The 4064s: PET 64, Educator 64 |
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.
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.