My Grail Computer: The Commodore PET 2001

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Originally Posted by freakaftr8

The old Folsom library was giving these things away back in early 90s. My buddy and I picked up 3 of them one was a Commodore CBM. We could never get it to do anything except for a cursor but we had no idea what they were. What happened to them was a mystery. I dont remember unfortunately.

Same thing around here, back in about 93-94 there was a secondhand store that had about 20 of them. Never did ask the price as they were one of those places with ridiculous prices. They must have been out of a school or something. When I was in school we were using Apple IIe's but they were all numbered like they were out of a classroom.
As first glance I thought the 2001 was some sort cash register. It was the first one that I seen with the chicklet keyboard and the cassette drive, then I figured out it was a computer.
Back at that time information on programing them and any software was scarce.
It was before the internet took off and one's information sources were limited.
Aroung this time a commodore PET was for the most part considered junk to all but the few diehard commodore geeks that were out there. And this was also way before retro-computing was ever a trend.
It was enough of a challange to find information on booting a Commodore 64 that I got a year or so later.
I think back to that time especially when I see the $1000+ dollar prices on ebay and what I ended up spending on the 2 pets that I have now.
It's funny how much times have changed. Back then I asked everyone I knew and could get nowhere. Now within 5 minutes you can find enough information to be writing a program from a printout or test running a program on a emulator. And all the programs that can be downloaded could keep you glued to the screen for months on end.