The PET lives on in odd ways. I use the PET font, long since hoisted out of the ROMs by several people and via Unscii and Funscii, as the medium weight font for virtual terminals on my own Linux-based, NetBSD, and FreeBSD machines.
It pairs up nicely with the BBC Micro graphics font as the bold weight, as the PET characters have thinner (bitmap) 'strokes' than the BBC ones. Moreover, since they were originally 8×8 (although I have run them through an upscaler to get 16×16, and strictly the PET was 7×7) they work better with CJKV and 'square' character cells than 9×16 PC fonts do.
I've also used Dragon (i.e. MC 6847T1) + Atari paired up for medium and bold, as there's a similar different in 'stroke' widths. But the MC 6847T1 has a limited 7-bit true 1963 ASCII repertoire. The PETSCII fonts have all of the PET's graphics characters as well, which of course are now mapped as of Unicode 13.
The Unscii bitmap font for the PET came with no information at all. Thank you for that. I've just discovered https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29723782 too. So I'm going to add attribution at the top of my copy.
Old man story time. This was the first computer we had in our home, I believe in the summer of 1978 or 1979. Mom was working on her Masters in education (high school mathematics) and also taking Fortran courses on Hofstra’s PDP-11. She took me (~6 years old) to the machine room once, and one of the bearded sysadmins printed me a giant ASCII art of Snoopy on his doghouse on white and green fanfold paper with a dot matrix printer.
Her high school took delivery of its first ever computer, a PET with a chiclet keyboard. She was assigned to take it home over the summer to learn, and figure out how to use in the curriculum.
A few memories- it was the first piece of electronic equipment in the house with a grounded plug, and the house had no grounded outlets. Most people would have used a cheezy adapter, but Dad sledgehammered an 8’ copper rod in the backyard and installed a single grounded outlet for it.
The cassette loading could be very fiddly and slow. A favorite game was “Hangman”, played that for hours. Observe the beautiful graphics.
The PET went back to the school in the fall, and I started begging for a PC of my own. For the longest time I was constantly asking for a Timex/Sinclair. Christmas 1983, a TI-99/4a appeared under the tree, thanks to them being sold far below cost after failing in the market. That lead to an Apple //e in 1987, and a Dell 486 DX2-66 in 1993.
I have two of them, one totally stock, the other hotrodded with f18a DVI video output, a FinalGROM cartridge with the complete cartridge library one SD card, and a whopping 32k sidecar memory upgrade. And homemade joysticks built with Sanwa arcade mechanisms to replace the awful TI ones. Makes PARSEC playable. There are some pretty neat modern homebrew games, too.
I had a different home computer, with a cassette player hooked up to it, and I remember well having to fiddle with volume and tone controls to get things to load. I'd always been envious of Commodores and the like, which came with what I assumed was a specially built and calibrated tape drive, so surprised when you said it was quite fiddly to load as well. What kind of adjustments could you make to get stuff to load properly?
That sounds like a Tandy, at least, they just used a normal tape recorded with an adapter for mic/headphones. And people had to fiddle as you say, I think.
Not the person you're replying to but I remember loading games from tape on the Commodore 64 could be fiddly as well. Not sure about adjustments (today I am spoiled, having a disk drive for my 64) because I was a kid back then. I just remember how frustrating it was to see "LOAD ERROR" after waiting for what felt like an eternity. I think we just rewound the tape tried again.
Yeah, it was a super expensive custom cassette tape drive. The only components it shared with a regular cassette tape player was the read and write heads, and the capstan drive. Everything else about it was unique to Commodore.
Same year, 78'ish, my Dad takes me to his associates new office, where his assistant has just unpacked the brand new Commodore Pet. "We have no idea what to do with it, we just know we need it", says the associate.
I spend the afternoon unattended making pictures with PETSCII and poking around the user interface, which I remember as being difficult, and the very first time I encountered BASIC.
Been programming ever since. Literally still got almost every machine I ever hacked on in between now and then, also. ;)
For me, I had played on early ATARI game consoles, and I knew from a very early age that I wanted to play on even more powerful computers.
