Commodore PET 2001-16N The original Commodore PET 2001 was introduced in April 1977 with a price of $600 for a 4k machine and was Commodore's first entry into the fast-expanding microcomputer market just 3 years after 'Raido & Electronics' showed an article on building the Mark-8. The 8k version was priced at $795. The original PET 2001 had a membrane chicklet keyboard, an internal tape drive, a 9" 40-column monochrome monitor and 4k or 8k of RAM. Later versions of the PET 2001 left out the tape drive, switching to external units, increased the RAM to 16k or 32k and changed to a full sized typewriter-style keyboard. All 2001-series PETs retained the same 9" CRT, though later series machines increased the size of the built-in monitor to 12". The whole PET line proved to be quite successful in terms of sales. This.particular machine is a later 2001-series machine with the full sized keyboard and 16k of RAM. Program loading is by way of an external Commodore 1530 or C2N cassette recorder or an external Commodore disk drive system, such as the 4040, which connected using the IEEE-488 bus. The machine boots into Commodore Basic when powered on. BASIC used a full-screen editor.

On April 29, 1994 Commodore International shut it's doors. Early in 1995, German PC-manufacturer ESCOM bought Commodore, though they themselves would go into receivership the next year.

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