Random Pet Question: Paper, er, Metal or Plastic?

[Eudimorphodon]

This weekend I finally got around to checking out a spare Dynamic Pet motherboard I received in a trade from another forum member. It seems to work perfectly... or does now after I realized I was a complete and utter bonehead and inserted one of my BASIC EPROMs backwards. (Thank goodness it didn't cause any damage other than destroying the EPROM. I'm really kicking myself for frying a 2532, though.) The board came in the somewhat shattered remains of a PET 2001-N-16 missing the keyboard, so to check it out I put it into my partially-repaired 9" 4032 from this thread of doom:

http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?25203-DOA-PETs.-(2001-8-4032-and-8032)

While extracting the board from the 2001-N I noticed something odd that had me scrubbing the various PET FAQs, and also looking back to this thread:

http://www.6502.org/users/sjgray/computer/petlabels/index.html

About label variations on different PET models. My 9" 4032 has a folded steel/white painted upper case, and the label is a black sticker. The 2001 I extracted the board from has a plastic bezel nametag, and because of that I was pondering the idea of transplanting the monitor (the monitor is very dead on the 2001) and keyboard from my 4032 over to it and using that case for the complete unit. But then I noticed that instead of being folded metal the entire upper case of the 2001 is cast plastic. It's "high-profile", shaped like the folded metal case, but the top is plastic, and also the power supply mounting involves a screw-out backplate like that of the "low-rise" 12" 4016 and the 8032 I have rather than the cord and fuse mounting directly in the rear panel like the 4032.

I guess the question I have is, what's the odder combination, a plastic-topped case labeled "2001", or a 9" 4032 with a folded steel case? The PET FAQ says this about 9" pets:

9" display units (40 column x 25 line character only display):
(snip)
Large Keyboard PETs (no more internal datasette drive):
PET 2001 xN (x=8,16,or 32 depending on amount or RAM it was shipped with)
- Full-size key keyboard w/PET graphic symbols imprinted on keys
- Upgrade ROMs
- Many steel cased, some w/molded plastic tops.
- many with clearer green on black displays
- Later versions had 4.0 ROMs installed
(snip)
PET/CBM 40xx Series (PET= N keyboard/ROM, CBM= B keyboard/ROM, xx= RAM)
- 4.0 ROMs
- molded plastic top

Plastic 2001s are mentioned while it claims 4032s are "molded plastic tops". But... my memory could be faulty, but I would swear that the majority of 9" 4032s at the recent school PET dump were metal cased. (Granted it can be sort of hard to tell unless you touch the box.)

I imagine this is just Commodore being Commodore (those kooky guys and their bizarre inventory management practices), but I guess I do have a question for people that have 2001-N and 9" 4000-series machines in their collections: are yours metal or plastic? I think I've decided to stick with the metal case (if I can only get one 9" PET completely running) but I'm curious what the majority is.

My 4032 does have a sticker on the back that says "refurbished". A theory I have is I wonder if it might actually be an old metal 2001-N that went back to Commodore for a memory and ROM upgrade, and at that time they peeled off the 2001 sticker and slapped "4032" on it.

 

[MerrickD]

I picked up a few 2001-N machines at the same event and they all had plastic cases. The only metal ones I remembered seeing were chiclet keyboard 2001s. I didn't take any other models besides 2001s but I think that all the other models were plastic. What I did notice is that there seems to have been a lot of parts swapping in these so I'd think that maybe some of these PETs are made of multiple different machines.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

What I did notice is that there seems to have been a lot of parts swapping in these so I'd think that maybe some of these PETs are made of multiple different machines.

I'd credit that I suppose, but the 4032 does have a factory build sticker with the model number on it pasted on the back panel so unless someone swapped the case top with an old 2001-N and moved the sticker over...

Given my luck with the PET dump perhaps I just have a thing for picking oddities. At the same time I grabbed a chicklet-key 2001 and it turned out to have a Dynamic motherboard in it instead of one of the various SRAM-memory variations. It is probably an older machine repaired with a newer motherboard, but the sketchy timelines that I've dug up documenting the introduction dates of various PET models leaves open a several-month window where it's *possible* something like that may of shipped as a new build. Whee.

 

[MerrickD]

Given my luck with the PET dump perhaps I just have a thing for picking oddities. At the same time I grabbed a chicklet-key 2001 and it turned out to have a Dynamic motherboard in it instead of one of the various SRAM-memory variations.

Oddly enough I got a chiclet PET with an SRAM motherboard but with a dynamic PET power supply and monitor. It was metal cased but lower profile than my other metal cased PETs.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

Anyone have any more thoughts on the rarity of plastic 2001-Ns verses metal 4032s?

Part of my interest in this, other than wondering what would make the better case for my now working 32k Dynamic PET, is due to me vaguely pondering the idea of transplanting the guts and monitor of my working 40 column CRTC PET into the 4032 case and calling it a "High-rise" 12" PET because its case is pretty scruffy. (It has been engraved multiple times in obvious places with ownership information.) When I was mulling the idea, though, I was operating under the flawed assumption that all "high-rise" cases were metal and all low-rise cases are plastic. If a metal 9" 4032 is "odd" then maybe I want to keep it that way. (And there's also the question of whether a 12" monitor on a metal high-rise is authentic under any circumstances.)

(I suppose I could transplant the 12" guts and monitor to the nearly flawless plastic 2001-N case and make an attractive but presumably completely un-authentic mutant...)