Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: WolfToTheMoon on December 27, 2012, 12:07:22 PM
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There was a little known original internal
engineering effort at MOS Technology with the goal
of developing a 32-bit processor called the 65E4
relative to the 68K which was coming into
popularity at that time. The extra digit in the
exponent was a brainstorm which could only have
originated in the marketing department.
Anyway the "merger" with Commodore terminally
sunk that project.
http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/archv021.cgi?read=213654
The author of the post seems to be a past MOS/C= employee...
I wonder what C= would achieve if they indeed had produced a 32 bit chip? Could have been a big source of income if they retained the same cost efficiency as with 8 bit line and a big competitor to 68K and early x86 designs. It could have made possible a C900 like UNIX workstation earlier than 85'. Amiga could have been made even cheaper by making everything in house...
Edit... it should have been 65E4 in the thread title, can some of the mods fix it
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Jack Tramiel didn't want to spend money. Ever notice why the C-16 had less memory than the C-64? They didn't want to pay for it which means they were stealing from the customer by giving consumers less. Another computer would have competed with their best selling computer. Running two assembly lines is more expensive than running one assembly line. When you have the plans for the 6502, why would you pay for more technology to put your best selling line like the C-64 out of commission? What would it have cost to have BASIC redesigned for the new chip? You would have to pay for that too.
The reason why Jack Tramiel merged with Irving Gould was because he was out of money and the lawsuit with Motorolla made M.O.S. broke so Commodore assumed debt by buying M.O.S. as well.
Business owners generally don't all want to spend money. Warehouses don't like stocking items because they can lose money if the item doesn't sell.
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If you had a $2 dollar 6502 chip and a $6 dollar Z80 chip, which do you think would win out? 6502? Why?
Do the math on how much you would have to borrow to ship 10,000 or 100,000 or a 1,000,000 units. Would you want to borrow 2 million or 6 million for a million units? That is money tied up until you get a sale. How much could you save by saving 6 cents or 11 cents over a long period of time?
The best doesn't always win. Cost wins.
And just think what your Commodore 64 could do if it had the best hardware. No one wants to find out because everyone is happy with their old machines.
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Jack Tramiel didn't want to spend money. Ever notice why the C-16 had less memory than the C-64? They didn't want to pay for it which means they were stealing from the customer by giving consumers less.
WTF are you talking about? Jack Tramiel gave us the B128 (128k of RAM) and the B256 (256k of RAM) in 1983.
The B256 which you famously refused to buy, saying "I want less memory!"
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WTF are you talking about? Jack Tramiel gave us the B128 (128k of RAM) and the B256 (256k of RAM) in 1983.
The B256 which you famously refused to buy, saying "I want less memory!"
The prestigious B128 wasn't sold and were mostly destroyed. They weren't licensed by the FCC.
Prices didn't come down until the Commodore 64 which was 1983.
I don't know of anyone who has a Commodore B128.
No one knows the B128 existed and I've only saw a few liquidated in esoteric magazines and they were highly expensive and unsupported:
Due to the popularity of the C64, the P series was cancelled in the United States before it could be officially released; however, a few dealers who received preproduction units sold them. As these computers had not received approval from the Federal Communications Commission, this caused legal problems for Commodore. The units were recalled and destroyed, but a very small number exist today, in private collections. At least one model, the P500, was commercially released in Europe but only sold in small numbers.
The most common of the B series was the low-profile B128[1] (called the CBM 610 in Europe), which had 128 kilobytes of RAM. The B128 did not sell well, and ultimately Commodore's inventory was liquidated by Protecto Enterprises ("We Love Our Customers"), a large Commodore mail order dealer based in Chicago, Illinois.[1] The Protecto ads for the B128 bundle, including a dual disk drive, monitor and printer, appeared in various computer magazines for several years. The terms of the liquidation deal did not allow Protecto to advertise the computer's manufacturer, so it was simply referred to as a "128k computer". The Commodore name plate was legible in the photo in several of the ads, however.
[EndQuote]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_B128
The B128 or 264 became the C-16 which only had 16KB Ram.
