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Charles Winterble, then director of worldwide engineering for Commodore, gave the go-ahead for the chip effort, and Charpentier’s group labored pretty independently till each chips have been completed in mid-November 1981.

At a gathering with Charpentier and Winterble late that month, Jack Tramiel, then president of Commodore, determined to not proceed with the online game. As a substitute, he determined, the chips would go right into a 64-kilobyte residence laptop to be launched on the Shopper Electronics Present in Las Vegas the second week of January 1982. The pc had but to be designed, however that was simply remedied.

In two days, the engineers laid out on paper the machine’s fundamental structure. Simply earlier than the brand new 12 months, they accomplished 5 working prototypes. Within the meantime, sufficient operating-system software program was copied and rewritten from the VIC-20 to present satisfactory demonstrations of what the brand new machine may do. Following its enthusiastic reception on the Shopper Electronics Present, the Commodore 64 was rushed into manufacturing; quantity shipments started in August 1982 and have continued unabated.

Regardless of complaints about high quality management and the trade’s slowest disk drive, the Commodore 64 has been an unparalleled success, pushing a lot of its rivals out of the market. A part of the rationale for its success is the value, which retains falling—from $595 at its introduction to $149 presently, for which the buyer will get graphics and sound equal to or higher than that supplied by machines that price 5 occasions as a lot.

Designing the subsequent nice chips

Within the late Seventies, MOS Know-how was a profitable semiconductor firm; its engineers had designed the favored 6502 microprocessor, and it manufactured a number of different solidly promoting merchandise. Commodore, a West Coast firm on the time, took over MOS in 1976—inflicting lots of the MOS engineers to stop when their inventory was purchased at 10 cents on the greenback—however MOS was allowed to function pretty autonomously.

In 1979 and 1980, recollects Charpentier, MOS Know-how developed the 6510 microprocessor—a minor revision of the 6502 with an extra input-output port, the 6526 peripheral controller, loads of read-only reminiscence (ROM) chips, and a 4-kilobit random-access reminiscence (RAM) chip. At the moment, MOS was supplying gear to Atari Inc., General Electric Co., Hewlett-Packard Co., and a lot of different purchasers, in addition to to Commodore.

When the choice was made to design the newest in superior graphics and sound chips, step one was apparent: to seek out what the present high-quality chips may do. In assembling his design staff, Charpentier recruited Robert Yannes, a younger engineer who had joined MOS in 1979 and had designed the VIC-20 at residence, from a spare prototype board. The staff spent about two weeks researching comparable chips industrywide.

“We appeared closely into the Mattel Intellivision,” recollects Winterble. “We additionally examined the Texas Devices 99/4A and the Atari 800. We tried to get a really feel for what these firms may do sooner or later by extrapolating from their present expertise. That made it clear what the graphics capabilities of our machine needed to be.”

The MOS designers freely borrowed concepts that they favored—sprites from the TI machine, collision-detection methods and character-mapped graphics from the Intellivision, and a bit map from their very own VIC-20. They then packed as a lot of these concepts as they might right into a predefined space of silicon.

“Al [Charpentier] was given the liberty, inside a sure die measurement, to place in every thing he may, working backward inside the measurement we deliberate. When he ran out of registers he stopped,” mentioned Winterble. “We outlined upfront the silicon measurement that may give a yield we have been keen to stay with; at the moment, a die measurement that was affordable in 5-micrometer expertise was lower than 200 mils. Then we prioritized the want record from what have to be in there to what ought to be in there to what we’d like to have, so the selections that have been wanted at numerous factors grew to become pretty automated.”

9 months to first-pass silicon 

For 9 months, Charpentier labored with two draftsmen and one computer-aided-design operator on the graphics chip whereas Yannes labored with two different draftsmen and one CAD operator on the sound chip. They lacked fully the subtle design instruments of at present’s engineering workstations, however that they had one available design device discovered nearly nowhere else within the home-computer trade: a chip-fabrication line on the premises. With this, Winterble defined, a circuit buried deep contained in the chips may very well be lifted out and run as a check chip, permitting thorough debugging with out concern for different elements of the circuitry. David A. Ziembicki, then a manufacturing engineer at Commodore, recollects that typical fabrication occasions have been a number of weeks and that in an emergency the captive fabrication facility may flip designs round in as little as 4 days.

