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New Photos of the wooden PET prototype

H

Hutch

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This has been around Facebook and Twitter for a few weeks but I don't think it's been shared here yet. I thought it might be of interest to some Commodore enthusiasts here.

I've been doing research off and on for about a year trying to locate the original wooden PET prototype. Many people thought it was lost or destroyed long ago but I found out that it was on display in the Gates building at Stanford University. Before that, it was in Boston at The Computer Museum there. When that museum closed, most of it's collection went to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. While making arrangements to visit and photograph it at Stanford, I found out it wasn't there anymore. Assuming it was recalled by the CHM to their archives for conservation, I reached out to them but never received any response.
So I asked Leonard Tramiel (via the Commodore International Historical Society) to reach out to his contacts at the museum and see if they still have it, and if it would be possible to access it for photos.
It took some time to locate it due to an error in their catalog, but that was figured out and eventually Leonard Tramiel arranged to visit with John Feagans, one of the engineers who built it, and the museum allowed them to open it for photos of the inside.

Link #1 https://myoldcomputers.tumblr.com/post/189724190940/petprototype

Link #2 https://myoldcomputers.tumblr.com/post/190331961970/petprototype2

The interior of the prototype was somewhat surprising, not at all like the production models.
Follow the links above for more photos and details.

 
That card cage arrangement is adorable though in hindsight for troubleshooting I'm glad they went with a single monolithic board.
 
The card-cage interior certainly makes sense on a prototype, assuming they were still tweaking the designs of the various subsystems before committing to a big expensive final PCB.

I seem to recall reading at some point that they did intend the production models to have a plastic case based on the sexy curvaceous exterior of this prototype, but the fact that Commodore was still in the business of making office desks and filing cabinets at the time (and thus had very cheap access to machines for bending sheet metal) trumped those plans.
 
@Eudimorphodon, Yeah, according to John Feagans, the prototype was based on the IBM Selectric typewriter, but in the end it was cheaper to use their sheet metal factory on Toronto that was already making their filing cabinets.
 
Wow, now that you've said it it's hard to un-see the Selectric resemblance. (It probably didn't hit me right away because Selectric IIs were more common around offices by the 1980's, so that's my default mental image of what a Selectric looks like.)
 
The cases for our prototypes were done in a model shop in acrylic. Big things too--the guy on the Bridgeport mill was a genius--he did cases for Qume printers as well.
 
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