Market performance
The C16 was a flop in the US and was discontinued within a year, but it sold reasonably well in Europe as a low-end game machine (over 90% of all C16 software was produced by European developers) and in Mexico as well
The C16's failure in the US market was likely due to a lack of software support, incompatibility with the C64, and lack of importance to Commodore after its competitors withdrew from the market.[EndQuote]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_16
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Jack Tramiel didn't want to spend money. Ever notice why the C-16 had less memory than the C-64? They didn't want to pay for it which means they were stealing from the customer by giving consumers less.
The C-16 had nothing to do with Jack, his last computer was the $99 commodore 264 but he left before it mutated into the $299 plus/4.
He spent money on prototypes and cancelled them if there was not enough interest. A new processor would have been too expensive for a punt.
After he left, commodore didn't function at all well.
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The C-16 had nothing to do with Jack, his last computer was the $99 commodore 264 but he left before it mutated into the $299 plus/4.
Gould suggested that Tramiel travel to Japan to learn why they were able to outcompete North Americans in their own local markets. It was during this trip that Tramiel saw the first digital calculators, and decided that the mechanical adding machine was a dead end.[9]
[EndQuote]
I was a child when calculators sold for $100 or more and then TI and the Japanese dumped calculators on the market for $10. Commodore was first called "Commodore Business Machines" and they were in the calculator market. They took a heavy hit because why would a consumer buy a $100 calculator when you could buy one for $10?
Whether or not Jack got credit for this machine, the planning and direction took shape well before the C-16 came out for consumers and was delivered. Their strategy was to drop the price of the C-64. Their strategy was a price war from the beginning. The 6502 was a $25 chip meant to replace a $300 processor / computer system or more.
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WTF are you talking about? Jack Tramiel gave us the B128 (128k of RAM) and the B256 (256k of RAM) in 1983.
The B256 which you famously refused to buy, saying "I want less memory!"
Why was the SID chip team only given a month to design the SID chip and what happened to them after the first month?
What happened to the original MOS team?
Why didn't Commodore fix the hardware in the 1541 making it faster?
What happened to the Commodore LCD prototype?
Why didn't Commodore invest in schools after the Commodore Pet?
Why were Ram expanders separate for the Commodore 64 and 128 instead of put on the computer?
Where was the Commodore hard drive? They never invested in one.
What happened to the Commodore light pen? It was never released.
What happened to the Commodore Midi keyboard? It was only released in the Netherlands.
The answer is that Commodore didn't invest in these avenues. Instead, Commodore lowered the price of the Commodore 64 every year decreasing profits.
If you were delivering newspapers with a car, you would have to reinvest a third of your profits into car maintenance. Commodore made someone rich at the top and the money didn't go back into the product and I would see their job as design and to get machines out the door which they didn't do. Instead, they were bleading money out of the company.
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If you had a $2 dollar 6502 chip and a $6 dollar Z80 chip...
The C128 had a Z80 chip.
...which do you think would win out? 6502?
The 6510.
Would you want to borrow 2 million or 6 million for a million units?
The C128 sold about 6 to 8 million units.
Happy New Year!
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
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Why was the SID chip team only given a month to design the SID chip and what happened to them after the first month?
What happened to the original MOS team?
Why didn't Commodore fix the hardware in the 1541 making it faster?
What happened to the Commodore LCD prototype?
Why didn't Commodore invest in schools after the Commodore Pet?
Why were Ram expanders separate for the Commodore 64 and 128 instead of put on the computer?
Where was the Commodore hard drive? They never invested in one.
What happened to the Commodore light pen? It was never released.
What happened to the Commodore Midi keyboard? It was only released in the Netherlands.
Many of those questions are answered in Brian Bagnall's Commodore book. Also many of those questions have been answered in CBM engineer Bil Herd's videos posted on-line. For more specifics, why don't you shoot your questions to Bil at http://www.c128.com ?
Happy New Year!
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
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I don't know of anyone who has a Commodore B128.
Fortunately, my friends and acquaintances own B128s - PET gurus Larry Anderson and Mike Naberezny, vice-president of the Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists (MARCH) Bill Degnan, and C= master repairman Ray Carlsen. In fact, we had Larry's B128 for users to play with at the Commodore Vegas Expo v8 last July 28-29. We ran some programs off of Mike Hill's product, PETdisk, when my MSD SD-2 was failing to recognize inserted floppy disks.
