does that speech board use an SPO-256 chip? I made something similar for my B128 machine. I also have a composite video adapter just like the one used on that tv show. Got it from John at one of the TPUG meetings.

Steve

Yup, the chip pair that Radio Shack used to sell, an SP0256 with one of the ROMs. We'll have to get a pair of our PETs together telling each other stories of their old days...

 

[billdeg]

Hi! Sorry, there's no actual networking going on between the two machines, I just manually synced them to make the display a bit more interesting.

Here's the source anyway: http://pastebin.com/fcqxq3bS

ah. I see.

 

[MikeS]

Does the TV/video interface work well? As I mentioned before, I have something very much alike, except mine has a metal case around the circuit board. I suppose if I open it up, I might find a circuit board very much alike yours. Previously I tried mine both with 40 and 80 column PETs without getting any decent RF signal, but the board might be b0rken.

Well, it outputs a composite video signal, not RF, but yes, it worked quite well with an 8032. Keep in mind that AFAIK the video signals from the PETs with no graphic controller are different, as are your video standards over there. I'd hook it up and take a picture but, like much of my stuff at the moment, I can't find it right now, maybe Steve?

 

[tezza]

That's my impression as well; much has been written with hindsight about Commodore's North American marketing mistakes....

I was intrigued by this so I did a bit of digging on the Net and found this fairly long article on computer history which has a section on (the rise and fall of) Commodore. If the article is to believed, then Commodore treated customers and dealers very badly in the early days compared to the competition. A reflection of Jack Tramiel's agressive way of doing business maybe?

Tez

 

[carlsson]

60 Hz NTSC composite video is no problem for me. It usually displays on all monitors and TV sets, although often only in B&W.

 

[tezza]

1977 micrcomputer face-off

1977 micrcomputer face-off

As I see it here are the main pros and cons of the PET as measured against the competition at the time it was released (1977).

PET 2001.

• Pros: All-in-one unit, full screen editing, lower case.
• Cons: Calculator-style keyboard, poor distribution/customer and dealer relations

TRS-80 Model 1

• Pros: Existing distribution chain (in North America), good customer support
• Cons: poor 4k Level 1 BASIC (at least initially), Four separate pieces leading to desk clutter.

Apple II

• Pros: Colour, easy expandability
• Cons: Had to buy a screen and a storage device, very expensive

 

[dave_m]

PET Utility ROMs

PET Utility ROMs

Do any of you remember the Utility ROMs we would add to our PETs in the expansion sockets? They contained BASIC extensions and disk commands similar to the Commodore universal wedge.

Here is a show & tell of a couple of the features of the Basic, Assembly and Text Processor (BATPRO) utility.

On the first line, a Monitor Mode command is executed (;mm). The “c” on the second line just before the register dump indicates that the monitor was called and not reached by a Break instruction. This is the extended monitor (XTRAMON) with several functions added to the built-in machine language monitor.

At this point on the display, an Interpret Memory command (.i) is issued for a block of memory from hex B0B0 to B0DF in memory (ROM area). The monitor then displays not only the memory contents in hex but also in PETSCII characters.

The next command is the Disassembly command (.d) for a fragment of code from hex CC00 to CC0C. Both the hex data and the assembly language code is displayed.

An Exit command (.x) exits the monitor and returns to BASIC.

While the BATPRO version found only works with BASIC 4 PETs (4000 and 8000 series), there are other similar utilities like Command-O and New-TIM that work with the 3000 series machines. The binaries are posted on Zimmers.
-Dave

 

[sjgray]

Well, it outputs a composite video signal, not RF, but yes, it worked quite well with an 8032. Keep in mind that AFAIK the video signals from the PETs with no graphic controller are different, as are your video standards over there. I'd hook it up and take a picture but, like much of my stuff at the moment, I can't find it right now, maybe Steve?

Mine is accessable. I haven't even tested it, so I guess this would be a good excuse... will let you know, and post on my page. If i get some time I'll work on the 8032-SK and graphics board ;-)

Steve

 

[MikeS]

I was intrigued by this so I did a bit of digging on the Net and found this fairly long article on computer history which has a section on (the rise and fall of) Commodore. If the article is to believed, then Commodore treated customers and dealers very badly in the early days compared to the competition. A reflection of Jack Tramiel's agressive way of doing business maybe?
Tez

Well, Jack certainly had a reputation, but I think customer and dealer service varied quite a bit depending on location; my recollection of Commodore Canada here in Toronto is that they were actually quite accessible and supportive, first in the hobbyist market with newsletters etc. which became The Transactor AFAIK, and then the local educational market with donations, software, etc.

I don't recall Apple having much of a corporate presence aside from their dealers, although I think Canada seems to have been a lucrative market for the Taiwan clones.

IIRC the early TRS-80s had some reliability issues and although it was a lot better than today the technical expertise in your local outlet was not always up to the task. They did publish the best documentation though, IMHO.

So, maybe I'm biased but I think of the three Commodore actually treated their customers and dealers relatively well, at least in Canada and at least in the early days; later, not so good...

 

[jthiemann]

Ok, time for me to chime in! I couldn't post anything until today because I had a big deadline to meet, but that's done! Off to grab my PET out of storage!

Ok, not exactly clean, but seems is still OK shape!

Checking the oil... looks good, no caps leaking...

Closeup! Let's try powering up!

6809 mode

and 6502 mode!

So far so good. I haven't taken the 4040 out yet, that will be more of a challenge.

This PET came from McGill University (where incidentally I am now doing my PhD - but it came from the Physics department where it was doing data collection tasks of some sort, whereas I'm in EE) I also have all the Waterloo software for it, and WordPro (with ROM!). But I'm not sure I can dig out everything before PET Alive! comes to an end!

The only problem with the PET is that the 6502/6809 selector switch is electrically noisy - it wants to be a 6809! If the switch is set to 6502 and you look funny at it, it'll reboot and go into the language selector mode.

Joe.

 

[MikeS]

Ok, time for me to chime in! I couldn't post anything until today because I had a big deadline to meet, but that's done! Off to grab my PET out of storage!
<snip>

Hmm, I wonder if your deadline was the same as mine...

(for you non-Canadians, today was our last day to file our income tax return...)

Nice pictures BTW, Joe; I sort of have a SuperPET waiting for me, kinda makes me want to go and pick it up even though I don't have any place to put it...

 

[jthiemann]

Naah, I did my taxes last week (though submitting them online only this morning). The deadline was for a conference I submitted a paper to (www.interspeech2010.org if you're curious).

Hmmm, I should probably make those pictures a tad smaller. If I get the 4040 working this weekend, I'll post some pictures of running APL programs

Joe.

 

[tezza]

Ok, time for me to chime in! I couldn't post anything until today because I had a big deadline to meet, but that's done! Off to grab my PET out of storage!

Nice machine. Looks like the SuperPET used the standard base and keyboard of the earlier ones?

Tez