So So fun! I remember working on a Commodore PET 64 (I believe that's what they were), in the Math Learning (Tutorial) Center at Shasta College in 1978. I was taking classes and working at the learning Center, when they had acquired four, maybe five, of the Commodore PET Computers. I'm sure it was some kind of a grant or such, or someone bought them for Math Department, and they just called them PET Basics. They had decided that what they would do with them is take the 2nd semester Calculus class, which was Integrations, and change it from a 4 to a 5 unit class, and have us go over to the lab on Friday and do programs that we were assigned. The funny thing, or maybe I should say the horrifying part, was we only had one guy who was a computer geek, and geek he was! However, he was not put in charge over it, we could go ask questions if he was in and available, but he didn't even much of all of it, and we were never given a manual!😱 We were given a brief description of what the basic language looked like, information about the commands, and we were just supposed to work them out. As "brilliant Calculus students' we were charged with learning it ourselves, and as the one person who worked in the learning center who was in the class, for some reason people thought I knew it?! 🫣 Well, it did push me to work harder at it and learn more about it as quickly as I could, but it was quite a season and quite an introduction to computers for me! 🙄 At that time people were still doing punch cards with programking, Fortran and Pascal, etc., and feeding them into larger computers, so this was a whole new paradigm for everybody. I remember many afternoons running late into the evening with the sounding like the wailing Wall in there from all of us trying to get this thing done. It was the most intense, time demanding, miserable episodes of learning a completely new paradigm with no information, and a giant exercise in commiseration for us students! We had a great woman, Kay Brown, who was quite bright, running the Math Learning Center, and even she was like, "Hey, I can't help you with this...". 😖🫣😱😭 It's funny to see this and feel this warm nostalgic feeling, because I think at that point in time there was not one of us that didn't consider coming in at night and pouring acid on those things!! So it's kind of fun, and a bit surprising, to see it now, looking back on it, and smile! Howrver, it is like the song "Memories" says, "Could it be that life was all so simple then, or has time rewritten every line.. " I would say that time has definitely done rewrite in this area, but it certainly wasn't rewritten and BASIC!! 👍🏻🤭😆🤣
I remeber seeing one of these in the front office of my elementary school as a kid. Any plans on releasing brand new videos here in 2023? Keep up the great work!
Thanks. Possibly. Remastering these old videos has enthused me a little. They are taking a lot of work though, especially the ones originally recorded in low-res. Christmas is looming so I'm not sure I'll get any new ones into 2023. However, there are a couple of my models that don't yet have videos. I should really film them for completeness.
Great video and great detail. The bitfixer is a good addition to make it useable. In 1979 i went to secondary school and they had a pet and 2 RM 380 z computers. The pet was not as good for learning about computers when compared to the RMs. My first job in 1993 had a Pet in the office to run old engineering software. Bit rubbish compared to the IBM compatible pc that were also available (running msdos, lotus 123 and wordperfect )
Thanks for the support. A PET still in use in 1993. That's impressive. Still, I guess 8 inch floppy disks were used for nuclear launch software in the U.S. up to a few years ago. Old software often needs old hardware.
The PET is different from most other 8 bit computers in at least 1 important way. That is, the PET is not really a computer model as such. There is not "The PET" There are many different configuration of PETs with varying screen width and varying amounts of RAM. The PET 4032 means this is a pet with a 40 column screen and 32k of RAM. But it could be an 8032 or something as well. While other 8 bit computers were available with different amounts of RAM, I don't think there ever any models with different screen resolution capabilities by default.
While the PET is definitely a classic computer and one with a well earned spot in any vintage computer collector's collection, it one of the most useless of retro 8bit home computers. For me, the main attraction of retro computers is what they can still do well today. For most of them, it's games. I really laugh myself silly when some youtube dweeb (it's ALWAYS a youtube dweeb) goes out of his way to find an 8087 to stick in his XT class computer. I always comment when they do that "you never know.. You just might find yourself crunching spreadsheets one day or doing serious CAD drafting on you XT" It's ridiculous. The PET is a ridiculous computer today. It's big and heavy and costs a fortune to ship. Then it sits in your collection room taking up a cubic yard or more of space and at the end of the day, it can't really do much. Plus, PETs break a lot. They are an unreliable computer, at least partially because they are so old with high parts count. To be fair, I'm a person who does not appreciate vintage items as just relics of the past locked up in a museum. I'm into classic cars and it kills me when I see a "trailer queen" being towed around from show to show. To me, it's not a car, it's a 4000lb knickknack. Like cars, computers make for ugly knickknacks. They are machines meant to be used. If the only use you have for it is to play games, then play games on it. I feel the same about vintage radios. If you are going to restore and own a vintage radio, you should be at least someone who tolerates talk radio or at least have your own small AM transmitter so you can let your radio sing. . If you have a gramophone, you best be playing records on them. This is how I cam to appreciate music from the entirety of the 20th century, and not just from when I was a kid.
We had one in the printfactory I worked as an apprentice. I wrote a numbering/labeling program in basic on it and they used it for years.