Happy New Year!
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
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Why was the SID chip team only given a month to design the SID chip and what happened to them after the first month?
The SID was designed by Bob Yannes and he took a lot longer than a month.
Why didn't Commodore fix the hardware in the 1541 making it faster?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km701Z3KQiI slow serial bus vic-20 13:45 c64 19:00
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The SID was designed by Bob Yannes and he took a lot longer than a month.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km701Z3KQiI slow serial bus vic-20 13:45 c64 19:00
We know why the 1541 was never fixed. The question was just rhetorical in nature.
ANDREAS : What would you have changed in the SIDs design, if you had a bigger budget from Commodore?
BOB YANNES : The issue wasn't budget, it was development time and chip size constraints. The design/prototype/debug/production schedule of the SID chip, VIC II chip and Commodore 64 were incredibly tight (some would say impossibly tight)--we did things faster than Commodore had ever done before and were never able to repeat after! If I had had more time, I would have developed a proper MOS op-amp, which would have eliminated the signal leakage which occurred when the volume of the voice was supposed to be zero. This lead to poor signal-to-noise ratio, although it could be dealt with by stopping the oscillator. It would also have greatly improved the filter, particularly in achieving high resonance. I originally planned to have an exponential look-up table to provide a direct translation for the equal-tempered scale, but it took up too much silicon and it was easy enough to do in software anyway.
[EndQuote]
http://sid.kubarth.com/articles/interview_bob_yannes.html
From what I've read, they had about a month.
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The C128 had a Z80 chip.
The 6510.
The C128 sold about 6 to 8 million units.
Happy New Year!
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
That is unfair answer because the C-128 had different goals, had to manage four different types of ram and it was a totally different kind of machine if you think about it. They wanted CP/M on a machine so of course you had to use a Z80. I remember the chips they had to use had something to do with the tank at the MOS building was leaking and something about they didn't want to produce one of the chips?
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Many of those questions are answered in Brian Bagnall's Commodore book. Also many of those questions have been answered in CBM engineer Bil Herd's videos posted on-line. For more specifics, why don't you shoot your questions to Bil at http://www.c128.com ?
Happy New Year!
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
Irving Gould got control of the company and Jack Tramiel wasn't happy about it, Jack left and formed Atari. We know that much. A book isn't going to tell motives or things that are not discussed.
Irving Gould was a partner and he invested $400,000. He later got control of the company.
If you wanted to steal a company, what would you do? You would run it into the ground so the owner couldn't pay his bills. A company that isn't doing good is worth less. Right? The value of a company goes down and you could get a billion dollar company for a steal. Isn't this what happened to Commodore? Is the book going to pick up on this? I haven't read the book but maybe the author was busy on other issues. Someone observant has to answer and that is why I posed this question to Bil. He might not be able to go back that far and fully answer the question because it depends on when he joined Commodore.
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That is unfair answer because...
Nobody said anything being fair. :)
Happy New Year!
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
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Is the book going to pick up on this? I haven't read the book...
Enough said.
Happy New Year!
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
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We know why the 1541 was never fixed. The question was just rhetorical in nature.
From what I've read, they had about a month.
It only works as a rhetorical question in your favour if you don't know the reason it wasn't fixed. They were going to fix it, they invested money in fixing it. However they found out too late that a mistake in the production meant that they couldn't fix it. Delaying would have allowed another computer to gain market share that they wouldn't have been able to recover.
Wherever you read that they only had a month from starting the SID to finishing it was wrong. Both the SID & VIC-II were loosely scoped projects, they don't appear to have been started with any form of deadline. When commodore decided to do the c64 they needed them reasonably functional to demo at the January CES or they wouldn't get any orders. Without orders they wouldn't know whether to manufacture any, a lot of projects were demo'd at CES but if nobody wanted them then they were killed.
In answer to your original question. Bob Yannes did the SID on his own and also worked on the C64 motherboard, he left commodore shortly after they were complete.
The engineering team at commodore was always very small. At least for the people that achieved anything.
They wanted CP/M on a machine so of course you had to use a Z80. I remember the chips they had to use had something to do with the tank at the MOS building was leaking and something about they didn't want to produce one of the chips?
