CBM engineer Bil Herd to attend CommVEx 2015

[RobertB]

Wow!  Get ready your questions... get ready your autograph pens... get ready to greet one of the C128 "Animals!"    Bil Herd, Commodore Business Machines' engineer who developed the Plus/4 and the Commodore 128, will attend this year's Commodore Vegas Expo v11!  He's making a rare West Coast visit, and he's ready to "rock out" the 30th anniversary of the C128 with us.  He promises to tell his familiar stories and to relate some new stories about working at CBM and about the computers we love.

At CommVEx we'll have Plus/4's, flat C128's, PAL C128D's, C128DCR's, 1571's, and 1581's, so Bil could feel right at home.  Naturally, we'll have a PET or two, VIC-20's, and various Amigas.

Gotta re-read the book, "Commodore: a Company on the Edge," and see if I can dig out any questions for Bil that were not answered in the book.

This will be one special CommVEx!

Sincerely,
Robert Bernardo
organizer - July 18-19 Commodore Vegas Expo v11
http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex
CommVEx discussion - http://www.commodore.ca/forum/viewforum.php?f=6

[Iggy]

I honestly never understood the C128.
The C64 focused on graphics and sound.
With the C128, you got a additional processor (a rather slow Z80) and CPM support?
Uh, wtf?
CPM had basically no support for graphics or sound.

Most of Bill's work is like that. Pointless derivations of the C64 that weaken the design.

The C65?
Now that would have been interesting.

Then again, offering my opinion isn't that fair as I always prefered Motorola processors and the Amiga is much more to my liking than CBMs own creations.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

With the C128, you got a additional processor (a rather slow Z80) and CPM support?

The C128, in actual C128 mode, was a fantastic computer for the time.  Shame most software was written for "the least common denominator", the C64, and required that the C128 run in C64 mode to use it.  Had more software actually been written for the C128 mode...  who knows...  

[Darrin]

At that time my school was still using CP/M software (we had a couple of Research Machines 380Z computers along with our new, but limited in number BBC Micro computers).  Considering the amount of business software for CP/M, I can see why it was included in the C128.  Also, the BASIC was a vast improvement (Although I still preferred to use SIMONS BASIC in C64 mode just because I was used to it), had extra RAM and an 80 column display.

All in all, the C128 was leap forward from the C64, and yet it remained almost 100% compatible with the software and hardware.

As far as I'm concerned it was a great machine, but it came out just before the big leap into 16bit computing.

That said, I'm drooling over that announced C65 FPGA clone in a lookalike case.  I hope it actually happens.

Edit:
And it had a keypad!!!  

[Iggy]

At that time my school was still using CP/M software (we had a couple of Research Machines 380Z computers along with our new, but limited in number BBC Micro computers).  Considering the amount of business software for CP/M, I can see why it was included in the C128.  Also, the BASIC was a vast improvement (Although I still preferred to use SIMONS BASIC in C64 mode just because I was used to it), had extra RAM and an 80 column display.

All in all, the C128 was leap forward from the C64, and yet it remained almost 100% compatible with the software and hardware.

As far as I'm concerned it was a great machine, but it came out just before the big leap into 16bit computing.

That said, I'm drooling over that announced C65 FPGA clone in a lookalike case.  I hope it actually happens.

Hopefully, I haven't pissed off too many of you with the negative comnents on the C128.
Honestly, I'm just not that into CBM hardware. And if I had wanted  a CPM system during that period, I would have built it.

At the time, I was working for a company building systems based on Peripheral Technologies 68K hased boards, so I had already moved into 16/32 bit hardware.

And, since I had a few contacts at Motorola, and I was firmly fixated on the 6809 and 68000, only the Amiga really got my attention.

Guess I have always wanted more control/involvement in my hacking.

Except for scavenging SID chips, I never really had a lot of use for MOS based stuff.

Weirdly enough, having started my computer use during the "you gotta build it yourself" period, I'm actually pretty well adjusted to the current state of Amiga development.

Its in our hands now.

I actually think we have a pretty bright future.

And, as a small community, its pretty neat being able to exchange messages directly with your hardware and software developers.

If I had any desire to attend the California meet, it would be to finally thank Trevor in person for getting involved and hiring Varisys (which I still find weird as I was exchanging mesages with Paul Gentle when all this was still unknown, and I can't think of a better firm to rest our future on).

[alphadec]

I honestly never understood the C128.
The C64 focused on graphics and sound.
With the C128, you got a additional processor (a rather slow Z80) and CPM support?
Uh, wtf?
CPM had basically no support for graphics or sound.

Most of Bill's work is like that. Pointless derivations of the C64 that weaken the design.

Get your self a Valium!, sounds like u need it.

[Iggy]

Get your self a Valium!, sounds like u need it.

You might having  a point, I have always been more than a little high strung.
I mean, I still can't get over the Wintel platform's dominance, and I saw that coming when some IBM engineers visited our shop and gave us a pre-release copy of Windows 3.0.

An OS with an interface you could figure out just by using it, I could so see our little mystery boxes becoming commodity appliances.

Anyway, benzos give me blackouts, so...

I guess I'll appologize ahead of time for using you all as cheap therapy, then go crank up some Motorhead.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

then go crank up some Motorhead.

After that try GEOS 128 with a 1581 or one of those CMD hard drives, and the extra 512K of RAM.  It really wasn't a bad system, for the era.  Oh, how I drooled over the C128 in the magazines.  Right up until I got my Amiga, of course.  

