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Oral History of Chuck Peddle
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All the comments and stories posted to Hacker News that reference this video.⬐ fermigierChuck Peddle is an absolute legend.The 6502 was my first microprocessor love, thanks in part to this book: https://archive.org/details/Programming_the_6502 ("Programming the 6502" by Rodnay Zaks - Actually I read the French edition by Sybex, I didn't read English at the time), and to the awesome computers that used it: Commodore, Oric, and of course Apple (I owned an Oric-1 a few years later).
⬐ djmips⬐ dangSame. An important book for me.Related:An interview with Chuck Peddle (in memoriam) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22633446 - March 2020 (1 comment)
Chuck Peddle: Personal Computer Pioneer, Dies at 82 – WikiChip Fuse - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21898433 - Dec 2019 (1 comment)
Chuck Peddle Dies at 82; His $25 Chip Helped Start the PC Age - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21875001 - Dec 2019 (53 comments)
Chuck Peddle passes away, December 15, 2019 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21848251 - Dec 2019 (2 comments)
In Memoriam of Charles “Chuck” Peddle - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21847718 - Dec 2019 (22 comments)
Most of what I know about that comes from Brian Bagnall's books (e.g. Commodore: A company on the edge). It's covered in the first chapter. I don't know of any preserved documents - if they exist they'd belong to Motorola, and I'd expect the leavers would have preferred to ditch any such documents (though part of the reason for the settlement with Motorola was that one of the engineers stupidly taking 6800 documentation with him).This [1] summarizes it. Here [2] is an interview by Computer History Museum of Chuck Peddle. It matches up with the first chapters in Bagnalls book very closely. From about 50 minutes in he talks about his meetings w/Motorola customers that told him the 6800 was too expensive. From about 58m in they talk about basically setting a size metric for the chip to meet a low enough price point. So the starting point was what they could fit in small enough space.
You might also like the Computer History Museum interview w/Bill Mensch [3]
[1] http://www.cpushack.com/2013/08/03/mos-technology-mcs6501-pr...
⬐ masswerkThanks! I'll have a closer look at these. – Admittedly, I haven't looked deep into Chuck Peddle's history (besides anything related to the PET), yet.
So sad. I learned to program with my Atari 130XE, mainly in 6502 Assembly. Truly respected him and his constant engineering and entrepreneurship efforts.The Computer History Museum interviewed him back in 2014 and posted the video on YT earlier this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enHF9lMseP8
Scene World Magazine also did an extensive interview 6 years ago: https://vimeo.com/89640027
Agreed. I was sad to hear of Chuck's passing. His MOS Technology was a huge thorn in Intel's side in the early days. That company punched way above its weight class because the chip was so simple it made a huge number of things possible.I got to meet him when he did this interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enHF9lMseP8) with the Computer History Museum and really was impressed at how he understood and expressed computation.
Tramiel had a habit of firing good engineers 3 months after product release. Either directly, or by screwing them by moving to useless positions or taking bonuses away until people 'got the message'. Those who didnt get what was going on or didnt care about money/dignity were the ones who stayed as long term employees. Jack had an eye for suckers and people putting passion before common sense and self respect.Whole C64 design team was effed out of promised bonuses and fired/left. People like Bruce Crockett (manufacturing), Al Charpentier (VIC) and Robert Yannes (SID) went to start Ensoniq (later sold to Creative), Chuck Peddle went to Apple, Bill Mensch hung around for two years of abuse. Same with Amiga team (Jay,RJ,Needle).
Those two videos touch on the Commodore culture of curb stomping until only the weak and dumb survive:
Oral History of Chuck Peddle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enHF9lMseP8
Oral History of William David "Bill" Mensch Jr. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne1ApyqSvm0
⬐ cmrdporcupineThat's interesting, though your example of the Amiga team -- they weren't there under Tramiel, so would have nothing to do with him in particular. Though I'm sure the culture there was rotten.⬐ raszCommodore went from being hostile and ruthless (but profitable and successful!) under Tramiel to plain stupid under Rattigan to corrupt under Mehdi.⬐ vidarhThat's true, a lot of the problems came down to Irving Gould - Tramiels main investor. While Tramiel was there they appear to have countered each others flaws just enough for things to mostly work. After Tramiel, Gould went through executives in short order, and most of them had no idea how to properly leverage what Commodore had.That said, Tramiels last pricing stunt (drastically dripping the price without preparing the distribution chain, and so hanging them out to dry) also contributed to gutting Commodores distributor network in the US in a way they never really managed to fix.