The price of creating the Commodore 64: Nobody is aware of. “I had no formal funds accountability,” mentioned Winterble, “aside from Jack [Tramiel] watching me. Jack mentioned that budgets have been a license to steal.” As a result of MOS Know-how’s fabrication facility was not working at full capability, the gear used for C-64 check chips and a number of passes of silicon would in any other case have been idle. “We have been utilizing individuals who have been there anyway,” mentioned Ziembicki. “You waste somewhat little bit of silicon, however silicon’s fairly low cost. It’s solely sand.”

Though customized chips are often thought of costly, the C-64 chips weren’t. Not solely have been improvement prices absorbed in firm overhead, however there was no markup to pay, as there would have been inf the chips had been constructed by one other firm. And yields have been excessive as a result of the chips have been designed for a mature semiconductor-manufacturing course of.

The sound chip was designed with 7-micrometer expertise, cutting down to six in locations. (Against this, the customized chip for Atari’s Video Computer System, fabricated 4 years earlier, was constructed with 6-micrometer expertise.) Commodore’s video chip was designed with 5-micrometer options.

As a result of design time slightly than silicon was at a premium, the chips have been laid out merely slightly than compactly. “We did it in a really modular style,” mentioned Yannes. For instance, he famous, “the usual manner of constructing oscillators is to construct one after which multiplex it till you will have as many as you want. We simply constructed an oscillator module and repeated it, as a result of that was a lot sooner than figuring out all of the timing for the multiplexer.”

“What was outstanding,” Winterble added, “was that 9 months later, after we got here out with the primary move, it functioned apart from one dangerous sprite.”

In November 1981, the chips have been full. The unique intent had been a sport machine, however at this level the personal-computer market was starting to look promising. At a gathering of Charpentier, Winterble, and Tramiel, the choice was made to go for a private laptop. The subsequent option to be made, in response to Charpentier, was between a 16-kilobyte and a 64-kilobyte machine, for the reason that customized chips have been designed to deal with both possibility.

“Jack [Tramiel] made the guess that by the point we have been prepared to supply a product, 64K Rams could be low cost sufficient for us to make use of,” Charpentier mentioned.

When the design of the Commodore 64 started, the overriding targets have been simplicity and low price. The preliminary manufacturing price of the Commodore 64 was focused at $130; it turned out to be $135. The pc would use the identical case because the VIC-20 and the same-sized circuit board, to hurry improvement. “That wasn’t even a choice,” mentioned Charpentier. “It was simply widespread sense. For those who’ve bought a product that’s a winner, why change it?” To change from the VIC-20 to the Commodore 64, the manufacturing group had solely to make the cartridge slot smaller, change the colour of the case, and design a brand new label.

Moreover, as a substitute of designing for efficiency first and worth second, as many engineers are inclined to do, the small design staff at Commodore had price in thoughts from the start. Yannes, for instance, had made economic system his credo when he was an impecunious high-school scholar searching for elements to construct a sound synthesizer. “Anytime I design one thing, I wish to use the minimal variety of elements attainable. It’s a private problem. If there’s a spare [logic] gate in a gate bundle, I’ll work to do away with all the bundle, as a result of in working with a sure variety of chips, I ought to have the ability to expend every thing that’s in them. The Commodore 64 was my try and construct absolutely the minimal system that may very well be constructed out of the video and sound chips put collectively.”

Blissful New 12 months 1982!

Within the consumer-electronics trade, new merchandise are historically launched to distributors, sellers, the press, and the competitors twice a 12 months—throughout the first weekend in January and the primary weekend in June, on the Winter and Summer time Consumer Electronics Shows (CESs).

“Whenever you labored for Commodore,” mentioned Yannes, “you at all times needed to have one thing for the Winter CES.” The C-64 didn’t have a lot competitors on the winter present in 1982. Atari was nonetheless sowing its 400/800 laptop. Mattel launched the Aquarius laptop, and Spectravideo launched its laptop/sport machine, each with restricted reminiscence and capabilities.

Ziembicki recalled, “All we noticed at our sales space have been Atari folks with their mouths dropping open, saying, ‘How are you going to try this for $595?’”

“We have been a success,” Winterble added.

