Commodore PET

I rescued this from my school when the department was clearing out some old "junk". I have a particular affection for the PET because it was the first computer I ever got my hands on. My high school got a handful of PETS when I was in grade twelve in 1981 and started a computer club where I taught myself how to program in BASIC. They didn't have an actual computer class until I was in grade 13 (the Ontario curriculum had a university preliminary year back then - much for the better), but they wouldn't let grade thirteens take it because the school wanted us concentrating on "more important" subjects.



I can't say for sure if our school had 4032s, like the one pictured here, but it sure was very similar to this, and the release date of May 1980 would sure make it likely.

Amazingly, the thing does boot (as you can see if you look closely at the first picture), but somehow the external drive has been lost so I have no way of saving data (internal hard drives were still a few years in the future). The computers we had in grade 12 had cassette tape drives. When they got a full class set the next year, they got 5.25" floppy drives, but I would love to score an old tape drive for this machine.

My other problem is that all but a few of the keys don't work. I'm hoping a good cleaning out will fix that. I'm planning on keeping it in the back of my computer classroom. 32K of RAM with a 1MHz CPU, it's a nice reminder of the past.

Mike