In what year was the Commodore PET released?
Posted on 12/20/2017 9:07:59 AM PST by Swordmaker
Short for Personal Electronic Transactor, the monochrome PET was the first full-featured computer released by Commodore.
via Oldcomputers.net
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It's a memory display program. It allows you to see the individual bytes store in RAM. Very similar to the MS-DOS debug utility.
First desktop computer I ever used was a TRS-80, Model II from Radio Shack. It had a whopping 64k of memory and two 8”floppy disk drives [no hard drive]. The Department manager bought it for the department. That was about 1981 or 1982. I was the only one who would even touch it. None of the others showed any interest.
A couple of years later, I bought (for my own use) a Commodore Plus 4. It had a whopping 80k of memory.
My new LG smartphone I got a few weeks ago is so much more powerful it is scary to think how far we have come in a relatively short period of time.
0977
1977, rather. LOL
Or not. Some people are saying it’s a game. I can’t really make out the text. It does look like a debug screen though. Don’t know how fun that game would be. :-)
I have noticed while channel surfing that QVC is offering a little device that emulates about 70 of the old Atari games.
It will be interesting to see whether the youngsters use it.
Late 1970s. The PET had that stupid chiclet keyboard and a built-in cassette tape drive. By 1981 Commodore was making the 4032 and 8032, which had actual usable keyboards and could use an outboard floppy diskette drive that was about as large as the main CPU case.
79 or 80 I should think. I took a programming class about that time with TRS80s that also used casette tape storage.
Ascii?
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I would guess that it is a 20th Anniversary (of Apple) Mac.
That Commodore Plus 4 was such a disappointment when it came out. It was supposed to have a full featured word processor built in but the damn WP was limited to 99 lines of text, and required scrolling to even see a full line, and very limited formatting when there were quite sophisticated WPs out there for the Commodore 64. The other 3 programs were also crippled in the same way making them essentially unusable for the very purpose they were most intended for. Another example was the included spread sheet was limited to 63 rows of 254 columns. The built in data base was a modification of the spread sheet and could only contain data in the same grid of 63 x 254. Many critics pointed out that a grid of 254 x 63 would have been a far better design for a spread sheet or data base.
The Plus 4 was promised to come with competitive software to what was available on the C=64 but the CEO of Commodore was more interested in churning the stock value for his benefit and HE was the one who crippled the Plus 4.
The entire inventory of Plus 4s was disposed of between a Vacation Resort to be used a premium for taking a tour of their time shares, and a reseller who dumped them at $80 each, because they were unsaleable at their original $300 price point after it became obvious their software was a scam. Too bad, the concept was actually a good one. . . but Jay Gould wanted to short his stock, so at the last minute they crippled the software from what they originally announced would be included. That worked for him and he made millions.
His insider trading resulted in his being not able to enter the USA lest he be arrested for that crime. . . but he did it repeatedly until his shenanigans got out of control and Commodore's stock dropped below $1 a share and it got delisted from the NY stock exchange. That spelled the death knell and pretty soon Commodore was placed into receivership and then bankruptcy.
It's actually the old text-based Star Trek game. If you zoom in on the picture, you can read: "Objective: Destroy __ Klingons in __ turns" (I can't make out the numbers) and "The number of Starbases is 7." The grid on the left that looks like a memory dump is actually a map showing the relative locations of the Enterprise, Klingons, stars, and Starbases.
We played similar games on the pdp8. You had a limited number of Photon torpedoes, limited energy split between shields, sensors, phasers, engine power and life support systems.
You had to enter coordinates for torpedoes. Phasers just blasted stuff. If your warp engines get damaged or you lose too much energy, impule power only. Star bases can be used to repair and refuel.
HEY! I had one of these! Great little computer.
Just didn’t have a printer to hook up to it.
1977. I (my dad brought it home) had that one.
Thanks to Swordmaker for the ping!
Wow, a PDP-11.My company could only afford a PDP-11s for me. It had a smokin’ 12K of CORE memory.
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