Introduction

So you have an old Commodore PET / CBM computer and you want to hook up a harddisk drive ?

Looks like you have 3 options. Starting with the easiest, they are:

Buy a Commodore D9090 or D9060. These are external Commodore Harddisk Drives with a couple megabyte capacity. They have an external IEEE-488 connector and were specifically designed for the PET CBMs. I've got one of those babies.
Pros: Easy to hookup, full PET-DOS support.
Cons: Quite hard to find, big and heavy, uses a lot of power, near impossible to repair


Get a cable that hooks your CBM to your PC's printer port and, with some software, emulate a CBM disk drive on your PC (i.e. use your PC's harddisk). This has already been done, I believe.
Pros: Cheap
Cons: Requires PC to be running, limited PET-DOS support


Buy the PET/CBM IDE interface. You'll have to wait for me to finish developing it, of course. In fact, it may never make it to production...
Pros: Small, integrated, adds RS-232 to your PET (maybe)
Cons: Limited PET-DOS support.


Since you're here, you have probably already toyed with the first 2 options. If not, maybe you should. On the other hand, if the PET/CBM IDE interface sounds appealing to you, then you've come to the right place. Watch this blog to stay informed.