Nostalgia-fuelled vintage computing specialists The Future Was 8bit and Tynemouth Software have opened pre-orders for a new computer kit based on Commodore’s venerable PET, featuring everything you need to compute like it’s the 1970s – just bring your own flares.
First released in 1977 as a follow-up to the considerably simpler KIM-1, and notably designed following a rejected offer from Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak to turn the Apple II into a Commodore system, the Commodore PET (aka the Personal Electronic Transactor) was an all-in-one machine with integrated keyboard, tape deck and monitor, driven by the MOS Technology 6502 processor.
Capable of displaying 25 lines of 40 or 80 character text, or monochrome character-based graphics, the PET launched at $795, the equivalent to around $3,503 today. Despite featuring a mere 4kB of memory – expandable to a whopping 96kB, if you had the cash – the PET proved popular and laid the groundwork for the later VIC-20 and record-breaking Commodore 64.
Working PETs are increasingly rare, which is where Tynemouth’s Mini PET family comes in. First…
