• 1982

Hardware Description

The P500 is a member of the Commodore PET-II family of computers. It is a close relative to the Commodore 600 and 700. While the Commodore 600/700 models were designed as business models with 80 column monochrome video, the P500 was designed as a home computer with 40 column video, featuring the VIC-II chip that was later available in the C64. Because the timing is controlled by the VIC, it is in fact determined by the video standard in use. So the other difference between the 600/700 computers and the P500 is that in the latter, the CPU is clocked with about 1MHz, while the former run with 2MHz.