Electronic Pets

The PET (Personal Electronic Transactor) was a home-/personal computer produced by Commodore starting in the late 1970s. more...

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Although it was no top seller outside the Canadian, US, and UK educational markets, it was Commodore's first full-featured computer and would form the basis for their future success.

History

Origins and the early models

In the 1970s, Texas Instruments was the main supplier of CPUs for use in calculators. Many companies sold calculator designs based on their chip sets, including Commodore. However, in 1975 TI increased the price to the point where the chip set alone cost more than what TI sold their entire calculators for, and the industry they had built up was frozen out of the market.

Commodore responded by looking for a chip set of their own they could purchase outright, and quickly found MOS Technology, Inc. who were bringing their 6502 microprocessor design to market. Along with the company came Chuck Peddle's KIM-1 design, a small computer kit based on the 6502. At Commodore, Peddle convinced Jack Tramiel that calculators were a dead-end. Instead they should focus on making a "real" machine out of the KIM-1, and selling that for much higher profits. Tramiel demanded that Peddle, and Tramiel's son, Leonard, create a computer in time for the upcoming trade show COMDEX, and gave them six months to do it.

The result was the first all-in-one home computer, the PET. The first model was the PET 2001, including either 4 kB (the 2001-4) or 8 kB (2001-8) of 8-bit RAM. It was essentially the KIM-1 with a new display chip (the MOS 6545) driving a small built-in monochrome monitor with 40×25 character graphics. The machine also included a built-in Datassette for data storage located on the front of the case, which left little room for the keyboard. The 2001 was announced in 1977 and started deliveries around September. However they remained back-ordered for months, and to ease deliveries they eventually cancelled the 4 kB version early the next year.

Although the machine was fairly successful, there were frequent complaints about the tiny keyboard, often referred to as a "chicklet keyboard" because the keys resembled the popular gum candy. This was addressed in upgraded "dash N" and "dash B" versions of the 2001, which put the cassette outside the case, and included a much larger and better feeling keyboard. Internally a newer and simpler motherboard was used, along with an upgrade in memory to 8, 16, or 32 kB, known as the 2001-N-8, 2001-N-16 or 2001-N-32, respectively.

Sales of the newer machines was strong, and Commodore then introduced the models to Europe. However there was already a machine called PET for sale in Europe from the huge Dutch Philips company, and the name had to be changed. The result was the CBM 3000 series ('CBM' standing for Commodore Business Machines), which included the 3008, 3016 and 3032 models. Like the 2001-N-8, the 3008 was quickly dropped.

Read more at Wikipedia.org