Commodore PET Series 3001

First check out the PET 2001 entry for more general information on Commodore PET computers.

Encouraged by brisk US and Canada sales of the PET 2001, Commodore introduced their wonder machine to the European market, only to hit an almost immediate snag. A Dutch company called Philips was producing a 96 kB. RAM System called the "Programm-Entwicklungs-Terminal", and had rights to the acronym "PET". Facing threats of a lawsuit, Commodore removed the "PET" name from their 2001 series computers, and rebadged them in Europe as the "CBM 3001" series. The CBM 3008 was briefly available, to be quickly replaced by the more common CBM 3016 and the CBM 3032 (below). Shown here is an upgraded CBM 3008.

The 3001 series is clearly based off the 2001 series architecture. They come stock with BASIC 3.0, but many are upgraded to BASIC 4.0, which was readily available soon after their original release. All of the machines in this series feature a 9" green phosphorous screen and a full graphic keyboard. A datasette is an optional feature that plugs into the external datasette port, as are disk drives and printers through the IEEE-488 port. A fully programmable bi-directional parallel "user" port is used to control a myriad of home project hardware. Shown here is the CBM 3016, while the CBM 3032 is below.

Statistics, features, and 3001 series resources:

One of the more interesting items in this collection is this hand-upgraded CBM 3008. Starting from an original 3008 motherboard, the previous owner managed to socket and then fill the memory sockets, bringing this machine up to the maximum 32k. The ROMs were then replaced, bringing it up to BASIC 4.0. At the same time, a third party video board was installed, giving this little machine an INCREDIBLE, crisp, 80 columns of text video on that tiny little 9" screen. I cannot yet report whether the killer-poke, or the 80-to-40 column programs have any effect on this machine. Click on the picture for a slight enlargement.