What was it like to program for the Commodore PET

[Frozone212]

Seeing as how i was never born during that time, What was it like to program the PET (the 2001)?

 

[Keatah]

I would imagine it being a pain in the ass.

[bluejay]

I would imagine it being less of a pain in the ass than the Apple II. It actually has a “graphics” systems that makes sense to the average individual, and it being made up of text characters makes everything all the more simple. 

[JamesD]

3 hours ago, bluejay said:

I would imagine it being less of a pain in the ass than the Apple II. It actually has a “graphics” systems that makes sense to the average individual, and it being made up of text characters makes everything all the more simple. 

The memory layout of the screen is a PITA on the Apple II, but the Apple II has commands for drawing pixels and lines in hi-res mode.
There were plenty of utilities that added the ability to print text, etc... on hi-res screens from BASIC, so unless you were in assembly, you really didn't notice.
I learned assembly on the Apple II in college, and even wrote a character generator, and other functions for drawing on a hi-res screen.
It wasn't as simple as a regular layout, but it wasn't terribly difficult either.
 

 

19 hours ago, Frozone212 said:

Seeing as how i was never born during that time, What was it like to program the PET (the 2001)?

 

If you are talking BASIC, the TRS-80 Model I has a slightly better BASIC, but it depends on what you are programming.
For business stuff, the PET was no worse than the Apple II.
For games, it was no worse than the Model I.
The VIC 20 is pretty much the same with color and fewer characters on the screen.

Assembly?
I can't say I'm a huge fan of the the 6502... or the Z80 for that matter.  Motorola 6801 on are easier and the code tends to be smaller.
 

[zzip]

I took my first BASIC class on a Commodore PET.   BASIC programming was similar to other systems of the time: Line numbers, no full screen editor, etc.

 

The main thing that sticks out was the class had BASIC games programed using the PETSCII graphics, and I wanted to design similar games myself.

 

But I haven't used one since and haven't used other languages on it.

[Keatah]

4 hours ago, bluejay said:

I would imagine it being less of a pain in the ass than the Apple II.

Depends. The choice of BASIC or Assembly make a difference to a newcomer.

 

4 hours ago, bluejay said:

It actually has a “graphics” systems that makes sense to the average individual, and it being made up of text characters makes everything all the more simple. 

That could be an advantage.

 

Now. With Apple II nothing could be simpler to an aspiring pre-teen programmer.

10 HGR (set the graphics mode)

20 HCOLOR = 3 (pick a color)

30 HPLOT 50,60 (draw a dot at x,y)

 

I picked up on that in one evening.

The next I discovered how to draw lines.

By the end of the week I was doing trig and sines and cosines to make spirals and circles and Lissajous.

[+Gemintronic]

I remember writing simple programs in BASIC.  Didn't even mess with character graphics much.

 

Loading and saving via cassette was easy and fast.  In fact, I've never had a better experience with cassette than the PET. 

[oracle_jedi]

It was slow.

 

The 2001's chicklet keyboard was not something you ever got fast at.  Of course this was 1981-ish so no one had a computer in the home then.  Typing was something girls learned as part of secretarial skills.  But the chicklet keyboard of the first PETs was at least familiar to anyone who had used a desk calculator, which were pretty common back then.

 

BASIC was very limited but I don't think we really knew that at the time.  It wasn't as if we had much to compare it to.  Most of us didn't even have a ZX81 at home.  

 

There was no AUTO or RENUMBER commands.  And no structured BASIC commands either.  Programs consisted mainly of INPUT and a bunch of IF/THEN/PRINT commands.  When you got really advanced you started exploring DATA, READ, RESTORE and FOR-NEXT loops.   Wild stuff.

 

But it was also magical.  Here was an actual real computer.  Just like they talked about in the movies or on TV.  Only this one was so tiny.  It could fit on a (large-ish) desk!  Would the computer explode if I entered the wrong command?  Take over the world?   Start World-War 3?  These all seemed real possibilities to an impressionable 10 year old.  The warm glow of the monochrome monitor, the way text and symbols would fade from the screen when you pressed SHIFT-CLR HOME.

 

My memory says the BASIC did have a full screen editor.  At least you could move the cursor around and type over a line of BASIC.  But I might be confusing memories here.  Our school ended up with several PETs from the 2001 to the later green-screen 4000 series.  Some had those huge double-full-height disk drives attached but I don't know if that worked with the 2001 or not.  Definitely agree with @Gemintronic that the cassette interface was a strong point.  You could load and save your programs and give them names.  Years later I recall being baffled by how crude the Atari's cassette handler was by comparison.

 

There was no color or sound.  PETSCII graphics were all you got.  Lot's of fun creating variations of that flapping bird animation.

 

To this day I still enjoy playing PETSCII-graphic games on my VIC20.  The Pixel Productions games, the Commodore cassette titles.  The early Audiogenic titles.   A while back a fellow on the VIC sleeping-elephant forum ported a bunch of PET games to the VIC using a 40-column software emulator.   So many great memories playing those titles.