The Z80 in the C-128 was designed in by accident, CP/M was never a design consideration. It was only because someone in marketing had promised 100% compatibility and the C-64's CP/M cartridge worked less in the C-128 than it did in the C-64. Personally I think they could have argued their way out of it as the CP/M cartridge was so rare. Even if it meant designing a new CP/M cartridge that could be exchanged. But Bil chose to put the Z-80 on the motherboard instead, maybe it was cheaper to do it that way? He might have been forced to remove it, except the compatibility hack for the Magic Voice cartridge also relied on it.
The MOS building was shut down by the EPA years later due to the leak, I don't remember anything happening around the time of the C128. AFAIK Commodore manufactured all the C-128 & 16bit Amiga chips that they had a license for. For AGA they had to outsource some of the chips because their fab lines were out of date. They redesigned the CIA on a more modern production process for the CD32 as they had closed the fab completely by then, both CIA's are included in the AKIKO chip.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology#GMT_Microelectronics
If you wanted to steal a company, what would you do? You would run it into the ground so the owner couldn't pay his bills. A company that isn't doing good is worth less. Right? The value of a company goes down and you could get a billion dollar company for a steal. Isn't this what happened to Commodore?
There doesn't appear to be anything like that going on with commodore. Fraud to drive the stock price up maybe, however Jack was never tied to it. Possibly because the man who was thought to be responsible (C. Powell Morgan) and another key witness died before the fraud was investigated.
http://www.commodore.ca/history/company/chronology_portcommodore.htm
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=m4QJke60-oAC&pg=PA114&lpg=PA114&dq=C.+Powell+Morgan+atlantic+acceptance+company&source=bl&ots=XWb7VIzoOr&sig=ex4yT1W5A5dH-FOQwLYgRrRguUk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=wqDkUOS3E4WZ0QWx3oCwBw&ved=0CEwQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=C.%20Powell%20Morgan%20atlantic%20acceptance%20company&f=false (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=m4QJke60-oAC&pg=PA114&lpg=PA114&dq=C.+Powell+Morgan+atlantic+acceptance+company&source=bl&ots=XWb7VIzoOr&sig=ex4yT1W5A5dH-FOQwLYgRrRguUk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=wqDkUOS3E4WZ0QWx3oCwBw&ved=0CEwQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=C.%20Powell%20Morgan%20atlantic%20acceptance%20company&f=false)
http://www.commodore.ca/history/people/irving_gould.htm
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They wanted CP/M on a machine so of course you had to use a Z80. I remember the chips they had to use had something to do with the tank at the MOS building was leaking and something about they didn't want to produce one of the chips?
The Z80 in the C-128 was designed in by accident, CP/M was never a design consideration. It was only because someone in marketing had promised 100% compatibility and the C-64's CP/M cartridge worked less in the C-128 than it did in the C-64. Personally I think they could have argued their way out of it as the CP/M cartridge was so rare. Even if it meant designing a new CP/M cartridge that could be exchanged. But Bil chose to put the Z-80 on the motherboard instead, maybe it was cheaper to do it that way? He might have been forced to remove it, except the compatibility hack for the Magic Voice cartridge also relied on it.
The MOS building was shut down by the EPA years later due to the leak, I don't remember anything happening around the time of the C128. AFAIK Commodore manufactured all the C-128 & 16bit Amiga chips that they had a license for. For AGA they had to outsource some of the chips because their fab lines were out of date.
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The Z80 in the C-128 was designed in by accident, CP/M was never a design consideration. It was only because someone in marketing had promised 100% compatibility and the C-64's CP/M cartridge worked less in the C-128 than it did in the C-64. Personally I think they could have argued their way out of it as the CP/M cartridge was so rare. Even if it meant designing a new CP/M cartridge that could be exchanged. But Bil chose to put the Z-80 on the motherboard instead, maybe it was cheaper to do it that way? He might have been forced to remove it, except the compatibility hack for the Magic Voice cartridge also relied on it.
I always thought that they were scared of the popularity of CP/M and wanted a product in case there was competition and I believe the Commodore magazines made mention of it.
I think CP/M was more popular overseas.
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There doesn't appear to be anything like that going on with commodore. Fraud to drive the stock price up maybe, however Jack was never tied to it. Possibly because the man who was thought to be responsible (C. Powell Morgan) and another key witness died before the fraud was investigated.
