Re: Commodore and Apple

[et472@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Michael Black)]

Anders Carlsson (anders.carlsson@mds.mdh.se) writes:
> Jim Brain <brain@jbrain.com> writes:
> 
>> I suspect the overriding factor was Chuck wanting to do his own PC,
> 
> In 1993, Hogia Data (Sweden) opened a personal computer museum during
> the summer. Unfortunately they closed it in the fall, but as a memory
> from the exhibition, I still have the paper they printed for the museum.
> Among many other things, they have an article on Chuck Peddle, and
> although I don't know which sources they used, here is their story:
> 
> < MOS Technology under the leadership of Chuck Peddle got the task
> < to develop an 8-bit micro processor. Within short time the 6502
> < processor was ready. 
> <
Of course, Chuck Peddle had designed (or contributed to the design)
the Motorola 6800, and the similarity of the CPUs shows that.

> < Peddle succeeded in convincing Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak to
> < use this processor in their first Apple computers. Maybe it was the
> < price that was in Peddle's favour - in any case it was remarkable
> < that the Apple computers were to be based on the unknown 6502 
> < processor rather than Intel's already well known 8080 chip.
> <
I think this is a misreading of history.

One of the first issues of Byte, I think it was the November 1975 issue,
had an article about the 6500, the original Mos Technology CPU that
was pin compatible with the 6800.  It made a big issue of the $20
price in single quantities, may have even been in the title.  This
was when all the CPUs were far more in single quantities; when the Altair
8800 came out almost  a year earlier its cost is said to be the same
as buying an 8080 in single quantities at the time.

I looked at the article and thought "wow, I can get a computer".  I
never did build one, but it was precisely that article that steered
me to the 6502 and it's descendants; I had a KIM-1, then an OSI SUperboard,
then a couple of Radio Shack Color Computers (with the 6809), and then
an Atari ST and a Mac Plus.  The first time I had a main computer with
an 8080 descendant was in mid-2001.

I doubt I was the only one who reacted that way to the article, and the
6502.

And reading the history books, they tell of how Steve Wozniak had designed
his computer around the 6800 (I've not seen an indication of why that and
not the 8080), and when the 6502 (the original 6500 did not get very far,
because Motorola objected to the identical pinout, so it was replaced with
the 6502 which was the same CPU but different pinout) came along, its
cost meant that was a better choice for the Apple.

Even if that's a wrong bit of history, the fact that the 6502 was $20
in single quantities had to be very tempting.  That was the point, 
Mos Technology deliberately priced it so people and companies would
choose it.

No further convincing was needed, and indeed I've never seen any talk
of that line of reasoning in the history books.

And while the 8080 did have a lead at the time, there wasn't the 
monolithic thinking we see today.  Plenty of companies either planned
or actually introduced computers with "oddball" CPUs.  Godbout planned
a sixteen-bit computer using a National CPU that fall (which never seemed
to be produced in the end), I'm pretty sure it was the fall of 1975
that MITS introduced their second computer, the 680, based on the 6800.
Since the field was still developing, and there weren't standard operating
systems, one CPU was almost as good as another.
 
> < But Chuck Peddle was not satisfied with developing processors. Very
> < soon he had developed a complete computer and he presented to the
> < Commodore management a complete micro computer based on the 6502
> < processor - the first PET computer.

I'd have to check the books.  I suspect Commodore, having bought Mos
Technology, wanted products that would make use of that in-house source
of ICs.  

   Michael