After the present, Commodore, which had a fame for typically exhibiting merchandise that by no means reappeared, needed to get the 64 into manufacturing rapidly. Just a few design modifications have been made to prepared the machine for manufacturing. “What’s within the 64 functionally is what I wished,’ Yannes mentioned. “What’s within the sound chip is what I wished, and what’s within the video chip is what Al [Charpentier] wished.”

In truth, mentioned Ziembicki, “after it lastly bought into manufacturing, we appeared again and requested, why did we hassle altering it after January? It wouldn’t have bought one unit much less, and we might have saved some huge cash on improvement prices.”

A few of the modifications have been pretty vital, however they might have created as many issues as they solved. The largest enchancment was to treatment “a hiccup” within the video chip, mentioned Winterble.

When Charpentier first designed the video chip, he defined, his aim was optimum efficiency in each black-and-white and colour. Earlier video chips, equivalent to these used within the Atari and the Apple, had a black-and-white frequency of seven.16 MHz—twice the tv color-clock frequency of three.58 MHz—however this might not squeeze sufficient characters on a line, and it additionally induced cross discuss between the 2 alerts, inflicting an object to shift barely to the left or proper on the display screen relying on its colour. After the January 1982 CES, when he noticed that 40 characters wouldn’t fairly match onto a TV display screen, Charpentier sped up the black-and-white clock charge and made the 2 clocks fully asynchronous. However for the reason that colour and black-and-white units of knowledge have been consistently altering part relative to one another, “the colour transitions have been improbable, however there was an general swimming impact,” he recalled. The answer was to place a phase-locked loop into the system so the colour and the black-and-white data would have a continuing relationship. This, Charpentier acknowledged, was “a Band-Support answer.”

And that’s what it seems like, in response to Craig Nelson, director of product improvement for Epyx Pc Software program of Sunnyvale, Calif. “It’s a extremely elegant circuit,” he mentioned, “apart from the phase-locked loop, which is simply caught in the course of it.” (Commodore now says it has redesigned the chip to remove the issue.)

On account of the “Band-Support,” the colour data and the black-and-white data shift part by 180 levels in relation to one another on successive video fields slightly than altering part unpredictably. This conforms extra intently to the Nationwide Tv Programs Committee (NTSC) normal, which requires black-and-white data to have a clock charge that’s an odd harmonic of the color-clock charge, in order that the 2 robotically reverse their relationship each different discipline—one discipline in part, the subsequent discipline out of part. (Within the NTSC normal, colours are decided by the part distinction between the colour sign and a colour reference sign transmitted initially of every line.)

On the time the usual was developed, generally out there circuitry couldn’t fully separate the black-and-white data from the colour: modifications in colour would result in modifications in brightness and vice versa. It was to common these modifications out over time that the NTSC specified that the relative part reversal of the 2 alerts may happen on successive fields. The result’s extra pleasing colour transitions, however the part shift makes stationary figures seem to jitter. The jitter is especially apparent on skinny vertical traces, like these in alphanumeric characters. However when the Commodore 64 was conceived, it was to be primarily a sport machine, not a pc.

Working a 5-micrometer-technology chip at an 8-MHz clock charge brought on it to dissipate a substantial amount of energy—almost 1.5 watts. Not solely did the chip run quick, however to stop the colours from washing out, as that they had within the VIC-20, “we went to 12 volt to drive the heck out of the colour alerts,” recalled Winterble. “We knew we’d have a warmth downside.”

At this level Winterble made one other design repair—welding a small steel tab onto the within of the lid of the shielding enclosure across the video chip. When the pc was assembled, the tab pressed towards the highest of the chip bundle, forming a heat-conducting path and turning the shielding right into a warmth sink.

Some modifications which may have improved the machine didn’t get made within the rush to manufacturing. For instance, Yannes mentioned, the wires for the sound output on the printed-circuit board run alongside the wires for the video sign. In consequence, the sound output picks up an annoying 15,750 -Hz whine. Rerouting the circuit would have taken time, “and we had a board that labored,” he defined. “At that time, for those who had one thing that labored, you didn’t change it.” A circuit-board revision since then has rerouted these traces, Commodore mentioned.

