The Commodore PET 2001-N was an improvement upon it's predecessor, the PET 2001. The N stood for New. The Cassette recorder was omitted from the design, and the chicklet style keyboard was replaced with a fullstroke keyboard, with a much larger space-bar. This was more in line with typewriter keyboards, and what office workers were used to.

The PET 2001-N also used a standard green phospor montior insted of the white colored one that came with the original 2001. The Kernel ROM was upgraded to support Commodore's new line of disk drives. The 2001-N was offered in different configurations:

• 2001-N8 - 8KByte of RAM
• 2001-N16 - 16KByte of RAM
• 2001-N32 - 32KByte of RAM

BASIC was upgraded to BASIC 2.0 which had bug fixes and improvements. It also had an easter egg that was personally coded by Bill Gates: If one would type WAIT 6502,x the message "MICROSOFT!" would appear on the screen x times.

The 6502 is an 8-bit MicroProcessor designed by MOS Technology. The team was led by Chuck Peddle and had also worked on the Motorola 6800. The 6502 is a simplified, but faster and cheaper design than the 6800.

The 6502 was introduced in 1975 and was the cheapest microprocessor on the market. Together with the Zilog Z80, the 6502 helped start the home computer revolution of the 1980s. The 6502 was used in a wide range of devices: the Atari 2600, the 8-bit Atari home computers, the Apple II, the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Commodore 64, the BBC Micro and many others. All used the 6502 or a variation of it.

The 6502 is a 1MHz design, while the 6502A is designed for 2MHz. The 6502A is 100% compatible with the original 6502.

Commodore soon bought MOS Technology, but conitnued to sell the microprocessor to competitors and licensed the design to other manufacturers.