A C-64 question - who designed the hardware?

[kiwilove]

Most people here, would have probably read about Jay Miner and some of his interviews he gave, concerning his involvement with chipset for the Atari 400/800 computers... but I always wondered - has there been any comprehensive interviews with the designer of the C64?

When I first saw the Vic20 - I was totally unimpressed... compare that with the Atari400 - and you would know which is the better computer? How come the Vic20 was so crappy - and then the C64 much more sophisicated. Was the Vic20 of the same design team as the C64?

 

Thanks for any information.

 

Harvey

[Oswald]

vic20 was more of an accident: "Commodore engineered and manufactured the "Video Interface Chip 6506" or VIC1 for the video game market which was beginning to collapse". Ok, according to Wikipedia the VICI simply could not be sold by C=, it found no market to it. Then Bob Yannes after being hired to C= found the VICI a nice chip, and after wondering why the company makes no use of it built a computer around it as a home hobby project. He showed his prototype to someone from the management, and eventually his prototype made to be seen by Jack Tramiel. Jack loved it, saw the machine filling his idea about the market (computers for the masses) and decided to make it happen. This was around the time when Chuck Peddle (father of the 6502 and C= PET) and Jack had a big clash: Chuck wanted C= enter the business market, Jack pushed for the low end market. The result: Chuck quit, and VIC20 was made.

 

VIC20 was kind of C='s speccy, a cheap 'color' computer for the market, and it was kind of a succes: "first computer reachin 1 mill unit sold".

 

Oh I didnt knew this but google helped: VICI was designed by: Al Charpentier who is also responsible for VICII (c64), and for the record VICI was done in 1977, so for the time it was a good chip. (notice that antic etc came 2 years later)

 

So to answer your question: VIC20 was so crappy because it used a 3 year old video chip, while VICII was designed in the same year as the c64.

 

here is a very good article from '85 about the design of the c64 including the chips, chip Designers Al Charpentier & Bob Yannes (SID) talking:

 

http://www.commodore.ca/gallery/magazines/.../c64_design.htm

[Fröhn]

Albert Charpentier was the lead behind the VIC2, Robert (Bob) Yannes was the one who did the SID. Both left Commodore before the C64 was released and built the Synth company Ensoniq.

[kiwilove]

Thanks for the information - guys...

What was the story relating to the cassette tape history of the C64?

Was it dead slow and unreliable as per the Atari 8 bit ...? Then was it Paul Woakes of Encounter fame, that found a way to increase the speed of the tape loading? And hey presto - that took off - and it was further tweaked so that music played while the game loaded.. My memory is a bit hazy... and wonder if this memory is accurate?

Same thing with the C64 Disk drive? It was crappy until Action Replay? stepped in and offered a fast loading disk system?

I do wonder about development for the C64? When did information become available such that home programmers could then start programming their own games - knowing how the hardware worked?

With Atari - there was the Technical Manual available (or was available?) - written by Atari. A friend I knew - found out it was available, and purchased a copy right away, knowing it held all the technical information, you could ever want to know about, was in it..

Harvey

[Rybags]

They were overly cautious with the tape drive.

 

IIRC, it actually runs at around 1200 baud, but 2 copies of a program are stored. The program is loaded, then a check/correct pass happens with the second copy.

 

So, it ends up being about the same speed as the Atari tape system.

 

The disk drive - well, that was covered towards the end of the recent thread that got locked "Atari vs C-64" (or similar) title.

 

AFAIK, the C-64 Technical Reference guide was released at an affordable price as soon as the computer went on sale. I know that I read it through, and was able immediately to do useful things on the machine. In fact, it could probably be credited for the C-64s fast rise, and the generally higher technical expertise among owners who also wanted to create their own programs.

[thomasholzer]

From 82 - 92 Ukers lived happily with C64s using tape drives (releases on tape vs fdd in the uk was 3 - 1).

 

I think Epyx Fast Loader cartridge was more popular with C64 fdds than Action Replay, and they were earlier too.

 

Music whilst tape loading was nothing new, I got some early 80s Atari/C64 tapes, which play 'real' music whilst loading the game.

Edited April 29, 2008 by thomasholzer

[Heaven/TQA]

btw. is there any mp3 to listen to Dimension X & Blue Max tape loading music?

[Oswald]

Same thing with the C64 Disk drive? It was crappy until Action Replay? stepped in and offered a fast loading disk system?

I do wonder about development for the C64? When did information become available such that home programmers could then start programming their own games - knowing how the hardware worked?

 

 

c64 disk drive got slow because:

 

- VIA chip was faulty it could not send over a byte as it was designed, each bit had to be done by "hand", they decided to leave it as is instead of having to explain the users why some of them has faulty drives.(they made a whole run of these faulty drives, it would have been a loss not to sell em)

- parallel I/O lines mistakenly optimized off from motherboard

- Jack Tramiel yelling at the guy writing the loading sf: "I want to see it working here next week" (and showing the spot on the desk with his hand:) )

 

there were a lot of fastload software/cartridge even before action replay, going as far as autmatically displaying DIR, and letting the user select a file with crsrs to be loaded.

 

programming info was never a problem on c64, the manuals were there, even c64 only magazines started up very soon with the release of the machine.

Edited April 29, 2008 by Oswald

[thomasholzer]

And....this should be under 'Classic Gaming General'

Edited April 29, 2008 by thomasholzer

[kchris73]

"On the Edge" is a great book about the history of Commodore, including many details about what is discussed in this thread.

 

4.5 stars on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Edge-Spectacular-Ris...e/dp/0973864907

[+Philsan]

"On the Edge" is a great book about the history of Commodore, including many details about what is discussed in this thread.

 

4.5 stars on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Edge-Spectacular-Ris...e/dp/0973864907

I agree. Very interesting.

The computer's history belongs not only to Microsoft and Apple.

I hope a similar book will be written regarding Atari.