However the designers did actually change some issues that labored—together with one revision that degraded the machine’s efficiency. The unique design specified a high-quality radio-frequency modulator to transmit the sign to a tv set, however a less expensive modulator was substituted. “It was $6.25 to $6.50 for a superb one, and we ended up spending about $3,” Charpentier mentioned.

Winterble has a special view of the $3 modulator: “The 50-cent modulator we have been utilizing on the VIC-20 wasn’t adequate,” he mentioned, “so we went to a costlier one.”

Digital design wasn’t the one troublesome space because the Commodore 64 went from prototype improvement into manufacturing—the logistics posed a posh downside. The C-64 was designed in Norristown, Pa., at MOS. The VIC-20 meeting line, which was to start making C-64s, was in Santa Clara, Calif. Because the C-64 went into manufacturing, Commodore was additionally opening a brand new meeting line in West Chester, Pa. There have been extra VIC-20 meeting amenities in Japan, the place the disk drive for the C-64 was to be manufactured. And the C-64 circuit boards have been being made in Hong Kong.

“It was loads of enjoyable,” mentioned Ziembicki. “The design folks would decide an English screw. The manufacturing finish would decide metric. However they went with what that they had. Commodore manufacturing was excellent at making issues match whether or not they have been meant to or not. Their constitution was ‘Ship ‘em’”

“It takes a really powerful particular person,” defined Charpentier, “to say ‘I’m not transport these as a result of they’re inferior to they may very well be’—particularly when persons are clamoring to purchase them.”

​Adjustments proceed throughout manufacturing

The beginning of manufacturing of the Commodore 64 within the spring of 1982 didn’t sign an finish to the controversy. “The secret is to have the ability to resolve your issues if you are working,” mentioned Ziembicki.

One of many first battles, recalled Charpentier, was over the format of the printed-circuit board. Commodore’s meeting plant in america used automated component-insertion gear, however its Japanese facility didn’t, and the 2 meeting methods required totally different element spacing. Ultimately, the board for the C-64 was laid out for automated insertion, and manufacturing was moved to a brand new plant in Hong Kong that had the automated instruments.

Issues additionally plagued a lot of the elements—switches, for instance. “You decide a swap that’s listed as a client swap,” mentioned Ziembicki. “You design it in. You name the producer and get an estimate that sounds affordable. Then California [the production division] needs 50,000 every week, however the producer says, ‘We are able to’t make that. It’s a client swap, however we’re not geared for client portions.’ At that time, you’re hung up.”

Since Commodore had simply moved its engineering workers from California to Pennsylvania, communication between the design engineers and the manufacturing amenities was not excellent, Ziembicki defined. “It bought to the purpose the place you couldn’t cease working even for those who didn’t get an answer—you’d simply proceed with the elements that you just thought the manufacturing finish may get.”

And outdoors suppliers weren’t at all times dependable. “One supplied an influence provide for engineering approval,” Ziembicki recalled. “It bought authorised, after which the provider modified the design and didn’t inform anyone.”

Charpentier mentioned that his relations with the manufacturing group have been pretty agreeable. Winterble’s dealings with them weren’t almost as cordial, however he discovered this acceptable. “I personally needed to play the heavy on loads of stuff,” he mentioned. “Then Al would go in and do some good. That method eased loads of pressure—it was a solution to get issues achieved.”

Probably the most infamous downside was “sparkle,” a defect that brought on small spots of sunshine to seem on the show display screen. The issue was solved earlier than Charpentier left the corporate in September 1982, however stories of the defect continued effectively into the Christmas season, with press stories citing it for example of Commodore’s poor high quality management. Canny shoppers used it as an excuse to return completely good Commodore 64s whereas they have been below 90-day guarantee. Because the worth of the machine had dropped $200 within the two months following its introduction, this ruse enabled homeowners to acquire a refund of the acquisition worth and purchase one other C-64 on the decrease determine.

Sparkle was broadly attributed to bugs within the video chip that was the center of the system, however actually it was brought on by a ROM chip of which 3 million have been in service with no issues in different programs, together with the hit arcade online game Asteroids. Commodore engineers themselves first appeared for the issue within the video chip. It took them three weeks to identify the ROM chip because the supply of the defect, Charpentier mentioned. “The issue was a random occasion—it didn’t occur on a regular basis. We thought the video chip was for some cause seeing the incorrect information. We didn’t even suspect it may very well be the ROM. Lastly we put the logic analyzer on it and tracked it down.” The ROM, which Charpentier and his group had designed years earlier, had a particular pre-charging circuit to make it run sooner, however the circuit made it delicate to spurious alerts. The video circuitry and the 6510 microprocessor alternated in controlling the system bus, and when management handed kind one to the opposite, voltage spikes have been typically generated.

