November 8, 2008by Chris

It is rare that some recall a very old, short-lived, TV series called "Mr. Merlin" - but if you do recall, perhaps you remember the episode that starred the futuristic-looking Commodore PET. Come to think of it, this thing still looks futuristic with the stealth-like angular design and Matrix-the-movie-like green display. But this machine is nothing but futuristic as it was released several decades ago in the 1970's.

Weighing in at about a ton and encased in a bullet-proof metal armour, the many versions of the Commodore PET delighted users with state-of-the-art technology, a friendly chirp from the piezo speaker at bootup, and the refined BASIC operating system (supplied by no other than Bill Gates).

An Easter-egg was encoded into the OS by Mr. Gates using a clever encryption in a table of floating point constants, whatever that means. Apparently, if one enters "wait 6502,n", the string "MICROSOFT!" will be returned n times (Commodore Pet Basic version 3.) Big Bill did this in retaliation after a spat with Jack Trammell (owner of Commodore Business Machines at the time).

The PET was one of the first machines that made a successful run in the education system - later to be trumped by Apple, Icon, and then the attack of the clones (IBM clones that is).

Students enjoyed programming in Commodore Basic with line numbers and playing video games depicted in "PETSCII" character graphics - the machine was unable to process a single pixel but people made up for it with amazing intuition.

Students also enjoyed messing with the fabled 'killer poke' - the setting of a particular memory cell to a particular value that would throttle the video controller and make the monitor scream in pain while the display wrapped in on itself. Students can be so cruel. If the machine was left in this state, the monitor would be destroyed.

CS 11-8