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Whats more common on the original PET 2001-8 a 6550 RAM board or a 2114 RAM board?

VERAULT

VERAULT

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I was wondering about this. I own two commodore PET computers model 2001-8 with chiclet keyboards. One with a black CRT Bezel one with a blue bezel. My first machine was the blue bezel which I paid too much for and the keyboard pcb was complete corroded to nothing. all the springs were rusted to dust too. It was from a college I assume coca-cola was spilled out it decades ago and it just wrecked the keyboard.

Fortuitously when buying and Apple II plus one day the seller threw in some odds and ends and one of the things he included was a pretty clean complete chicklet keyboard with pcb and cable and a PET 2001-8 mainboard. I was able to use the keyboard to finish my blue bezel 2001-8.. But lets get back to the board that was also thrown in. IT was a 1978 PET 2001 board with 2114 RAM on it. My two pets both have 6550 RAM. This owner had a pet 2001 8 he loved but couldnt keep due to space so he kept the keyboard and mainboard. Its better than throwing it all away I suppose so I am very gratefull to him.

Other than my two PETs and this spare board I have nill experience with PETS.

My question is this. How many original PET 2001-8 computers had the 2114 RAM board variant? How long did they run that board? This is just speculation on my part but the 2114 board seems much less common than the 6550 board when it comes to posts I see.

Would love to hear other input.

Mick
 
If the model numbers of the PCB are any indication it looks like the 2114 versions were the last variants of the SRAM boards, so I would guess that statistically the newer your PET the more likely it is to have 2114s, but Commodore was pretty infamous for tossing together machines out of whatever they had in the bins so it also wouldn’t surprise me to find out MOS boards were still going out the door right up to the end.

As for rarity, here’s the gigantic grain of salt I would chuck out there when it comes to trying to make any guesses about the relative rarity of them verses the MOS memory boards based on the number of posts: The MOS memory chips are famously unreliable. 2114s are *not*. (I mean, sure, they do fail, the video memory on Dynamic Board PETs is 2114s and it’s not a *rare* failure, but overall they seem to have held up better than 6550s have.) Obviously you are going to have more repair threads about the unreliable thing than the reliable one.
 
When I got my PET 2001, I bought it with little knowledge of all the variants out there. There wasn't even a photo of its insides on the ebay auction.

When it turned up I found out that it had the plastic case, and the metal VDU. Also it was the Dynamic PET with the 4116 DRAMS and the two 2114 SRAM IC's. Also there were no holes in the pcb where the additional row of DRAMs were mounted. I had no idea that some of these pcb's got vandalized by Commodore.

Later on I thought that I just "got lucky" with it. As Forest Gump's mother said, life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get. This must apply to many PET's given Commodores penchant for deploying what they had on hand.
 
Thanks for the Info Guys. Do you really think Commodore was just using whatever they had even in the early days of the PET? I wish I had more info on the number of 2114 Boards made. I know Commodore was still selling the PET 2001-8 "special order" for years after other lines of PET were introduced. I wonder if the 2114 Board was what was used.
 
VERAULT said:
Thanks for the Info Guys. Do you really think Commodore was just using whatever they had even in the early days of the PET? I wish I had more info on the number of 2114 Boards made. I know Commodore was still selling the PET 2001-8 "special order" for years after other lines of PET were introduced. I wonder if the 2114 Board was what was used.
Click to expand...

My Chicklet-keyboard PET, formally owned by a school district, actually had a Dynamic board in it, not a SRAM board at all. It also has a REFURBISHED sticker on the back of it, so I assume it originally saw the light of day with a different board and got the Dynamic board in response to something going Pffft... BUT, if they were actually doing special orders of "new" chicklet PETs after 1979 they may well have come with Dynamic boards. All PET boards all the way up through the "UNIVERSAL" (used in both 40 and 80 column PETs) have the plugs to support the internal cassette drive, so they would have had no good reason to keep churning out the obsolete SRAM boards.
 
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