“It simply occurred that we hit the precise timing,” Charpentier mentioned. “If the spike had been a number of nanoseconds shorter or longer, it wouldn’t have been an issue. The spike was simply large sufficient that the ROM noticed it as a legitimate deal with. It might ignore the subsequent deal with request and provides the video chip incorrect information.” Because the ROM contained the C-64 character set, the display screen show could be affected by random slices of characters.

Based on Nelson of Epyx, “This confetti interference-looking stuff on the display screen, glowingly known as sparkle, has an especially un-nice property: it causes {hardware} collisions—the sprites imagine it actually exists.” Because the sparkle was brought on by inappropriate information fed to the video chip, it triggered the circuitry chargeable for checking whether or not the movable show objects—sprites—have been overlaying background objects on the display screen. So software program that trusted collision sensing to regulate the motion of objects on the display screen would go berserk when confronted by sparkle.

The bug within the ROM was corrected, though Commodore needed to depend on outdoors suppliers for some time because it ramped up its new manufacturing line. Solely the primary few hundred thousand models shipped had the defect. However, Nelson noticed, “it doesn’t matter to programmers that it was mounted. Our software program has to work in each machine on the market.” The perfect answer for programmers, he defined, is to repeat the contents of the ROM into RAM, which is dependable. However this wastes 2 kilobytes of RAM.

​“A screw-up in my timing”

Along with the issue with the ROM, “I made a logic error,” Charpentier recalled. The error, which was corrected typically after Charpentier left Commodore, brought on the early C-64s to generate the incorrect variety of clock cycles on every horizontal video line. “It was off by one,” he mentioned. “As a substitute of 65 clock cycles per line, I had 64.”

In consequence, the 180-degree part shift between the black-and-white and colour data, which might have eradicated color-transition issues, didn’t happen. Relying on their colour and the colour of the background, the sides of some objects on the display screen would seem barely out of line. This was corrected roughly 5 months into manufacturing.

However main edges are nonetheless an issue with the C-64. The circuitry that shows both sprite data or background data at any level on the display screen is usually sluggish to reply and overlays the sprite on the background data solely after it has missed a number of pixels.

The C-64 designers weren’t the one ones revising their machine; even some assembly-line staff bought into the act. Since testing colour high quality robotically is just about not possible, assembly-line staff have been instructed to show a potentiometer that controls the colour and black-and-white alerts till they noticed colour. As Charpentier recalled, the employees quickly found that in the event that they turned the potentiometer so far as attainable, it resulted in saturated colour—but it surely additionally worn out the black-and-white sign. A number of thousand computer systems had been shipped earlier than the assembly-line staff’ “revision” was seen; by then, some reviewers have been lambasting the C-64 for its “garish” colours.

​High quality nonetheless missing

Although these modifications have been made within the C-64 since its introductions, designers who write business software program for the machine want to see a number of extra. One such change could be enough high quality management. “They don’t check,” mentioned Nelson of Epyx. “I’ve opened up brand-new Commodores and located traces reduce. They clearly use an influence screwdriver to assemble the C-64, typically miss the screw, and chop the traces. How, may you marvel, may which have handed last inspection? Properly, these traces are hooked as much as the disk-drive connectors, which they clearly don’t check.”

In hindsight, Charpentier referred to as considered one of Commodore’s errors “not coming somewhat nearer to high quality.”

One criticism voiced by designers of add-on {hardware} for the C-64 is that its minimalist design leads to undesirable interactions between elements of the {hardware} and software program. For instance, the circuitry used to regulate the joystick and the game-paddle port is borrowed as soon as each 1/60 second to scan the keyboard for keys which were pressed. If the joystick switches are closed, the keyboard-scanning software program will report {that a} key has been pressed. Gadgets that connect to the joystick ports could cause unpredictable responses—an issue that may not happen if separate {hardware} had been used for the 2 features.

