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Interesting PET64 - no SID from the factory

According to this page, the main difference between the PET 64 and the Educator 64 was that the Educator 64 had a standard C=64 board and a built-in amplified speaker, while the PET 64 used a modified board with no RF modulator and without a speaker. However, their mainboard photo for the PET 64 does seems to show that the SID is indeed missing, although the article itself doesn't mention this:
cbm-pet64-open.jpg
 
Well Commodore was never afraid to cut costs, so I am not terribly surprised if this were the case for all PET64s. I was just surprised so many sites failed to mention the lack of a SID chip.
 
rpiguy2 said:
Well Commodore was never afraid to cut costs, so I am not terribly surprised if this were the case for all PET64s. I was just surprised so many sites failed to mention the lack of a SID chip.
Click to expand...

Oddly, it appears that the Educator 64 came along after the PET 64, so they actually added to the costs of the later unit by keeping the SID chip and RF modulator, and adding the amplified speaker (perhaps requested by teachers or something, who knows). According to the above-linked page, the boards used in at least some of the Educator 64s were repaired pulls from breadbox C=64s sent back due to being defective, so perhaps that offset things a bit..........
 
AdamAnt316 said:
Oddly, it appears that the Educator 64 came along after the PET 64, so they actually added to the costs of the later unit by keeping the SID chip and RF modulator, and adding the amplified speaker (perhaps requested by teachers or something, who knows). According to the above-linked page, the boards used in at least some of the Educator 64s were repaired pulls from breadbox C=64s sent back due to being defective, so perhaps that offset things a bit..........
Click to expand...

I think the 4064/PET64 came before. All the ones I ever saw, including my own, have first revision boards with no SID, no speaker, no colour RAM, no modulator, and a separate board to convert the luma signal to a separated v-sync, h-sync, and video signal required by a true PET monitor, ie. no grey scale.

Rob
 
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