The pictures in this directory have a very international background. George Page, an American Commodore collector, sent the photos of his computers to me, a Finnish C= enthusiast, while I was in Lübeck, Germany. The pictures were scanned by my German friend Andreas Boose, and transferred to Finland by disk and over the net.
Below is the description George Page sent me with the photos. I hope that you enjoy them!
See also the Computer demo/display notes he sent with the pictures.
Also thumbnails of the pictures are available: 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40, 41-50, 51-53.
These are going out to a few different people--hope you find them informative. Feel free to copy or scan or whatever, and show 'em to all your friends! The descriptions and information is accurate to the best of my knowledge--but my knowledge is a bit limited! Plus I'm getting old and senile (g) (48 in a few months). If you need more info or whatever, let me know. I can be reached through the FIDO network as George Page on 1:104/518 (Silver Hammer), or on Internet as gpage@nyx.cs.du.edu, or as aq361@Freenet.HSC.Colorado.EDU. Also on FIDO through Cybermiga or Senile Smile BBS's in Denver, but I don't have their nodes numbers at hand.
Sorry, but a few pictures got numbered out of sequence before I typed this up. The numbers on this sheet DO match the pictures.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6: These pictures were all taken while the machines were on display at the club meeting. I tried to display them in chronological order as best as I could. Each will be covered in more detail further on through the pictures. Looks like I had 26 on display. All of these belong to me except for the Educator 64 in the standard 64 case. (This is the one that looks like a regular 64 in picture 2, with no logo on its case.)
7: These are 3 of the 2001 series of PET's--the original styles. The center one (blue trim) and the right side one with aftermarket keyboard are 8kB machines. The blue and the right black Commodore PET labels are press-on foil type labels, the left back one is a thick plastic bolted or glued on type label. (The 4kB one with the cassette installed.) The right side one also has an aftermarket keyboard installed in place of the stock "chiclet style" keyboard and cassette. (For those of you outside of the US, "chiclet" was a brand of chewing gum sold here that was in little rectangular pieces, that looked like the keys on these keyboards.) This one also had a homemade 12kB memory expander board installed inside the case--which gave a whopping "19455 bytes free" power-up message.
8, 9, 10: Close-ups of these three machines. I was hoping the yellow stick-on label could be read, but no luck. It identifies the added keyboard as made by Maxi-Switch Company, P/N 2160020, with S/N 820-170. Also had # 630011-05 on the keyboard. The cassette unit visible in the pictures is one of the oldest I've found. It doesn't even say Commodore anywhere on the outside, but has a Commodore board inside to replace the original audio boards. It was a standard portable audio cassette recorder of the late 70's, modified by Commodore--the original manufacturer's name was scratched off the cover!
15: Back of the left (4kB) and center (8kB) machines.
14: Back of the right (black 8kB) and center (8kB) machines.
11, 12, 13: A 4064 (Educator 64 in a standard large PET case) and a SuperPET (SP9000). 12 shows the switches on the side of the SP that switched between ROMs and also write-protected memory.
The Educator was designed for school use, and used primarily refurbished C64 boards that had been returned to Commodore as defective or "sparkily". It came in both this style case, and a standard 64 style case. More-or-less crammed into whatever CBM had on hand and could sell to schools. The sound (SID), color, and sprites were disabled. '82/'83. [William Levak points out that according to other sources, the SID chip was indeed present in the Educator 64, but there was no loudspeaker in the system.]
[Editor's note: The Educator 64 uses a slightly modified KERNAL ROM that omits the "38911 BASIC BYTES FREE" message and changes the screen colors to black and white.]
The SuperPET ('81?) was a special 8xxx model machine with many built-in special features. Also called the "mini-mainframe". Designed/modified by the University of Waterloo in Canada. Had a true RS-232 port cable of 9600 baud, came with a number of languages such as Pascal and Fortran. 96kB and 4 built-in fonts. Used a lot to communicate with mainframe machines and allow programmers to work at home and up/downloaded back and forth from their mainframes.