There was fraud. They were a Billion dollar company and they weren't paying their taxes and then the IRS got on them. That is why they registered in the Bahamas with a P.O. Box.
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Wherever you read that they only had a month from starting the SID to finishing it was wrong. Both the SID & VIC-II were loosely scoped projects, they don't appear to have been started with any form of deadline. When commodore decided to do the c64 they needed them reasonably functional to demo at the January CES or they wouldn't get any orders. Without orders they wouldn't know whether to manufacture any, a lot of projects were demo'd at CES but if nobody wanted them then they were killed.
That is a recipe for disaster and it is failure on the part of leadership. You have consumers who have money and who can't travel to the CES show because they work, can't afford a plane ticket and a hotel but they can afford a computer who would buy the product but the computer products aren't made available to them. Tell me something. If Commodore came out with a Commodore 128 Slim without CPM and was half the price, do you think people wouldn't buy it if there weren't any orders at CES?
I have a motor and gear factory near me but they will do business with me if I place a 10,000 or 20,000 piece order but since I don't have that much startup capital, they simply won't meet with me so that I could buy 100 so that I could develop a product line for robotics. Its not that they can't do business but they don't want to do business.
When you do business like that, who needs salesmen?
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It only works as a rhetorical question in your favour if you don't know the reason it wasn't fixed. They were going to fix it, they invested money in fixing it. However they found out too late that a mistake in the production meant that they couldn't fix it. Delaying would have allowed another computer to gain market share that they wouldn't have been able to recover.
If they waited or if they came out with another revision, would you have bought it? Would other people have bought it? And what do you think would have happened to the popularity of Commodore if the 1541 was sped up? Exactly.
They're doubling the memory on the Raspberry Pi and are people returning their old units? No. People are ordering the Raspberry Pi again with double the memory. It generates more income and makes the product more popular.
Not doing it hurts the company.
Commodore should have had me as manager. I would have made moves to make them more popular.
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I always thought that they were scared of the popularity of CP/M and wanted a product in case there was competition and I believe the Commodore magazines made mention of it.
I think CP/M was more popular overseas.
Bil Herd is on record that he designed it in for the reason I gave. There was nobody at commodore that was working on strategy.
CP/M for the Z80 was basically dead way before the C-128 came out. An 8086 would have made more sense as a backup plan.
There was fraud. They were a Billion dollar company and they weren't paying their taxes and then the IRS got on them. That is why they registered in the Bahamas with a P.O. Box.
There was no fraud that would drive the cost of the stock down so that it could be bought. They kept having to borrow money to keep going.
On the subject of the IRS. 12 years after they were incorporate with the head office in the Bahamas, the IRS decided not to believe them.
http://articles.philly.com/1989-01-04/business/26121801_1_commodore-international-tax-bill-commodore-executive
In 1990 they started having their stockholder meetings in the Bahamas, which is where Irving Gould lived. So it's likely they stood by this statement.
A lot of companies still do stuff like this today and while Starbucks have been shamed into actually paying corporation tax in the UK, there wasn't anything legally that our government could do about it.
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Bil Herd is on record that he designed it in for the reason I gave. There was nobody at commodore that was working on strategy.
CP/M for the Z80 was basically dead way before the C-128 came out. An 8086 would have made more sense as a backup plan.
I'm not questioning Bil. It doesn't mean that Commodore representatives and Commodore magazines didn't put a spin on it or give their own answer. Commodore had their own magazine(s).
The Z80 is still used today and was used in some popular video game machines. Compare the ability of the 6510 to the Z80 and you have your competition. If you are selling Commodore computers with a 6510 chip then your competitors know there is a market and anyone wanting to bring the competition can do so with a Z80 because it can do as much or more. The Z80's clock speed today is up to 50MHZ. The reason you can't speed up the 6502 is because it has multiple clocks so the Z80 would have won out if there was competition on power.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilog_Z80
Quote:
Z80 was often used in coin-operated arcade games,[10] and was commonly used as the main CPU, sound or video coprocessors. Pac-Man arcade games feature a single Z80 as the main CPU.[55][56] Galaxian and arcade games such as King & Balloon and Check Man that use the Namco Galaxian boardset also use a Z80 as the main CPU.[57] Other Namco licensed arcade games such as Galaga and other games that use the Namco Galaga boardset such as Bosconian, Dig Dug, Xevious, and Super Xevious use three Z80 microprocessors running in parallel for the main CPU, graphics, and sound.[58]
It was also found in home video game consoles such as the ColecoVision,[59] Sega Master System[60] and Sega Game Gear video game consoles, as an audio co-processor in the Sega Mega Drive and as an audio controller and co-processor to the Motorola 68000 in the SNK Neo-Geo.