In 9th grade, the math class I was in was Pre-Algebra. I had nearly flunked 8th grade math, and so that teacher recommended I be held back for 9th grade, where normally everyone went into Algebra-I. My teacher for 9th grade was Mrs. King, and I got straight As for the first time in my life. To this day, I credit her with turning me around and helping to give me the incredible career that I’ve had. But that also meant I couldn’t get into the computer lab, since you had to be enrolled in Algebra-I in order to get in. That was also the year that my middle school got a computer lab, for 6th-8th grade. So, I missed getting into the computer lab in two different ways that year,
In 10th grade, I was in Algebra-I. But they changed the rules on me, and then you had to have already had Algebra-I, in order to get in. So, again, I missed the computer lab.
That summer (1982), I convinced my parents to buy me a Commodore Vic-20, with a whole 5KB of RAM available. It was the least expensive but reasonably functional machine we could get. I typed in a bunch of BASIC programs from various magazines, but the first program that I wrote for myself was a complete implementation of a choose-your-own-adventure book. I did every word, every paragraph, every choice, every ending. The whole shebang. After a while, I ran out of RAM. So, I had to buy an 8KB RAM expansion card, and a cassette tape drive. And then I ran out of RAM again. Then I had to buy a 16KB RAM card. I made all the variables and line numbers as short and small as I could, because there wasn’t a 24KB expansion card that could be bought. I ended up with just five whole bytes of RAM left over by the time I finished writing the game.
For 11th grade, the high school computer teachers said that I could come into the computer lab on my own free time (before and after school, during lunch, etc…) because the processor on the Vic-20 was similar to that used on the Apple ][+ computers they had in the lab. I couldn’t take any computer classes, because they were all filled by seniors. Before the first semester was done, I was helping to teach the seniors how to write their programs.
For 12th grade, the teachers let me directly enter into the advanced programming class (Pascal), because they knew that I had basically helped teach the intro class the previous year. We were split up into two-person teams for our final class project. The team I was on finished early, and so I was put into a team with another guy who had been working alone. We were the only two teams to finish our projects that year. For graduation, I wrote to my various family members to ask them to help me buy an Apple ][+ that my Scoutmaster was selling, so that he could afford to buy an Apple //e that he needed for his professional software development work.
Commodore people love to claim "first" for the PET because it was announced in January 1977, but they didn't ship until much later, like in October or later
So if you actually wanted an 8-bit computer in the Summer of 1977 you would have been stuck getting an Apple II which you could actually purchase
The Altair didn’t come with a keyboard or screen. Just a front panel with lights and switches (like a PDP-11, to be fair). So, the fact that it wasn’t an integrated system in one box all from the same manufacturer distinguishes it as a Mini/Micro Computer rather than a Personal Computer.
Yup. That's why you hear of the Apple II as one of the first personal computers, and not of the Apple I, which was a more advanced kit than most, but still required owners to supply their own case, power supply and keyboard.
I bought a TRS-80 as a 14-year old in 1979. Commodore Pet, Apple II, and TRS-80 were the only real options. The Altair was an entirely different beast. Take a look at the Altair advertisement in the wikipedia entry and you'll get the idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_8800
I think the low bar for something to be called a PC needs to have a crt screen and a keyboard.
Also, the "P" in PET stands for Personal, probably as differentiation to mean a computer that you don't have to share. It's a response to the larger time-shared computers back in the day. The "personal computers" had keyboards and screens that looked very much like mainframe terminals.
A friend in high school had one. We wrote little BASIC programs that would randomly roll up NPC's for Dungeons and Dragons—print them out on his small sheet-feed printer.
I had a friend who had the original PET with the small keyboard. Then when I started in the military in 1980 we had a course in basic computers and how to use then. One of these was a board with a hex display, where I managed to get it to display my name in the display.
But one day we were going to a 'real' computer lab, that was basically a room full of PET computers.
As I knew we were going back some days later, I quickly loaned a couple of cassette tapes from my friend, and the session became a bit more enjoyable, as we could play a lot of games now.
However, this was the version with the 'real' keyboard, which also meant that it had a newer ROM. So some of the old games didn't work on this version of the PET.
Nitpick: In Europe we used 220 Volts - not 220 Watts.
Semi-related: I was surprised to learn Commodore is not dead. After a hundred different bankruptcies and court cases, somebody managed to put together all trademark rights in 2025 and is now selling the 64 and they announced a flip phone, of all things, this year.
Way back in the 70s a PET was the platform for my first paying programming job. Given an equation for a transformer hysteresis curve with a couple of parameters, I was tasked to plot hysteresis curves graphically.