16, 17: An 8032 and 8032-32-B (high profile case). The high-profile case allowed the installation of internal drive mechanics, like the 8250 LP, and the 4040 LP (if the 4040 LPs were actually made).
18: Two low profile B/P series machines, and an MDS 6500. The left hand machine is a P500. The MDS6500 was a specially modified PET 2001-32N with some built-in software and a matching 2040 drive. Supposedly less than 500 made. (But this has S/N 804932 on back--maybe CBM's original number for the unmodified machine?) The right machine is a B128-80LP.
19: Back of the P500. ('82?) I don't have any info dug out on this one yet.
20: Back of the MDS (Microcomputer Development System).
21, 22: Back and bottom of the B128-80LP. The B128-80 and B256-80 (also known as 700 (128lp), 710 (128hp) and 720) came with a 6509 microprocessor standard and 8088 optional on the 128's and standard on the 256. Also the 256 had an optional 8087 math co-processor. External RS232-C port capable of 19200 baud with built-in 6551 ACIA. RAM expandable to 256kB internal plus 704kB external. BASIC 4.0. All had 6581 SID chip with 3 voices and direct audio output.
23, 24, 25, 26: B128-80HP and 720 (B256-80HP). Detachable keyboards, built-in monitors, and room to install two internal low profile drive mechanics, such as 8250LP.
27, 28, 29, 30: Three different style VIC-20's ('82). 3 different keyboards styles (if you look closely), the two different case labelings, and picture 29 shows the two different side panel/power connectors. 29 also shows a standard C64 for comparison. Note that the cases are NOT the same height! The VIC is a little bit taller. 30 shows the back of an early style (middle) 5pin video C64, as well as a later 8pin C64 and a VIC-20.
[Editor's note: The early C64's were housed in the taller case as well, and the case color was slightly changed when introducing the lower case. The taller case also lacked the descriptions of the back side connectors.]
31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37: Various views of a C16 and Plus/4, along with their boxes and power supplies. The Plus/4 is the smaller machine, with the larger power supply (square plug). ('84)
38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43: Various views of an SX64. This is mine that I added the second drive into. A few extra switches and stuff, for toggling device numbers, turning second drive on/off, and un-write protecting.
44: A trio composed of the legendary C65, C64C, and a prototype C128. Also a C64 in the background.
45: Closeup of 64C.
46: Back of C64C and C65.
47: The prototype C128. Missing keys are just broken--not designed that way. S/N of this machine is less than 300, and supposedly has version 1 (never-released) ROMs. Also had not been FCC approved yet. This particular machine isn't working right now.
48: C65.
49: Back of C128.
50, 51, 52: Comparison views of European and US models of the C128D. The Euro model has its keyboard snapped into its underside storage clips. The Euro model also has holders for the power cord, and a snap-out carry handle that was not in the US models. Euro is fully plastic case, US has plastic front but metal otherwise, although supposedly some US models had an all plastic case.
[Editor's note: The "US model" is actually the C128DCR that was also sold in Europe. The original C128D, the "Euro model", has the normal C128's motherboard, with the exception of the soldered connectors for the internal floppy, the power supply and the keyboard on the right hand side, and a special version of the 1571 disk drive controller board, and it has 16 kilobytes of VDC RAM. The C128DCR has an integrated 1571 controller on the motherboard, and it has 64 kilobytes of VDC RAM. Also, it uses 64kb*4 memory chips instead of the 64kb*1 chips used in the C128 and in the C128D.]
53: Family portrait of two different 2031LP cases, and a VIC1540 and VIC1541.
Whew--fingers sore--I quit! Hope you enjoyed the "show".
22 April '94 George Page.
I second that, after formatting the whole in HTML.
25 November '94 Marko Mäkelä.
George also has a large collection of disk drives and other Commodore products.
