Few people have heard of it, yet many consider John Blankenbaker's KENBAK-1 to be the first commercial personal computer.

Koss introduced these headphones over 40 years ago, and they remain affordable favorites to this day.

The Commodore PET 2001

Commodore PET 2001

The MOS 6502-based Commodore PET was introduced in 1977 with a meager 4K of memory. This model earns a special place in my heart as the machine I learned to write spaghetti BASIC on.

It offered a stunning level of integration with the computer, keyboard, monitor and tape drive all sharing a single 'stylish' case. The PET also had its share of quirks -- while later PETs had keyboards designed for Earthlings, early versions used something akin to a cash register keypad. But -- since I didn't know any better -- I thought it was fabulous.

The first series of PETs offered white phosphor monitors, but at some point these were exchanged for trendy green-on-black 'Matrix' displays. All Commodore models featured a secondary set of "graphic icon" characters that could be displayed instead of letters and numbers. This enabled simple graphic displays without requiring a bit-mapped graphic controller (where each pixel could be addressed independently).

I've had a recent hankering to find a dead PET and replace its innards with something a tad more modern. It'd be worth it, just to see people do a double-take.

The Commodore PET 2001 (Old Computer Museum)

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