Micro-PET
(C) 2020-2021 André Fachat
The Micro-PET is a re-incarnation of the Commodore PET computer(s) from the later 1970s. It is build on a single Eurocard board and has only parts that can still be obtained new in 2021.
- 2024-09-21 The Micro-PET R3 is now developed under the umbrella of the Ulti-PET/Micro-PET family!
- 2021-08-08 Micro-PET R2 released
- 2020-12-25 Micro-PET R1 released
Building a small Commodore PET clone, with advanced features has been long on my TODO list. So, when the Mini-PET came out this gave me the kick to finally start working on it. I used a CPLD as "glue"-logic and video display controller. In R1 I started out with a simple PET clone with PAL video output, and worked my way to higher frequency and more features, like VGA video output and the boot-from-SPI. This then resulted in the R2 board that is available now.
The main development is happening on github (see link left in the menu).
Features
The board is built with a number of potential features, not all of them have been implemented at this time.- Commodore 3032 / 4032 / 8032 / 8296 with options menu to select at boot
- Boot-menu to select different PET versions to run
- 40 col character display
- 80 col character display
- 8296 memory map emulation
- IEEE488 interface (card edge)
- Tape connector (card edge)
- PET graphics keyboard, or alternatively a C64 keyboard
- Improved system design:
- 512k video RAM, 512k fast RAM accessible using banks on the W65816 CPU
- boot from an SPI Flash ROM
- up to 12.5 MHz mode (via configuration register)
- VGA b/w video output
- Write protection for the PET ROMs once copied to RAM
- lower 32k RAM mappable from all of the 512k fast RAM
- Improved Video output:
- Hires graphics mode (using a configuration register)
- modifyable character set
- 40/80 column display switchable
- 25/50 rows display switch
- multiple video pages mappable to $8000 video mem address
Some pictures of the Micro-PET
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Last modified: 2024-09-21