One other flaw is the pc’s crude inner software program. The system comes up in Primary when it’s turned on. It is a leftover from the times of the primary Pet laptop produced by Commodore, which had no disk-operating system, since there have been no disk drives available then. “An honest disk-operating system wasn’t developed till Pet Primary 4.0,” Charpentier mentioned. The C-64 doesn’t use this superior model of Primary as a result of “it might have required extra ROM than we may put in.” As a substitute, the machine makes use of a much more primitive model of Primary, borrowed from the VIC-20.

Probably the most obvious omissions from the Commodore 64’s Primary are instructions to regulate the sound and graphics chips. “There was by no means any intention that the system would have built-in software program to regulate the graphics or the sound,” mentioned Yannes. “That was an apparent a part of the Commodore philosophy; you don’t waste cash on issues that make the product costlier and that almost all of consumers aren’t going to make use of.”

“Commodore has at all times paid lip service to software program,” Charpentier mentioned. “They do sufficient to get by after which depend on outdoors sources to fill the hole. Commodore was an extension of Jack Tramiel, and to him software program wasn’t tangible—you couldn’t maintain it, really feel it, or contact it—so it wasn’t price spending cash for.”

The C-64 designers had plans of their very own for modifications which haven’t but been applied. They used the VIC-20 case to shortcut improvement, however they did have a brand new case designed that they meant to substitute in eight to 10 months. “It was thinner in entrance and had extra of a wedge form to it,” mentioned Charpentier. “I at all times thought the VIC-20 case appeared clunky.” Just a few new options have been additionally to be added to the machine.

The truth that these modifications haven’t been made has probably not affected the success of the C-64, asserted Brian Dougherty, president of the Berkeley Softworks of Berkeley, Calif. “This machine has the very best graphics-display functionality of something that has but been achieved for a TV display screen,” he mentioned. “It got here sloe to being an superior system.”

​The albatross of the C-64: its disk drive

The one main flaw of the C-64 is just not the machine itself, however in its disk drive. With a fairly quick disk drive and an enough disk-operating system (DOS), the C-64 may compete within the enterprise market with the Apple and maybe with different enterprise computer systems. With the current disk drive, although, it’s hard-pressed to lose its picture as a toy.

“Enterprise-oriented software program doesn’t look nearly as good because it ought to on the C-64,” mentioned Dougherty, “not as a result of the bottom system isn’t adequate however as a result of the disk-drive entry is just too sluggish; any enterprise software requires loads of disk entry.” And for the reason that DOS is so weak and lacks options equivalent to the automated creating and sustaining of directories and holding observe of information, “it’s much more troublesome to develop enterprise software program” for the C-64, he added. “Any individual like Lotus [Development Corp., manufacturer of a popular integrated business-software package] is dealing with much more issue than they did creating software program for the IBM PC, as a result of the PC has an operating-system construction that simply doesn’t exist for this product.

“The essential input-output system in ROM is finished pretty cleanly, in response to operating-system ideas. All of the routines that must be there are there, however there also needs to be a facility for robotically studying the primary observe of the disk and booting a extra subtle working system into reminiscence.”

The disk drive does actually have a facility for robotically studying the primary observe of a disk, in response to Nelson of Epyx, however as a result of it isn’t documented, it isn’t broadly used.

How did the Commodore engineers botch up the disk drive?

“The disk drive? What a gory story!” Charpentier mentioned. “That needed to do with the one advertising and marketing enter we did settle for. Advertising mentioned the C-64 needed to be appropriate with the VIC-20.”

The disk drive on the VIC-20, Charpentier defined, was a direct descendant of the drive on the Commodore Pet laptop. “We had a parallel IEEE-488 bus for the Pet disk drive; and we used an odd format within the early days to be able to pack information: on the outer tracks, the disk strikes sooner than on the interior tracks, so the info charge modifications to be able to pack extra information on the market. It was a pleasant concept, but it surely was clumsy, in that you just’re incompatible with everybody else. That’s the nut this all began with.”

The VIC-20 disk drive was designed in Japan, and the bus was modified from parallel to serial to economize. The drive could be very sluggish as a result of the serial-interface portion of the interface controller (the 6522) used on the VIC-20 doesn’t work. In consequence, the 6502 processor sends out one bit at a time below direct software program management, slightly than sending a byte to the peripheral controller and letting it care for clocks, information, and hand shaking.

