

Though the purchase of the chip fab was initially instituted with an eye on the calculator market, Commodore found itself in the position of being a computer company that could make its own (custom) IC’s, or chips.

Sometime during this time Commodore, under the reins of its founder Jack Tramiel, purchased MOS technologies and became a computer company that owned a chip fabrication plant known as a chip fab for short. Turns out I had an affinity for how microprocessors “thought” and had worked my way up to the title of Hardware Design Engineer by the time I applied for a job at Commodore, fair to say that I would not have had my career in electronics without the existence of the 6502. I cut my teeth on the 6502 as a young bench technician at a company named Pennsylvania Scale Company in the late 70’s, doing processor controlled instrumentation which was pretty much a burgeoning field at the time. Peddle’s response was that he was proud of the Input/Output (I/O) chips of the day as a computer with no I/O is just a processor but add I/O and you have terminals, cash registers, printers, etc. When asked about his contribution to computers in general, Mr. Contrary to popular belief, the KIM-1 was not designed by Chuck Peddle but rather someone from the Calculator Group at MOS lead by John May. One of the earliest examples of the 6502 was a system known as KIM-1. The 6502 is at the heart of many of the home computers of the era starting with Atari, Apple, BBC Micro, and of course Commodore. The fact that the lawyers disagreed with Chuck is a different story. Chuck and company then joined MOS Technology in Norristown PA and subsequently released the 6502 microprocessor which sold initially for $25 and ultimately less than a dollar. Peddle basically received a “cease and desist” letter from Motorola to stop work on the 6800 which Chuck took to mean that they were abandoning the project and the intellectual property it represented. While this evolutionary step seems whole and natural to someone like you or I, the existence of the microprocessor was deemed a threat to those at Motorola who made their money selling the main processor board for tens of thousands dollars vs the $250 that the 6800 was slated to sell for.
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Chuck’s team successfully shrunk down a full sized PCB known as the main processor board onto a single chip, known now as a microprocessor, the 6800 to be exact.

The 6502 was the brainchild of Chuck Peddle and a team of engineers, Bill Mensch, Wil Mathes and others, who were all working at Motorola - we called them the Motorla Five even though there were seven of them. Check out the video and follow along below. To understand the success of the C64 I would first back up and talk about the fabled era of home computers which starts with understanding the microprocessor of the day, the venerable 6502. If one were to watch a documentary about the 1980s they may see a picture of an Apple computer or its founders but most likely would not see a picture of a Commodore computer in spite of selling tens of millions of units.

Some of you have probably not heard of Commodore, which is kind of sad, though there is a simple reason why - Commodore is no longer around to maintain its legacy.
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Note that I am saying “home computer” and not personal computer (PC) because back then the term PC was not yet in use for home computer users. This year marks the anniversary of the most popular selling home computer ever, the Commodore 64, which made its debut in 1982.