So So fun! I remember working on a Commodore PET 64 (I believe that's what they were), in the Math Learning (Tutorial) Center at Shasta College in 1978. I was taking classes and working at the learning Center, when they had acquired four, maybe five, of the Commodore PET Computers. I'm sure it was some kind of a grant or such, or someone bought them for Math Department, and they just called them PET Basics. They had decided that what they would do with them is take the 2nd semester Calculus class, which was Integrations, and change it from a 4 to a 5 unit class, and have us go over to the lab on Friday and do programs that we were assigned. The funny thing, or maybe I should say the horrifying part, was we only had one guy who was a computer geek, and geek he was! However, he was not put in charge over it, we could go ask questions if he was in and available, but he didn't even much of all of it, and we were never given a manual!😱 We were given a brief description of what the basic language looked like, information about the commands, and we were just supposed to work them out. As "brilliant Calculus students' we were charged with learning it ourselves, and as the one person who worked in the learning center who was in the class, for some reason people thought I knew it?! 🫣 Well, it did push me to work harder at it and learn more about it as quickly as I could, but it was quite a season and quite an introduction to computers for me! 🙄
At that time people were still doing punch cards with programking, Fortran and Pascal, etc., and feeding them into larger computers, so this was a whole new paradigm for everybody. I remember many afternoons running late into the evening with the sounding like the wailing Wall in there from all of us trying to get this thing done. It was the most intense, time demanding, miserable episodes of learning a completely new paradigm with no information, and a giant exercise in commiseration for us students! We had a great woman, Kay Brown, who was quite bright, running the Math Learning Center, and even she was like, "Hey, I can't help you with this...". 😖🫣😱😭
It's funny to see this and feel this warm nostalgic feeling, because I think at that point in time there was not one of us that didn't consider coming in at night and pouring acid on those things!! So it's kind of fun, and a bit surprising, to see it now, looking back on it, and smile! Howrver, it is like the song "Memories" says, "Could it be that life was all so simple then, or has time rewritten every line.. " I would say that time has definitely done rewrite in this area, but it certainly wasn't rewritten and BASIC!! 👍🏻🤭😆🤣
I remeber seeing one of these in the front office of my elementary school as a kid. Any plans on releasing brand new videos here in 2023? Keep up the great work!
Thanks. Possibly. Remastering these old videos has enthused me a little. They are taking a lot of work though, especially the ones originally recorded in low-res. Christmas is looming so I'm not sure I'll get any new ones into 2023. However, there are a couple of my models that don't yet have videos. I should really film them for completeness.
Looked at these new. $6000 Canadian dollars. Nope could not afford that. Great video.
Thanks!
Great video and great detail. The bitfixer is a good addition to make it useable. In 1979 i went to secondary school and they had a pet and 2 RM 380 z computers. The pet was not as good for learning about computers when compared to the RMs. My first job in 1993 had a Pet in the office to run old engineering software. Bit rubbish compared to the IBM compatible pc that were also available (running msdos, lotus 123 and wordperfect )
Thanks for the support. A PET still in use in 1993. That's impressive. Still, I guess 8 inch floppy disks were used for nuclear launch software in the U.S. up to a few years ago. Old software often needs old hardware.
Back in about 86 I had to fix my uncles PET. Luckily it was just a simple PSU fault that did'nt blow anything else up when it died.
Someone should do a modern FPGA mini PET. However there is a modern PET emu for C64. You can run it on the C64 mini.
The PET is different from most other 8 bit computers in at least 1 important way. That is, the PET is not really a computer model as such. There is not "The PET" There are many different configuration of PETs with varying screen width and varying amounts of RAM. The PET 4032 means this is a pet with a 40 column screen and 32k of RAM. But it could be an 8032 or something as well. While other 8 bit computers were available with different amounts of RAM, I don't think there ever any models with different screen resolution capabilities by default.
While the PET is definitely a classic computer and one with a well earned spot in any vintage computer collector's collection, it one of the most useless of retro 8bit home computers.
For me, the main attraction of retro computers is what they can still do well today. For most of them, it's games. I really laugh myself silly when some youtube dweeb (it's ALWAYS a youtube dweeb) goes out of his way to find an 8087 to stick in his XT class computer. I always comment when they do that "you never know.. You just might find yourself crunching spreadsheets one day or doing serious CAD drafting on you XT" It's ridiculous.
The PET is a ridiculous computer today. It's big and heavy and costs a fortune to ship. Then it sits in your collection room taking up a cubic yard or more of space and at the end of the day, it can't really do much. Plus, PETs break a lot. They are an unreliable computer, at least partially because they are so old with high parts count.
To be fair, I'm a person who does not appreciate vintage items as just relics of the past locked up in a museum. I'm into classic cars and it kills me when I see a "trailer queen" being towed around from show to show. To me, it's not a car, it's a 4000lb knickknack. Like cars, computers make for ugly knickknacks. They are machines meant to be used. If the only use you have for it is to play games, then play games on it. I feel the same about vintage radios. If you are going to restore and own a vintage radio, you should be at least someone who tolerates talk radio or at least have your own small AM transmitter so you can let your radio sing. . If you have a gramophone, you best be playing records on them. This is how I cam to appreciate music from the entirety of the 20th century, and not just from when I was a kid.
Yes, people are into historical items for all different reasons. Each to his (or her) own.