For maximum info-density and maximum aesthetics, I got deeply into the character set for block graphics, so that every position in the plot had the character that best fit the curves and made them as smooth and cool and informative as possible.
I owned one of those for a while. Was given to me by a friend back in the early 90s.
Aside from a huge power under the hood, ha ha ha, it also had heft. You could definitely stun a cow with that thing.
And power? We named it ouraborus and programed it to be a magic eight ball. However, sadly, it decided to live up to its name, and consumed the cassette tape that it was stored on. Those tape machines out of tenancy to eat the tape if you didn’t keep the heads clean.
But it did run magic eight ball slowly. Very slowly.
A friend of mine gave me one of those back in the 90s. We named it, Ora Boris and programed it to be a magic eight ball. Decided to live up to its name and ate the tape that it was stored itself on (we forgot to clean the heads).
And yes, I realize Ora Boris is misspelled, iPhone voice transcription just cannot handle that one.
When the 1977 trinity came out, the PET was the most useful system overall simply due to having Microsoft BASIC. The Apple II had Woz's Integer BASIC and the TRS-80 had an enhanced Tiny BASIC. The following year they all had Microsoft BASIC available.
The PET had the worst keyboard but the most reliable tape system. It could simulate an 80x50 bitmap.
The TRS-80 won on availability, vastly outselling the others due to production and sales outlet capacity. The CPU was about 60% the speed of the others. It could simulate a 128x48 bitmap.
The Apple II had the best graphics (A real 280x192 bitmap mode (monochrome) or 140x192 and colours). Integer BASIC only supported 40x40 graphics. You needed more RAM to support the true bitmap modes. The price was 2 to 3 times higher than the other systems.
37 comments
[ 0.18 ms ] story [ 21.1 ms ] threadIt pairs up nicely with the BBC Micro graphics font as the bold weight, as the PET characters have thinner (bitmap) 'strokes' than the BBC ones. Moreover, since they were originally 8×8 (although I have run them through an upscaler to get 16×16, and strictly the PET was 7×7) they work better with CJKV and 'square' character cells than 9×16 PC fonts do.
* https://github.com/jdebp/unscii/tree/2.1.1f/
* https://github.com/jdebp/unscii/blob/2.1.1f/src/font-pet16.t...
I've also used Dragon (i.e. MC 6847T1) + Atari paired up for medium and bold, as there's a similar different in 'stroke' widths. But the MC 6847T1 has a limited 7-bit true 1963 ASCII repertoire. The PETSCII fonts have all of the PET's graphics characters as well, which of course are now mapped as of Unicode 13.
I wonder of even a single byte I have written, will be still used decades from now.
Her high school took delivery of its first ever computer, a PET with a chiclet keyboard. She was assigned to take it home over the summer to learn, and figure out how to use in the curriculum.
A few memories- it was the first piece of electronic equipment in the house with a grounded plug, and the house had no grounded outlets. Most people would have used a cheezy adapter, but Dad sledgehammered an 8’ copper rod in the backyard and installed a single grounded outlet for it.
The cassette loading could be very fiddly and slow. A favorite game was “Hangman”, played that for hours. Observe the beautiful graphics.
https://youtu.be/jnj2ZgOYYDQ?is=zZauKOy5f95wDqrg
The PET went back to the school in the fall, and I started begging for a PC of my own. For the longest time I was constantly asking for a Timex/Sinclair. Christmas 1983, a TI-99/4a appeared under the tree, thanks to them being sold far below cost after failing in the market. That lead to an Apple //e in 1987, and a Dell 486 DX2-66 in 1993.
https://dnotq.io/f18a/intro.html
https://endlos99.github.io/finalgrom99/
https://thebrewingacademy.com/products/ti-99-4a-32k-external...
I spend the afternoon unattended making pictures with PETSCII and poking around the user interface, which I remember as being difficult, and the very first time I encountered BASIC.
Been programming ever since. Literally still got almost every machine I ever hacked on in between now and then, also. ;)
In 9th grade, the math class I was in was Pre-Algebra. I had nearly flunked 8th grade math, and so that teacher recommended I be held back for 9th grade, where normally everyone went into Algebra-I. My teacher for 9th grade was Mrs. King, and I got straight As for the first time in my life. To this day, I credit her with turning me around and helping to give me the incredible career that I’ve had. But that also meant I couldn’t get into the computer lab, since you had to be enrolled in Algebra-I in order to get in. That was also the year that my middle school got a computer lab, for 6th-8th grade. So, I missed getting into the computer lab in two different ways that year,
In 10th grade, I was in Algebra-I. But they changed the rules on me, and then you had to have already had Algebra-I, in order to get in. So, again, I missed the computer lab.
