Quote:
Originally Posted by SiriusHardware
Hmm, unlucky. I would have been inconsolable, I think. I wonder if it still exists somewhere now.
I should say that I have never physically laid hands on a PET, the closest I got to something of that kind / that era was a friend's Sharp MZ80K, although of course that was a very different (Z80 based) machine.
I do have a couple of complete (and when last tried, working) BBC model Bs but they were not originally mine, I bought them to 'rescue' them during the period when they were nearly worthless but I have never invested the time in them that I would have if I had owned one when they were at their zenith - at the time they were priced well beyond what I could afford. They are really nicely designed machines. That's as close as I have ever been to being a 6502 man, unfortunately.
I should really get those BBCs down and look them over but by all accounts they will need the RIFA capacitors changed before I could even think of turning them on now.
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Yes, I once got 3 BBC's for £1 & also got a free Microvitec monitor from Radio Rallies. Whereas a Retro computer place is advertising a 'Refurbished' (aka a couple of RIFA caps changed in the PSU) system, plus a GOTEK drive for £400! I've still got my original Beeb, that I bought for over half that in the mid 80's - Second-hand, as the Beeb had been replaced by B+ / Master, which I ( / parent's) couldn't really afford. And I had to sell my original Spectrum + Microdrive etc. to buy it. So I only had a bit of assembler experience on the Z80 (Not too nice on the Spectrum, with having to reload assembler etc. after each crash), before switching to the Beeb's 6502.
This was rather useful for A-Level Electronics EPROM-Priogrammer project, writing the timing-critical bits in assembler, And also went with me to Uni, allowing some word-processing and a bit of coding on Acorn-Pascal etc.
6502 assembler's also been useful for later 680x / 68HC11 etc assembler, as it's not too dissimilar to 6502.
Those RIFA capacitors shouldn't actually stop it working, as they are just mains-filtering. And they don't tend to go short - just smoke a bit when the clear resin cases crack and let moisture into the Paper! dielectric. Surprisingly they still seem to sell the same ones, even though I've seen a whole bag of unused ones with cracked cases. So you could probably just snip them out for now, if they do smoke too much!
Back to PET's, we did have the odd one at school but only really got used during 'computer club' sessions, for playing games. And no-one could afford to have one of these at home, as it seems Commodore bumped up the price a lot in the UK (apparently had been selling them virtually at a loss in USA). By the time programming was taught, it was all on classrooms of Beebs.
So were rather lucky to win one (or two), given relative cost back then (But times have changed with regards to media publishing full names and address of Schoolchildren!)
But I got given a couple of PET's by people back in the 1990's, before much interest in retro computers, and I sold a 4000-series one that worked many years later, as took up too much space. But I've still got a 2001N with calculator keyboard and built-in cassette deck that I recall just displayed the infamous random characters on the screen. I'd started to look at checking the old unusual pinout RAM's (Someone did these on their AB Electronics IC Tester, with a bit of custom test writing for pinout), but hadn't got round to looking at the odd ROM's. So the posting of an adaptor board in the last few days looks interesting, although I'm keen to readout the originals to see what they're like / keep them if OK.
I did pick-up some PET PCB assemblies very cheap from a Radio rally years ago. But I think they were later more standard memory IC's designs, so would have to swap whole board, and thought that's cheating a bit
- Even if Commodore did often use upto 4 different boards seemingly random in many models!