Photo of Front
Commodore PET 2001 Series Personal Computer
physical object
Identifier
2012.1.1Description
A white Commodore PET 2001 computer with a blue bezel around the screen. The cassette player beside the keyboard (datasette) was Commodore’s original data storage system which it introduced in the Commodore PET.The keyboard is small because the datasette took up too much space on the front of the case. The case is hinged at the rear and can be lifted to reveal the circuitry inside, a notable feature which also transferred over to the release of the SuperPET.
The 2001 is the first model of the PET and was released in 1977 as Commodore’s first personal computer, but the product line was discontinued circa 1982. The 2001 PET was advertised as having 4KB RAM, 1MHz speed, and cost $495 USD. Unlike other early Apple and TRS computers, from the beginning the Commodore PET dialect of BASIC supported floating-point numbers and lowercase letters.
The PET was designed to look friendly (as the PET was intended for home use), which explains the unnatural colours on the keyboard. Additionally, the name was chosen to make it sound like a “pet computer”, although it did have an unfriendly acronym: Personal Electronic Transactor.