A long time ago I bought an old Commodore PET 2001 in quite a good condition. It came along with a tape drive with just a few very simple games on it. Of course there is much more software out there for the PET but I needed a reliable and comfortable way to get it on there. Then I found a DIY kit on the internet called 'petSD'. It simulates a disk drive and stores it files on a SD card. It is quite easy to build. The only thing that is a bit tricky is the SD adapter itself since it is SMD and has very small pins to solder.
The website has very clear instruction for the assembly. You can also see a battery on the PCB and that actually is for a clock interface that should tell the PET the current date and time. I don't think I'll actually use that. But then it was time to switch the power on and everything looked OK. I did notice the odd looking centronics like connector and thought that would hook up to a port on the PET. And I was wrong :) Good preperation..... NOT !!. It is a IEEE 488 interface and there is one on the PET offcourse but it has a different connector. So you actually need a cable to hook it up. I thought it would be easy to find something like that on E-bay, but WRONG again.
After a long search and reading a lot of forum articles I managed to stumble on the TPUG (Toronto PET Users Group) from Canada. And they had them on stock :) So after that I had to wait for that cable to arrive before I could test the petSD. And today it arrived! So I hooked it up right away and did a LOAD "$",8 and LIST and got a directory listing of all the programs I already put on the SD card. So it actually worked :) Very cool.
And then it was time to test some games. My youngest daughter also joined and played with the old machine. She was complaining that it was slow :) LOL. Sure it is. But now I can put all the software ever made for the PET on a 512 Mbyte SD card. I already found some games that don't fit in the standard 8 Kbyte of RAM. So next thing is looking for a memory expansion for the PET. So if you happen to have one laying around. Let me know :) OK. If you are interested in the petSD project. You can find more information on this URL:
http://www.retro-donald.de/sinchai-shop/
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9 comments:
Very nice job, sounds a lot of fan. That amiga 2000 what CPU and mem have. You the A2000 can be most older powerful of the world? Cheers...
The Amiga 2000 is not that powerful. Standard CPU. It does have Buddha with IDE hard disk and CDROM, 286 Bridgeboard and Network Adapter. It has KickRom 3.1. But I also have a Amiga 4000 that is more powerful, but it needs new memory.
My A2000 have a GVP Gforce 68060 at 66mhz 128mb ram, picasso4, pablo, concierto4, picolo, Xsurf2, budha catweasel, minimegachip, HD scsi 9GB, HD120GB ide, dvdrom scsi, hiway usb. OS3.9 i can surf on the internet, play mp3, msn, irc, ftp, network with the pcs, emulate mac0s 8.0 very fast, play movies, play any old game. Its is a dream machine. You must to try. Also i have a A4000 with ppc but is not so estavel and the 68060 the 68k part not runs so fast like A2000. ah and the motherboard of my A2000 is from 1988. So is a modern machine from 1988. :)
Nice system :) I'm looking for another Buddha by the way for my A4000. If you know one. Do let me know :)
Nice system :) I'm looking for another Buddha by the way for my A4000. If you know one. Do let me know :)
Hi Michel! At 2 months ago I have one for sale, any way if appears one I let you know. Any way you must to try a 68060 CPU on Amiga, open many cool doors, including emulate PC with PC-Task software give the 486 cpu equivalency, it's possible run Win3.1 very fast and also Win95 not so fast. By the way your Apollo album is great very nice job, congratulations.
Thanks :) Great to hear you like the album. I hope you will enjoy it for a long time.
I have all you original albuns. My favority one is Aerodynamics. Hoppe on day have time to do my own album :) and also have my stuff so organized like you have :)
Wow great :) Thanks a lot for the support! I really appreciate it!
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