faiman@uiuccsb.UUCP (02/10/84)
#N:uiuccsb:4400037:000:1990 uiuccsb!faiman Feb 9 15:59:00 1984 Some of you may be old enough to remember the Commodore Pet - it was one of the first self-contained microcomputers. I ordered one back in September, 1977, and paid the magnificent sum of $499. It came with a 6502 microproc- essor, 4k bytes of RAM, a 25-line by 40-character CRT, calculator-style keyboard, and a built-in audio cassette recorder. It spoke only a restricted BASIC, which resided in ROM along with a somewhat buggy system. For reasons which I could never understand it attracted quite a following, although for me it was chiefly useful in the education of my then 8-year old son, who picked up BASIC the way kids pick up street talk - I refused, on principle, to teach him. Right now, if it holds any interest for us at all, it is only as a museum piece. So, before consigning it to a closet or some deserving (but unsuspecting) youngster, I thought I would fix it up and make sure that everything works. No problem, I hear you say. After all, chips are cheap. Right? Why, even a li'l ole 6502 can be had for under five bucks, and you'd pay the same amount for a 64k dynamic RAM chip (which is more total storage than in the whole PET, anyway). But, it does not need any of these. What it cannot live without is a couple of 1k by 4 static RAM chips to replace two on the motherboard that have gone bad. (Add-on memory can be anything you like, but this mother is particular about what goes inside the box.) So, what's wrong with a 2114? They're good and cheap; get a whole bucketfull for little more than the price of shipping. Well, this PET - it must have been a JAPET - doesn't like 2114's. It only takes something called a 6550, which won't fit the 2114 sockets. Who makes the 6550? Why, only Commodore, of course. How much is a 6550? Just 4-measly-k bits, and static, noch? As a special favor, the company is willing to sell me the chips direct, so I don't have to pay extra through a dealer. Just $15 each (that's one-five)! So much for Moore's law.