Various scientific and graphing calculators use the Z80, including the Texas Instruments TI-73, TI-81, TI-82, TI-83, TI-83+, TI-84+, TI-85 and TI-86 series.[62]
Quote:
The µPD780C was used in the Sinclair ZX80 and ZX81, original versions of the ZX Spectrum, and several MSX computers, and in musical synthesizers such as Oberheim OB-8 and others. The LH0080 was used in various home computers and personal computers made by Sharp and other Japanese manufacturers, including Sony MSX computers, and a number of computers in the Sharp MZ series.[36]
The Z80 has been made and sold all over the world and is still in use today.
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It's a bit nuts to suggest that the decision to add the Z80 was in any way influenced by the fact that, decades down the line, it runs much faster than the 6510 did in the mid-'80s. At the time, the usual clock range for the Z80 was 2-4MHz (I don't know whether they'd got up to 8MHz parts at this point, but if they did they certainly weren't common.) And that's just clock speed, which is a notoriously inaccurate indicator of performance between different architecures. The Z80 is a fairly capable CPU, to be sure, but it takes some 2-5 times more cycles per instruction than the 6502; then again, it can do a bit more per instruction. It mostly comes down to code quality. The reason so many of Commodore's competitors used the Z80 is because Zilog, unlike MOS, wasn't owned by Commodore.
(Also, the 6502 does not use multiple clock signals.)
In any case, psxphill is right; CP/M was pretty nearly dead by 1985, having been supplanted for business use by MS-DOS, and never really catching on with most Z80-based home computers the way it did with the hobbyist micros of the late '70s.
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It's a bit nuts to suggest that the decision to add the Z80 was in any way influenced by the fact that, decades down the line, it runs much faster than the 6510 did in the mid-'80s. At the time, the usual clock range for the Z80 was 2-4MHz (I don't know whether they'd got up to 8MHz parts at this point, but if they did they certainly weren't common.) And that's just clock speed, which is a notoriously inaccurate indicator of performance between different architecures. The Z80 is a fairly capable CPU, to be sure, but it takes some 2-5 times more cycles per instruction than the 6502; then again, it can do a bit more per instruction. It mostly comes down to code quality. The reason so many of Commodore's competitors used the Z80 is because Zilog, unlike MOS, wasn't owned by Commodore.
(Also, the 6502 does not use multiple clock signals.)
In any case, psxphill is right; CP/M was pretty nearly dead by 1985, having been supplanted for business use by MS-DOS, and never really catching on with most Z80-based home computers the way it did with the hobbyist micros of the late '70s.
{Quote}
Contemporary Z80 processors now have (close to) single-cycle execution rates, thus eliminating the 6502's performance advantage over the Z80.
The 8080/Z80 family offer a larger number of internal registers, distinct I/O and memory address spaces.
{EndQuote}
http://forum.6502.org/viewtopic.php?p=10175#p10175
Previous Memorize Share Next The 6502's two clock signals
The 6502, that classic CPU, is relatively simple in its design as CPUs go, but it has one design quirk which often confuses people studying its architecture: While it has only one clock-input pin (as was usual for CPUs of its time), it has two clock-output pins. Not only are these two clocks made available to outside devices via pins on the 6502 chip package itself, but these two clocks are used internally within the 6502 for various timing and control purposes. Why does the 6502 have two internal clocks, and how are they different from each other?
[EndQuote]
http://lateblt.livejournal.com/88105.html
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*facepalm*
Would you care to explain to me what in blazes the performance improvements of contemporary (i.e. modern) Z80 designs has to do with a computer designed in 1985? Hell, even the R800 (in the MSX Turbo-R) wasn't released until ~1990.
