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PET 2001-8 & C2N Restoration

ajgriff

ajgriff

Experienced Member
Joined
Nov 11, 2021
Messages
125
Location
Halifax, UK
Earlier this year I managed to repair an early PET 2001-8 and restore a dilapidated datasette to replace the one that was missing from the PET. This is a Dropbox link to the PDF file describing the restoration which I thought might be of interest to members here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/f80cwfr2rj...ation.pdf?dl=0

As you will see I'm a relative novice when it comes to vintage computer repairs but I hope you'll find it an interesting read nonetheless. Please let me know if there's a problem with the link as I'm a novice when it comes to using Dropbox too!

Alan
 
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I can read it fine Alan.

You may have used some of my diagnostics on the emulator card you purchased...

Dave
 
Thanks for confirming that the link works Dave. As you say Nivag has included a ROM image of PET Tester on the emulator board and a very handy utility it is too.

As I indicated in the document the emulator was something of an extravagance on my part but I'm not at all sorry I splashed out. I could only find three possible options when choosing an emulator but there might be others:

1. Tynemouth (UK) - Commodore PET ROM/RAM

2. bitfixer (US) - ROMulater 6502 Kit

3. NivagSwedna's Emporium (UK) - ROMulan PET RAMulator

All three come in at around the same price point in the UK once import costs are taken into account for the bitfixer kit. I opted for Nivag's board for various reasons but it would be unfair of me to comment on which is the best one to choose. I think a prospective buyer has to look at the avaialble documentation and ask questions before deciding on what suits them best.

Alan
 
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Just wanted to say, when I was diagnosing my PET 2001-8, I ended up getting the ROMulan PET RAMulator. The integrated diagnostics software was really helpful. I had two bad ROMs and was incorrectly programming replacements to use with a 6540 adapter I got from go4retro. After getting the EPROMs to work, my PET was working like new. Then one of the 6550s went bad, so the RAMulator part showed its value.

Now, at the time I was doing this, Tynemouth had pulled the ROM/RAM off the market and it wasn't back up yet, and bitfixer had not yet put their ROMulator on the market. So I didn't have much of a choice. I bet all three work great, but I can only share from personal experience on one of them.
 
Good work on this article.

The ROMulan is great as it has the latest PETTest4 by daver2. The others also work fine. The ROMulator is available as a kit from bitfixer.com with assembled units coming later, and the Tynemouth PET ROM/RAM also includes some kind of diagnostic program. That unit is available from TFW8b.com in Great Britain.
 
@ajgriff Nice to see my babies out in the wild! I really should make up some more 8k RAM boards at some point. I made these gadgets to repair my PETunia but it's great that they have helped others. Happy Thanksgiving!
 
Nivag Swerdna said:
@ajgriff Nice to see my babies out in the wild!
Click to expand...

Hi Nivag,
I really like your ROMulan and it functions perfectly. The one issue I had was that I like to use a ZIF socket for the CPU. The form factor of your board interferes with the lever on the ZIF socket. The board sticks out too much in front of the socket. However, this is not an issue for vast majority of PET users. Continue to come up with useful PET gadgets!
-dave_m
 
Where did you find the head alignment procedure? I was looking for that but didn't find it in the 1530 service manual.
 
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