“We mounted the serial-shift register for the 6526 [the interface controller used on the C-64 to replace the 6522] however we couldn’t use it, as a result of the disk drive needed to be appropriate,” Charpentier continued. “And, as a result of the processor within the C-64is turned off for 40 microseconds each 512 microseconds, it saved lacking the interrupt alerts that management the disk interface. The answer: sluggish the drive down even additional.”

Velocity was the one issue that might have been modified with out incurring the price of radical modifications within the disk drive; if the C-64 designers had been in a position to forgo VIC-20 compatibility, they might have achieved a lot better. And ultimately, in fact, the C-64 was not appropriate with the disk drive of the IC-20 anyway.

“All of it stemmed from the 6522 serial interface not working,” Charpentier concluded.

Different producers are attempting to unravel the disk-drive downside of the C-64. Some are promoting their very own disk drives to be used with the C-64, however they’ve discovered it troublesome to interrupt right into a market that Commodore controls. Others are promoting applications that may be loaded into RAM to hurry up disk-transfer charges, however this feature applies solely to make use of of the C-64 for programming in Primary; prepackaged software program loaded into the system knocks the applications out of RAM. Epyx has launched a ROM-based program to hurry disk switch fivefold. Based on Nelson, this system will work with any disk-based software program. “That’s attainable,” mentioned Charpentier. “The C-64 disk drive has its personal microprocessor and reminiscence, and you may ship data to it to vary the working system and to hurry up the serial-bus protocol.”

The usual software program for the C-64 disk drive can learn a 256-byte sector each 2.5 revolutions of the disk, or 512 byes per second. Programming tips utilized by Epyx have yielded switch charges of as much as 2.5 kilobytes per second. (Amongst different sluggish disk drives, Atari’s 810 transfers 1000 bytes per second, and the Apple II disk drive runs at a most of 15,000 bytes per second.)

Intelligent design shaves pennies

The Commodore staff had labored exhausting to make sure a low preliminary manufacturing price for the C-64. Vertical integration helped maintain elements prices down, and Winterble vetoed concepts for added options. The designers themselves believed in counting pennies; Charpentier mentioned he had realized lots” from Jack Tramiel, who was “an actual stickler for price. We agonized over each transistor.”

With a manufacturing price of $135 and a retail worth of $595 at its introduction, the Commodore 64 would have a retail markup comfortably above the trade normal of 1 to a few (maybe one to 2 when volumes climb). However Commodore has continued to seek out methods to scale back each the retail worth, now $149, and the manufacturing price, believed to be between $35 and $50 at present.

Commodore wouldn’t affirm this price determine. Dougherty of the Berkeley Softworks estimated the prices of C-64 elements, base don his expertise at Mattel and Imagic.

• Three ROMS at $1 every.
• Eight dynamic Rams at $1.85 every.
• SID (sound) chip and VIC (graphics) chip at $4 every.
• RF modulator bundle, $3
• 6510 microprocessor, $1 to $2
• A handful of TTL, buffers, energy regulators, and capacitors for a complete of $5
• Keyboard, lower than $10
• PC board, $1 to $2
• Plastic case, $1 to $2
• Energy provide and miscellaneous connectors, $5 to $10
• Packaging and handbook, $1 to $2

In additional cost-cutting strikes, Commodore has changed the TTL with cheaper customized chips and has discovered methods to extend yields on the sound and graphics chips.

Not all cost-cutting steps have been with out detrimental impact on the system. The 6567 video chip was initially packaged in ceramic, regardless that plastic is less expensive. “We tried every kind of issues,“ Charpentier mentioned, “copper-lead frames, steel inserts within the bundle, and an ungodly variety of different issues to get a plastic bundle, as a result of a ceramic bundle could be very costly. However we couldn’t discover a bundle that ran cool sufficient. Earlier than I left Commodore, I listed some concepts to scale back the ability, however half of the chip was nonetheless working at an 8-MHzclip. And not using a main redesign, you might not get the ability out.”

The chip is now encased in plastic. Commodore engineers mentioned that along with redesigning the chip, they’ve developed a plastic bundle that may dissipate warmth in addition to ceramic.

