9 Nov
2007
9 Nov
'07
4:01 p.m.
Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2007 20:53:54 +0000
From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Commodore PET
<snip>
In my not-so-humble opinion, the PET's metal case
and automobile-style 'hood'
('bonnet' to you), hefty linear power supply, crisp built-in monitor, IEEE port,
and its
generous supply of other I/O ports, not to mention Commodore's good official
support, made it stand out among the Apples and R-S model 1s of the day.
I think it's not that they're particularly bad, just that I'm failing to see
why they've got quite the following that they have (unless this is just
another one of those UK/US differences - there were lots of expandable,
well-built, well-documented systems around in the UK back in the day, but
perhaps that wasn't so true of the US?)
On a personal note, the styling never appealed somehow - a dinky monitor
physically bolted to a large, squat, angular case with a large footprint just
didn't seem too practical. But then I've never been a big fan of all-in-one
systems anyway, I suppose - I'd much rather have separate keyboard / display /
CPU / drives, and with units that took up vertical space in favour of horizontal.
----------------
MHS:
Well, that 'splains everything; I'm a horizontal kind of guy and bemoan the trend
for PCs to go from AT style to towers; they're coming back to horizontal but now
they're too small to put any drives into. Then again, once you put your TV set or
monitor on top of your Apple it didn't look much different; just a fuzzier display
and some extra cables. But a PET sure wasn't as easy to carry over to a friend's
house to play with, I'll grant you that.
To each his/her own as far as styling goes, but it did look more like a 'computer'
(i.e. terminal), at least after that very first graphic kbd/tape drive version. The BM
in CBM did stand for Business Machines after all...
========
And, as an aside, it was many years before the
mainstream reached the 500MB
*per side* of the 8050 and 8250 disk drives (which could use pretty well any
diskette you had on hand, soft sector, 10 or 16S hard sector, whatever).
Granted that does seem pretty good (I assume you mean 500KB ;) - I think Acorn
would have been doing 400KB around that time but a lot of the competition (at
least in the UK) were aiming at something like half that.
-----------------
Oops; a small glitch in the 1/2 MB to 500K conversion...
========
I'm not really serious about them being nasty machines (hence the smiley in
the original message) - they just don't really 'do' anything for me. But then
we all have out *cough* 'pet' systems... ;)
(Anyone know the price on a 8250 drive back in the day? I bet they didn't come
cheap!)
cheers
Jules
-----------------
Well, yes, there is that; $2000+...
But they were meant for someone who could write them off their taxes...
m