Creating the Commodore 64: The Engineers’ Story
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
I wonder if this is why C64 power supplies have a tendency to fail, taking the computer with them?
https://retrogamestart.com/answers/replace-c64-power-supply-...
Turned on the c64, there was a bang, and a small thick cloud of smoke rose from the back of the machine.
But! It worked and I could play Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge again until the new power supply arrived.
Never did figure out what the smoke came from. I guess a blown capacitor.
Ran into the resin, gave up, but your story made me laugh, and brought back a picture, in my mind, of that resin.
Thanks
Other known problem - "too large to fall" - government try to save such large enterprises so hard, that lead to default.
Usually investors are much more cautious, but in Detroit, used standard scheme of distributed responsibility, where not exists one person, who responsible for bad decision, but these decisions made by committee or by some collegial scheme.
This is also known as one of the biggest problem of democracy - some subject could manipulate others.
In craziest form, one subject could ask other parties with vote power, to jail any other party, and than divide its property between others (who stay free), and repeat this until all others will be in jail, and all property will belong to this creative subject.
In real life, very typical thing, to make mega-projects (which where really created in Detroit), to plunder taxes. BTW this is easy to see, by looking on projects distribution. For example, normal community build lot of cheap projects, but little number of mega projects, and community which is not well enough mature, will attract to mega projects, because they fear to got response of making little things.
But Detroit was destroyed by the looting of the American auto industry, which was offshored, outsourced, and automated in the pursuit of efficiencies by people who were well-suited, well-heeled, and not far-sighted. The automakers had been in decline by the 70's, but the manufacturing of automobiles in Detroit sustained that city, and when you remove the chief industry of a city, the results are predictable: the city declines.
Detroit before raise of automobile industry was little periphery town, very depressive place like all periphery, so no leadership, no control (in this case, sure mean local government), simply because there where empty place, nothing to control.
In very short time appear automobile industry, which attract capital, but it is unfortunately typical, that business does not care about control, even more - in many cases business struggle against local government.
So that's all history - money tsunami appear, and flooded city; local government was not appear, it can't appear so fast, without special measures (I studying community dynamics and local governments for more than 10 years, and I have not found any facts about special programs to raise level of Detroit local government; unfortunately I seen extremely anti-local government measures); this money flood disappear, left debts.
And unfortunately that's typical history, poor cannot become reach just getting money, he should learn, change his mind.
And its large size not because it could just have some moderate benefits from size, but because it is impossible to build so large objects within small business.
Just imagine, 747 estimated to 500-700 man-years, nobody will wait even 1/10 of so long.
C64 totally different case.
And in Russia things are so bad, that few years ago there literally stole jail. - One entity won tender, than few months imitate works and sure, received money, and finally declare themselves bankrupts.
Not too much people have such opportunity.
If you want to be blown away by the sounds the SID chip can produce, I would recommend some of LMan's work. This is one impressive tune: https://youtu.be/h0qMNfpiLmE
And this is done with the hardware that Bob Yannes designed for the Commodore 64, in his early 20s.
Edit: on second listen, it sounds like it has a bit of reverb applied? I wonder if it was recorded from real hardware.
one thing im noticing in this is skipped ticks in the player... mysterious brief random pauses in the sequencer, ouch, heh.
Start with Turrican I end titles and go from there.
You could build a 2 MHz computer on a breadboard and expect it to work. The main analog parts in old computers were at the periphery, the sound DAC, the video drivers (the hardware part of that), TV modulator (usually a module to allow for easy NTSC/PAL/SECAM adaptations), joystick interface (ADC, or switches, depending on the model), cassette tape interface and so on.
A key transition was moving from the 1 and 2 layer printed circuit boards of 1970s e cheap 1980s computers to 4 layers like in the IBM PC and Apple Macintosh. The difference a ground and power plane makes in the waveforms is simply amazing.
> As a result, programs made sound effects you couldn’t hear.
Makes me curious if anyone has tried creating a to-spec version of the SID to see how those games would sound.
Self-contained devices that boot up within a second out of the box, and let you program right away. In this age of course we’ll need a basic GUI, and an app store as well.
what became Ensoniq which became part of Creative Technology and E-mu Systems.
Ensoniq made v cool sampler synths. E-mu made advanced audio peripherals. Creative made “SoundBlaster” audio cards for PCs.
Amazing productivity from the same group.
Explains a lot!
> The cost of developing the Commodore 64: No one knows. “I had no formal budget accountability,” said Winterble, “other than Jack [Tramiel] watching me. Jack said that budgets were a license to steal.”
They also had more margin in their process which is always good. Process is so tuned today that innovations are missed because there is no room to play.
> Because MOS Technology’s fabrication facility was not running at full capacity, the equipment used for C-64 test chips and multiple passes of silicon would otherwise have been idle. “We were using people who were there anyway,” said Ziembicki. “You waste a little bit of silicon, but silicon’s pretty cheap. It’s only sand.”
Silicon back then was like bandwidth or storage today, those are cheap and can be used to innovate on but tightened later.
> Although custom chips are usually considered expensive, the C-64 chips were not. Not only were development costs absorbed in company overhead, but there was no markup to pay, as there would have been if the chips had been built by another company. And yields were high because the chips were designed for a mature semiconductor-manufacturing process.
C64 having access to in house chips was key in building what they needed and quality levels they needed.
> “It was a lot of fun,” said Ziembicki. “The design people would pick an English screw. The production end would pick metric. But they went with what they had. Commodore production was very good at making things fit whether they were intended to or not. Their charter was 'Ship ‘em’”
Good product people, designers and engineers hold back until quality levels are acceptable.
> “It takes a very tough person,” explained Charpentier, “to say ‘I’m not shipping these because they’re not as good as they could be’—especially when people are clamoring to buy them.”
I have so many times hear about people too much concentrated on one thing so loose all others! I thought, it is known at least from 1970th (The Mythical Man-Month), but again and again see cases of the same..
I would expect such a headline as this to be rewritten nowadays to avoid the apostrophe, or just dropped altogether as ever since “Eats Shoots & Leaves” copyeditors have been hyper conscious about the impact dropped punctuation can have on meaning.
So it’s just nice to see it here, used as nature intended. In particular that it could be dropped and really not impact the meaning at all!