And if you'd actually read that second post: yes, the 6502 has two clock outputs. One of which is an inverted version of the other. It only has the one clock, which is why it only has one clock input.
Geez Louise.
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If they waited or if they came out with another revision, would you have bought it? Would other people have bought it? And what do you think would have happened to the popularity of Commodore if the 1541 was sped up? Exactly.
They're doubling the memory on the Raspberry Pi and are people returning their old units? No. People are ordering the Raspberry Pi again with double the memory. It generates more income and makes the product more popular.
Not doing it hurts the company.
Commodore should have had me as manager. I would have made moves to make them more popular.
A Raspberry Pi is $35, a C64 + a 1541 would set you back by about $1000. Do you really think people would buy another one because the floppy drive was faster?
The C64 is the best selling personal computer of all time. Commodore did pretty well without you.
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The Z80 is still used today and was used in some popular video game machines. Compare the ability of the 6510 to the Z80 and you have your competition. If you are selling Commodore computers with a 6510 chip then your competitors know there is a market and anyone wanting to bring the competition can do so with a Z80 because it can do as much or more. The Z80's clock speed today is up to 50MHZ. The reason you can't speed up the 6502 is because it has multiple clocks so the Z80 would have won out if there was competition on power.
Both the Z80 and the 6502 (and derivatives like the 6510) were decent designs. The Z80 had higher clocks, but a lower instructions per clock. Overall a 4MHz Z80 and a 1-2MHz 6502 performed the same.
The problem was that for a long time, the 6502 stayed at 2MHz max, and additionally the C64 kept on using a 1MHz 6502. The Z80 got a B revision at 6MHz - not that it was used much.
Overall home computers in most of the 80s were in stasis - not continually improving. MOS could have done a new 6502 running at a higher speed, but they didn't for quite some time - and then they lost it all because companies started sourcing them from other sources who did put the work in to improve the design.
Note the C65 was meant to have an up-to ~8MHz 6502 derivative.
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In any case, psxphill is right; CP/M was pretty nearly dead by 1985, having been supplanted for business use by MS-DOS, and never really catching on with most Z80-based home computers the way it did with the hobbyist micros of the late '70s.
I wouldn't be so sure of that - in the US maybe, but in the UK CP/M was kept alive for a long time because of the Amstrad CPC 6128 and the very popular Amstrad PCW series. However CP/M was never really advertised as a key feature, it was just a capability the machines came with and that users could use.
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A Raspberry Pi is $35, a C64 + a 1541 would set you back by about $1000. Do you really think people would buy another one because the floppy drive was faster?
The C64 is the best selling personal computer of all time. Commodore did pretty well without you.
Heh, $1000 in 1982 dollars is $2,385.71 today. Puts that $35 RasPi + $5 (SD card) + $10 (case) + $20 (keyboard, mouse) into perspective.
And one of the reasons the C64 did well was because it was cost reduced and kept the same - compatibility, large back catalogue, rapidly dropping price - that means success.
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A Raspberry Pi is $35, a C64 + a 1541 would set you back by about $1000. Do you really think people would buy another one because the floppy drive was faster?
The C64 is the best selling personal computer of all time. Commodore did pretty well without you.
I think the 1541 would be replaced today by an SD card, thumb drive or the C-64's electronics would be replaced by something that could handle a hard drive today. I think the C64 could get a 65C812S 16 bit processor which would offer 6502 compatibility. Of course, those options aren't exactly "Commodore style" but we would have to live with it.
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The Z80's clock speed today is up to 50MHZ.
65c02 is available up to 200mhz.
http://www.westerndesigncenter.com/wdc/
I wouldn't be so sure of that - in the US maybe, but in the UK CP/M was kept alive for a long time because of the Amstrad CPC 6128 and the very popular Amstrad PCW series. However CP/M was never really advertised as a key feature, it was just a capability the machines came with and that users could use.
I was writing software for an embedded system that ran CP/M up until the end of the 90's. But there are many historical operating systems that people write software for, it doesn't mean the operating system isn't dead. There doesn't appear to have been a large amount of CP/M software written for either Amstrad's, or if there is then I can't find it.
