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The 4064s: PET 64, Educator 64

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Intending to use pictures or text from this page? Please read this notice. Last modify 1 July 2007.

Despite both being "4064" systems (i.e., both of them say 4064 on their respective backplates), there are some important differences between these "64 in a PET case" units.

PET 64

Complete Views of the PET 64 (.jpg)
These pictures were taken by yours truly of Bryan Pope's PET 64 at Vintage Computer Festival East 4.0. This unit had a fault with its Char ROM, so I did not take a screenshot despite otherwise working normally.
Portrait (59K) | Keyboard Labels: Left (44K), Right (37K) | Mainboard (107K) | 901225-01 Char ROM, 901246-01 4064 Kernal, 901226-01 BASIC ROM (68K) | Board Notations (7K)

Screenshots of the 4064 (I created this with Frodo v4.1 and the 4064 Kernal ROM)
Startup Screen (1K)

4064 Kernal ROM Dump (courtesy Marko)

aka 4064
Introduced Earliest models appeared in late 1982.
Hardware, Graphics and Sound Identical to the 64 with modifications made to the Kernal ROM to make the startup colours black and white, and the familiar "38911 BASIC BYTES FREE" message was for some reason eliminated (this is the ROM version above, and the one in the screenshot); see Comments below for more about this feature. There is also no audio amplifier like that of the Educator 64 (below), and there is no RF modulator, although all other ports are available.
Eventual Fate Released in limited quantities.

See below for comments on both units.

Educator 64

.jpg Image of the Educator 64 (21K, courtesy Marko Märkelä, Andreas Boose, George Page)
.gif Image of the Educator 64 (21K)

Complete Views of the Educator 64 (.jpg, courtesy Moise Sunda)
Portrait (66K) | Front (51K) | Side (47K) | Keyboard (67K) | Keyboard Labels: Left (70K), Center (65K), Right (68K) | Mainboard (81K) | Backplate (38K) | Screenshot (54K)

aka 4064 (NOT Teachers' PET)
Introduced Per Gazette 1/90, fall 1984.
Hardware, Graphics and Sound Identical to original 64 hardware. In fact, Moise reports that his unit is nothing more than an early 64 motherboard with an audio amplifier connected to it and a headphone jack on the front (clearly visible in the photograph of the unit's front). Curiously, the RF modulator is offered, despite not being included in the PET 64. There is even a reset button next to the amp's volume control. The ROM is a standard Kernal, not modified like the PET 64.
Eventual Fate Released in limited quantities.

Comments
The fact that the 4064 series' units were not strong sellers didn't matter anyway, since most of them were refurbished 64 boards that had been sent back to Commodore. Commodore fixed them, crammed them into whatever case they had available, and shipped it out to schools at a bargain rate, hence the name. Commodore's line of public domain educational software was apparently targetted at the series, and may have even been bundled with it (unconfirmed). According to Travis Little, the series' design was at least in part the idea of the New York (State) Department of Education. School officials were dismayed at how easily the breadbox units could be stolen (in fact, quite a few disappeared from schools, and they fit very neatly in students' knapsacks), so Commodore presented the old PET cases as an inexpensive stopgap solution. (Apples, of course, had the edge for theft-proofing. Just try to stick a //e in your backpack, even without the security cable. :-)

Moise's and CCC's Educators all come up with the colour screen if you hook them up to a colour monitor, and all of them run C64 software without comment and with standard graphics and sound. Therefore, there must be two Kernal versions in the 4064 line: the stock 64 Kernal (in Moise's model) and the "4064" Kernal used in the earlier PET 64, offered available for download above, which sets all sprite, border and background colours to black during IRQs and has the new message. (It will let you change the cursor colour, however.) You can get colours back if you type POKE646,PEEK(646)OR128, which causes the Kernal to release its control, but hit RUN/STOP-RESTORE and it goes back to its old tricks. On a monochrome monitor, since you can only see luminance, this doesn't make a difference, but this allows you to use a 4064 normally with a colour monitor if you are so blessed.

Andrew Davie reports there are Educator units in the original breadbox. This seems odd since this would be basically a regular old 64. It is unclear if they were simply badged differently, and I have not received any photographs or any other information about these "breadbox" Educators.