Because the change to plastic packaging, a lot of new issues with the C-64 have been reported—issues which might be machine-specific or temperature-dependent. One failing that’s broadly identified all through the software program trade is a bent for the chip to lock up when a program switches graphics modes—from displaying a bit map to displaying characters [see sidebar, “A Rich Collection of Graphics Modes”]. “A sport we have been producing began to fail on the manufacturing line,” mentioned Nelson of Epyx. “Then we’d check [defective disks] once more and so they’d work. It trusted which machine we put them on and what the temperature was.” Charpentier speculated that some circuit traces had been left floating within the unique design; poor processing and excessive working temperatures would stress chips to the failure level.

One other downside that has begun to emerge in some C-64s is defective horizontal scrolling of bit-mapped screens. In a current evaluate of the Summer time Video games, an Epyx sports activities sport for the C-64, the San Jose, Calif., Mercury News criticized the “flashbulb impact” noticeable throughout the swimming occasion. That, in response to Nelson, is just not an “impact”—the C-64 utilized by the Mercury Information reviewer merely doesn’t do horizontal scrolling correctly.

The liberty ended

Though the machine has its flaws, the designers of the Commodore 64 imagine they got here up with many vital advances due to the liberty they loved throughout the early levels of the mission. The design staff was autonomous—they did their very own market analysis, developed their very own specs, and took their child proper up by means of manufacturing. However as quickly because the manufacturing bugs have been labored out and Commodore knew it had a winner, the company forms, which till then had been on the West Coast coping with the VIC-20 and the Pet laptop, moved in.

“At that time, many advertising and marketing teams have been coming in to ‘assist’ us,” Winterble recalled. “The subsequent product definition was going to be thought up by one group, and one other group was to be chargeable for getting issues into manufacturing, and Al’s group would do R&D on chips solely.”

“For those who let advertising and marketing get entangled with product definition, you’ll by no means get it achieved rapidly,” Yannes mentioned. “And also you squander the power to make one thing distinctive, as a result of advertising and marketing at all times needs a product appropriate with one thing else.”

Charpentier summed up their frustration: “Whenever you get many individuals concerned in a mission, all you find yourself doing is justifying your self. I knew the Commodore 64 was technically nearly as good and as low-cost as any product that may very well be made on the time, however now I needed to take heed to advertising and marketing folks saying, ‘It gained’t promote as a result of it doesn’t have this, it may possibly’t try this.’

“The liberty that allowed us to do the C-64 mission will most likely by no means exist once more in that surroundings.”

​Postscript (as of March 1985)

Of the unique Commodore 64 design staff, solely Robert Russell stays at Commodore; he’s presently a design supervisor. The remainder of the staff—Albert Charpentier, Robert Yannes, and Charles Winterble, together with David Ziembicki and Bruce Crocket, who helped debug the mission and produce it into manufacturing—left Commodore within the spring of 1983 and shaped the corporate Peripheral Visions. Their plan was to design one other laptop. To acquire working capital, they took on a contract from Atari—to design a keyboard for the Video Pc System, which was previewed however then, because the videogame market crashed, by no means launched. Peripheral Visions was sued by Commodore, which mentioned the VCS keyboard was a mission that belonged to Commodore. At this writing, the swimsuit had not been resolved.

Peripheral Visions has been renamed Ensoniq and can quickly launch its first product, a music synthesizer. Albert Charpentier is presently vp of engineering at Ensoniq, Bob Yannes is senior designer, and David Ziembicki is supervisor of manufacturing management. Charles Winterble left Peripheral Visions and is now group vp of electronics at Coleco Industries Inc. of West Hartford, Conn. And Jack Tramiel is presently chief government officer of Atari Corp., the corporate that was Commodore’s chief competitor within the home-computer market earlier than shedding almost a billion {dollars} in competing towards the C-64.

To probe additional

Pc bookstores carry a big selection of books on the C-64. Amongst these beneficial are
What’s actually contained in the Commodore 64, by Bilton Bathurst, revealed by DataCap of Feneur, Belgium, and The Anatomy of the 1541 disk drive, by Lothar Englisch and Norbert Szczepanowski, revealed by Abacus Software program of Grand Rapids, Mich. Pc magazines equivalent to Inventive Computing and Compute! evaluate software program and publish applications that run on the C-64. The Commodore 64 itself might be discovered at most massive retailers.