Re: www.6502.org

[aarona@/REMOVE/localnet.com (Aaron)]

On 24 Nov 1999 16:59:04 GMT, albaugh@agames.com (Mike Albaugh) wrote:

>Zefram Cochrane (zefram@daystrom.bog) wrote:
>: Randy Shackelford (shack@onyx.southwind.net) wrote:
>
>: : The original 6502 came from MOS Technology. The 65C02 and later chips came
>: : from William Mensch and Western Design Center. Rockwell was merely another
>: : source, as was GTE and CMD. Rockwell did add some instructions to their
>: : 65C02s, which were incompatible with all other 65C02s as well as all sub-
>: : sequent 6500 series chips.
>
>: Where does Chuck Peddle come into this ? Didn't he invent the 6502,
>
>	"Invent" is an odd choice of words. He certainly seems to have led
>the group of ex-Moto engineers who designed the 6502 at MOS technology.
>At least, to talk to him at the time (yes, I did. Bought a 6501 from him
>at Wescon, before Moto managed to take it off the market), he and some
>other Moto engineers, who had worked on the 6800 wanted to do (in their
>opinion) a "better" CPU, but Moto balked, so they went to a little
>calculator company named MOS technology and did the design. The two
>things that in _my_ mind distinguish the 6502 are the pipelining and
>the price ($20 for a 6501, $25 for a 6502, quantity 1, when Intel
>was asking over a hundred for the 8080 and Moto wanted over $50
>for the 6800). Those, and the availability of Jolt and KIM development
>systems for prices below the "two spouse decision" point sparked a
>_lot_ of micro-processor-based projects. :-)
>
>
>: was that processor specifically designed for the Commodore Pet ?
>
>	Not AFAIK. IIRC, Commodore bought MOS technology well after the
>introduction of the 6502. Possibly after the Pet itself. (Although
>Commodore was a calculator company, and MOS Technology was an aggressive
>supplier of calculator chips before the 6502, so they probably "knew
>each other" :-)
>
Commodore actually started out as a typewriter repair company in the
1950's. They then got into the calculator business and nearly lost
their shirts when their chipset provider, Texas Instruments, decided
to sell calculators directly to the consumer at the same price that
the calculator companies were paying for just the chipset!