That summer (1982), I convinced my parents to buy me a Commodore Vic-20, with a whole 5KB of RAM available. It was the least expensive but reasonably functional machine we could get. I typed in a bunch of BASIC programs from various magazines, but the first program that I wrote for myself was a complete implementation of a choose-your-own-adventure book. I did every word, every paragraph, every choice, every ending. The whole shebang. After a while, I ran out of RAM. So, I had to buy an 8KB RAM expansion card, and a cassette tape drive. And then I ran out of RAM again. Then I had to buy a 16KB RAM card. I made all the variables and line numbers as short and small as I could, because there wasn’t a 24KB expansion card that could be bought. I ended up with just five whole bytes of RAM left over by the time I finished writing the game.
For 11th grade, the high school computer teachers said that I could come into the computer lab on my own free time (before and after school, during lunch, etc…) because the processor on the Vic-20 was similar to that used on the Apple ][+ computers they had in the lab. I couldn’t take any computer classes, because they were all filled by seniors. Before the first semester was done, I was helping to teach the seniors how to write their programs.
For 12th grade, the teachers let me directly enter into the advanced programming class (Pascal), because they knew that I had basically helped teach the intro class the previous year. We were split up into two-person teams for our final class project. The team I was on finished early, and so I was put into a team with another guy who had been working alone. We were the only two teams to finish our projects that year. For graduation, I wrote to my various family members to ask them to help me buy an Apple ][+ that my Scoutmaster was selling, so that he could afford to buy an Apple //e that he needed for his professional software development work.
Then there was college.
So if you actually wanted an 8-bit computer in the Summer of 1977 you would have been stuck getting an Apple II which you could actually purchase
"It was the first commercially successful personal computer."
I mean it's gotta at least have a keyboard…
Jimmy Maher has some excellent articles on the history of early computers (with focus on videogames) in his blog.
https://www.filfre.net/2011/06/the-trash-80-part-1/
I think his best work was at Atari on the ST line.
https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/personal-computer...
Also, the "P" in PET stands for Personal, probably as differentiation to mean a computer that you don't have to share. It's a response to the larger time-shared computers back in the day. The "personal computers" had keyboards and screens that looked very much like mainframe terminals.
But one day we were going to a 'real' computer lab, that was basically a room full of PET computers.
As I knew we were going back some days later, I quickly loaned a couple of cassette tapes from my friend, and the session became a bit more enjoyable, as we could play a lot of games now.
However, this was the version with the 'real' keyboard, which also meant that it had a newer ROM. So some of the old games didn't work on this version of the PET.
Nitpick: In Europe we used 220 Volts - not 220 Watts.
Flick 'em on, wait 1 or 2 seconds, enter code & run it.
Pathetic.
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49953027
For maximum info-density and maximum aesthetics, I got deeply into the character set for block graphics, so that every position in the plot had the character that best fit the curves and made them as smooth and cool and informative as possible.
It was a great introduction to the craft.
Aside from a huge power under the hood, ha ha ha, it also had heft. You could definitely stun a cow with that thing.
And power? We named it ouraborus and programed it to be a magic eight ball. However, sadly, it decided to live up to its name, and consumed the cassette tape that it was stored on. Those tape machines out of tenancy to eat the tape if you didn’t keep the heads clean.
But it did run magic eight ball slowly. Very slowly.
And yes, I realize Ora Boris is misspelled, iPhone voice transcription just cannot handle that one.
The PET had the worst keyboard but the most reliable tape system. It could simulate an 80x50 bitmap.
The TRS-80 won on availability, vastly outselling the others due to production and sales outlet capacity. The CPU was about 60% the speed of the others. It could simulate a 128x48 bitmap.
The Apple II had the best graphics (A real 280x192 bitmap mode (monochrome) or 140x192 and colours). Integer BASIC only supported 40x40 graphics. You needed more RAM to support the true bitmap modes. The price was 2 to 3 times higher than the other systems.