[Iggy]

After that try GEOS 128 with a 1581 or one of those CMD hard drives, and the extra 512K of RAM.  It really wasn't a bad system, for the era.  Oh, how I drooled over the C128 in the magazines.  Right up until I got my Amiga, of course.  

Actually, I did get a chance to see GEOS.
I was a big advocate of GUIs early on.
And I'd have to give Microsoft some credit for that, as my prior experiences with MacOS were frustrating.

The owner and lead engineer at Delmar Company asked me at one point if we should support a GUI, and after my very ethusiastic response he had the first ports of Steve Adams G-Windows GUI running within two weeks.

This was as definately one way we diferentiated ourselves from Peripheral Technologies and StarKits. We never supported FLEX or SKDOS, only multi-user/multi-tasking OS9 68K AND we had the option of a GUI that worked quite well.

Anyway, heck, this is a Commodore thread, so...
So, I should state that while I was always entranced by the platform, I had issues with it as well.

The primary objection to the Amiga at the time (in comparison to what we were working with)?
First, multi-tasking on an Amiga appears to be cooperative rather than priority based.
Second, stability seemed to be an issue.
That is a polite way of saying they were crash prone.
There was some pretty crappy code floating around, and some packages just didn't play well with others.
Third, Amigas are designed to be single user systems. Sure you might be able to work around that, but at a further cost in stability.
Our base system, at $995, was a four user system supporting terminal (yeah, no GUI, but then one of our markets was POS systems).

Anyway, again, I'm throughly off topic.
My apologies.

Maybe I should consider attending this event.
Its being sponsored by people who want us to have a future, and can celebrate the past.

I don't want to appear to be too negative.
After all, the first 6809 based system I got to play with was a CBM design.

At first, their focus WAS business machines (after all, its part of the name).

[Plaz]

I bought a 128 when they were first released as an update to my 64. I really liked the new features, speed update, expanded memory and the fact it had C64 mode. I wrote a couple of cool graphic utilities and even a game I had thoughts of publishing. With the CP/M mode it was a very clever machine.

However It's competition at the time was tough. C64 were still selling pretty good, the Amiga was released, Windows 3.1 was out, and the first Macintosh as well. Commodore being the marketing genius they were at the time (NOT), didn't do much to promote the 128. Though sale were pretty good, 128 specific app development kind of floundered. (In Plaz's opinion) I didn't see much potential for my projects either and dropped them a couple months later and started researching Amiga.

Plaz

[Plaz]

Second, stability seemed to be an issue.
That is a polite way of saying they were crash prone.
There was some pretty crappy code floating around, and some packages just didn't play well with others.

Not to defend Amiga's issues, but what you describe there is Windows 3.1 all day long.

Third, Amigas are designed to be single user systems. Sure you might be able to work around that, but at a further cost in stability.

Agreed. Though not pretty, Win 3.1/3.11 for workgroups is what really put Microsoft in the driver's seat. Too bad Commodore didn't do more to develop client/server app support. 85-87 I hoped CBM would do more to supported Novell compatibility. There was Novell client for Amiga, 3.x compatible I think, but it died quickly.

Plaz

[Iggy]

Oh Plaz, I'd never try to defend DOS based Window's stability.
I was just impressed at how easy it was to learn.

More modern OS' that can maintain enough conttol to allow you to kill a rogue process are a blessing.

And I still get BSODs out of NT kernel based Windows products ooccasionally.

[RobertB]

I wrote a couple of cool graphic utilities and even a game I had thoughts of publishing.

Do you still have those programs?  You could release them for CommVEx!

Truly,
Robert Bernardo
organizer - July 18-19 Commodore Vegas Expo v11
http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex
CommVEx discussion - http://www.commodore.ca/forum/viewforum.php?f=6

[paul1981]

Are you chaps trying to rewrite history here?

Windows 3 - released 1990

Workbench 2 - released 1990

Workbench featured preemptive multitasking from day 1 (1985).
Windows 3 featured cooperative multitasking by comparison, and this didn't change until Windows 95.

[pwermonger]

Also Windows 3 (besides being released a full 4-5 years after Amiga OS 1.x) had very similar issues to Workbench still after all that time.

Issues such as only actual programs written for Windows being easy to use out of the box. Dos apps required the creation of PIF files manually by the user just like the Amiga user having to create a .icon file for a program that did not create one itself.

Though Workbench 2 which released about the same time as Windows 3 addressed that with a 'view all files' to allow viewing on Workbench files that did not have .info icon files.

Version 1.x workbench was a bit harder to use and not very stable until you got to 1.3, but a lot of that was addressed in 2.0

Guess folks trying to revise history don't recall Windows 3 computers coming to a halt when the simplest program locked up. People 'losing' programs when they accidentally pressed delete while reaching for the Enter key which to this day brings up the delete requester that defaults to 'yes' instead of 'no', deleting the icon (no trashcan) with no way to display it easily again. Got a lot of those calls back in Windows 3.1 days.

The advantage for business for Windows was the multiuser functions and networking which Commodore never managed to get into Workbench. But for home use, multiuser functions were rarely used even in Windows 95. First real use I would see for home users would be in XP and even that pretty rare. Usually just to give children locked down functions while the adults all used one user for their unrestricted use.