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Strange PET

Not more unique than that I have one of those in my basement. It seems Commodore labeled non-CRTC PETs (2001/3000) with Basic 4.0 as 4032, and sold those in parallel with CRTC units. They may be unheard of in the US, but I think it happened fairly often in Europe. The question though is if the customer got to know what they got, or had to look at the back side for clues?
 
Ok, well learned something new :) And yeah, would be interesting to know if this was something that was made clear to the buyer!
 
Drea said:
Ok, well learned something new :) And yeah, would be interesting to know if this was something that was made clear to the buyer!
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I'm not sure I get the point; AFAIK the 2001-32, 3032 and the 4032 are all the same model although there were variations among the cases. The 2001-32 BC specifies the 220V/50Hz Business version of the hardware, and the 4032 indicates that it has BASIC 4 firmware.
 
Well, what do you call a 40 column CRTC PET with 32K RAM and BASIC 4? Or did those arrive 1-2 years later than I thought so they'd actually replace the non-CRTC ones rather than being sold in parallel? I.e. was BASIC 4 available much earlier than the 6545 based systems were?
 
My non-CRTC 4016 was built in 1980 but has Basic 4.0 ROMs dated 1981. Also it has 32K soldered on board despite the 4016 type designation, and it doesn't look like anyone did a motherboard swap-out (unless they were REALLY good at not scratching the screws or anything).

I'm thinking in those days Commodore was a little sloppy with the type number identifications. I wouldn't be surprised if the motherboard of this one is identical to mine.

===Jac
 
jac_goudsmit said:
My non-CRTC 4016 was built in 1980 but has Basic 4.0 ROMs dated 1981. Also it has 32K soldered on board despite the 4016 type designation, and it doesn't look like anyone did a motherboard swap-out (unless they were REALLY good at not scratching the screws or anything).

I'm thinking in those days Commodore was a little sloppy with the type number identifications. I wouldn't be surprised if the motherboard of this one is identical to mine.

===Jac
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Well, anything is possible. PETs did break and got fixed. Motherboards get upgraded, swapped. And once they get out of the factory just about anything can be done by the owner. Some pets had removable bezels and some had stickers. Some cases had a short bezel area, some tall. The one in the picture is a tall bezel so if the owner took it in for an upgrade the motherboard and bezel could be swapped. Howerver, the model#/serial# sticker on the back would not have been replaced.

Steve
 
My nine-inch non-CRTC "4032" is labelled "4032" on the back, but there's something about it that has me wondering if the sticker is newer than the rest of the chassis. There were a lot of machines like it at the school district dump that I picked it up from; in fact, it was probably one of the most common styles of machine there. (Neck-in-neck with "2001-N-16/32"s, followed by 12" CRTC-based units and calculator-pad 2001-8s.) In addition to the "4032" labelling there is a prominent "REFURBISHED" sticker on the machine, and a lot of the other machines had those as well. It sort makes me wonder if it's possible that at least some of the "4032"s like mine started life as 2001(-N)s that were "re-manufactured" at some point by upgrading them to BASIC 4.0 and slapping on new stickers. (Or perhaps they might even have started life as non-dash-Ns and had their lids swapped out along with their motherboards?)

What has me pondering this as a theory is I also have a (partial) 2001-N-32 lying around and that machine, while "high-rise" in style with a 9" monitor, has a plastic clamshell and the power supply and its mounting looks very similar to the one in the 12" "low-rise" CRTC models I've seen inside. Meanwhile, all the "small 4032s" I remember from the PET-dump had metal, not plastic, clamshells, and at least mine has an older-style looking power supply (it physically matches and is mounted like the one in my 2001). I have no idea if metal-vs-plastic clamshell is any sort of reliable indicator when a machine was made, but it is "interesting" how many little variations there are in the parts used. At the very least the plastic 2001-N-32 case *seems* more modern than the 4032 despite the model number on the nameplate suggesting it should be older.
 
carlsson said:
Well, what do you call a 40 column CRTC PET with 32K RAM and BASIC 4? Or did those arrive 1-2 years later than I thought so they'd actually replace the non-CRTC ones rather than being sold in parallel? I.e. was BASIC 4 available much earlier than the 6545 based systems were?
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Those were indeed 4032s (no longer 2001-32s), mostly "Fat 40"s with a 12" screen; definitely confusing though.

There were certainly inconsistencies in their numbering system, but the OP's 2001-32BC labelled 4032 makes sense to me.
 
jac_goudsmit said:
My non-CRTC 4016 was built in 1980 but has Basic 4.0 ROMs dated 1981. Also it has 32K soldered on board despite the 4016 type designation, and it doesn't look like anyone did a motherboard swap-out (unless they were REALLY good at not scratching the screws or anything).

I'm thinking in those days Commodore was a little sloppy with the type number identifications. I wouldn't be surprised if the motherboard of this one is identical to mine.

===Jac
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Well , a 4016 would have BASIC 4 so no inconsistency there; however, if those extra 16K RAM chips were really factory-installed then I'd definitely suspect a board swap somewhere in its history. Considering the difference in price I can't imagine Commodore labelling and selling a 32K model as a 16K model.

As to that pile of school district machines I'd imagine there was a lot of haphazard board and even case & monitor swapping to get some working units back to the school ASAP.

If you got a pile of the beefed-up, modified and board-swapped PCs and XTs of the folks on this forum, what would that tell you about the "standard" IBM configuration?
 
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MikeS said:
As to that pile of school district machines I'd imagine there was a lot of haphazard board and even case & monitor swapping to get some working units back to the school ASAP.
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There were literally several pallets-worth of identical-appearing metal-cased 9" 4032s... and actually, Commodore's "4000 Series 4016-4032 Technical Reference", P/N 990438, has a picture of a 9" 4032 on the cover. (It's hard to tell for sure, but the picture *seems* to be of a plastic clamshell instead of a metal one. Did the "plastic nameplate" with the raised border ever appear on metal-cased units?) The same manual covers 9" and 12" monitors, and both the CRTC and non-CRTC motherboards, so the 9" 4032 is clearly an "official configuration". Again, I just wonder if any of those 9" units were "conversions", or if this was just Commodore being Commodore and improvising machines using random bits from their various parts bins.
 
Eudimorphodon said:
The same manual covers 9" and 12" monitors, and both the CRTC and non-CRTC motherboards, so the 9" 4032 is clearly an "official configuration".
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No doubt about it; AFAIK the 9" non-CRTC models with factory-installed BASIC 4 were 2001-32s labelled 4032 on the front, in both PET and CBM versions; I'd be a little surprised though if they were labelled 4032-N/B on the back _exactly_ like the 12" CRTC Fat 40s.

I've always thought that they were sort of like IBMs, with the series like GL300 on the front and the actual model out of 40 different versions in the fine print on the sticker.
 
I'll check out the sticker and verify what it says later... and compare it to my FAT40.

I don't suppose anyone has a Commodore dealer's catalog from that era lying around. I'm curious how the sales histories might of overlapped, if Commodore charged more for a FAT40 than a nine-inch if they did overlap...
 
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