The Commodore PET 4000 series features Basic 4.0 as a standard feature,
along with more memory and a lower price that made them attractive to
schools. Elementary, Middle, and High Schools all over Canada and
the United States were filled with these impressive lumbering beasts.
Introducing children far and wide to the wonders of BASIC programming.
Another lesson taught was the importance of patience, since many schools
provided only a tape datasette for loading and saving work.
The PET 4008 is shown here on the right.
Like the other models of PET, the 4000 series includes dual
datasette ports, though only one is exposed to the
outside of the casing. A standard IEEE-488 interface in the back allows the
PET to connect to the numerous (and heavy) disk drives and printers being
produced by Commodore and other manufacturers. The PET also has a fully
programmable bi-directional parallel interface called the "User" port, which
allows the PET to connect and control almost any device one could dream up!
The greatest feature, however, is the friendly READY prompt, and the well-laid
out keyboard with graphic characters only a keypress away! Pictured here is
the PET 4016.
Interestingly, although Commodore provided 8, 16, and 32k versions of their
PET 2001 and 3001 series, they had a hard time getting people to purchase higher
memory versions as an upgrade. It seemed that people were soldering in their
own memory chips onto PET 2001 and 3001 8k and 16k models to upgrade them to
32k. To help prevent this, Commodore sold many PET 4008 and PET 4016 models with
the empty memory sockets punched out and destroyed! This encouraged those who
wanted more memory to upgrade to the 4032 instead of doing it themselves. An example
of such a machine (4016) is below to the left. Pictured to the right, however, is a 4032.
CPU: MOS 6502
Sound: Piezo electronic speaker.
Keyboard: Full 69 key QWERTY
Personal Note:
Not a whole lot to say here either. My own 4016 has a nice dark
screen guard on it to eliminate glare. The 4032 I like best though,
and kept it available for many years for tinkering. They are all
back in storage though. The 4032 came from a flea market (its in
PERFECT shape). The 4016 came from a local collector, and the
4008 came from an eBay
auction.
Click here to return to the main pictures page
If you find anything in here you have questions or comments about, feel
free to leave me email right here.
To return to my home page, click here.