That is a recipe for disaster and it is failure on the part of leadership. You have consumers who have money and who can't travel to the CES show because they work, can't afford a plane ticket and a hotel but they can afford a computer who would buy the product but the computer products aren't made available to them. Tell me something. If Commodore came out with a Commodore 128 Slim without CPM and was half the price, do you think people wouldn't buy it if there weren't any orders at CES?
Commodore didn't sell products to the end users, they sold products to distributors and retailers. It wouldn't matter how many people might want to buy the computer, it was how many people wanted to sell the computer. Removing the Z80 and VDC wouldn't half the price. There was a cost reduced version produced, but it was so late to market that it wasn't launched. Everyone wanted an Amiga by then.
If they waited or if they came out with another revision, would you have bought it? Would other people have bought it? And what do you think would have happened to the popularity of Commodore if the 1541 was sped up? Exactly.
My parents bought mine in Christmas 1984. It was recommended to them by the owner of the TV shop that they bought it from, I doubt they can remember why he suggested it. I think I got a floppy drive around 1987/1988. If you wanted faster loading then you bought jiffydos or one of the parallel cable systems.
You can actually do a hack to use the CIA shift register as well, but you need a 1571 to make use of it. I was thinking of doing a fast serial hack for the 1541, because there is a workround for the VIA bug. However I've run out of free time to do it.
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I think the 1541 would be replaced today by an SD card, thumb drive or the C-64's electronics would be replaced by something that could handle a hard drive today.
Again you're suggesting that you could have improved on the management decisions of the mid-1980s by leveraging technology that didn't exist until much later. You seem to be confused about the direction in which time flows.
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65c02 is available up to 200mhz.
http://www.westerndesigncenter.com/wdc/
They are probably using FPGA.
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Again you're suggesting that you could have improved on the management decisions of the mid-1980s by leveraging technology that didn't exist until much later. You seem to be confused about the direction in which time flows.
No. I would have demanded changes for the 1541 back then.
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65c02 is available up to 200mhz.
http://www.westerndesigncenter.com/wdc/
They are probably using FPGA.
In addition it looks like the eZ80 hasn't really been updated since 2001, Zilog just have it as a cheap money-making product that tops out at 50MHz - although the IPC is up to 11 times higher than the original Z80.
I guess that it's simply not worth it to improve these products any more, not with ARM Cortex M series hanging around for applications that need more oomph than an eZ80.
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I guess that it's simply not worth it to improve these products any more, not with ARM Cortex M series hanging around for applications that need more oomph than an eZ80.
One of the companies that sold the Z80 now makes the Arm Cortex.
I have invested in ARM and someone showed me how to do it. If I wanted to upgrade, I might to an ARM Tegra. I'm ready to start wiring them up, do some programming and some playing with it. I would encourage others to get involved and learn it. The cost is basically $16 or less for an ARM board, $22 for a ST Link or $50 for a JTag to USB connector, a breadboard ($5 or more), some breadboard wires ($5) and some touch TFT screens. I have a list of other parts like diodes and resistors for different chips but some of the ARM chips are .39 cents and all you need is a $20 FTDI cable or custom made USB cable to program them. I already bought a PS2 to breadboard adapter and RCA to breadboard adapter plus an LCD that I already soldered to a pin header. I have friends willing to give me help in electronics and they've been helping me. Books are extra.
I thought about buying a scale and setting up a UPS account because I would love to make single board computers and products related to that and electronics.
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No. I would have demanded changes for the 1541 back then.
1541 worked. Slowly, but it worked.
A fix could have taken some time, that's time you're not making money. So you should release the slow, but working system.
The fix should still have been done, resulting in a 1542, and possibly a fixed C64 if that side of things also needed fixing. Not ideal, but technology marches on, and it wasn't long before the slow disc drive was a bit of a laughing stock.
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1541 worked. Slowly, but it worked.
A fix could have taken some time, that's time you're not making money. So you should release the slow, but working system.
The fix should still have been done, resulting in a 1542, and possibly a fixed C64 if that side of things also needed fixing. Not ideal, but technology marches on, and it wasn't long before the slow disc drive was a bit of a laughing stock.
A fix was put in but someone at Commodore took the leads out of the PCB design according to a video by Bil. They didn't want to fix it. If you are in business, you are here to compete and if it is too complicated to compete then get someone who will.