#241 – An Interview With Chuck Peddle – Charismatic Chipmaking Coryphaeus

http://www.theamphour.com/241-an-interv ... oryphaeus/

Wow, that page had a lot of inaccuracies, including that "the TRS-80 failed".. uhm, no it didn't. And Steve Wozniak bought a 6502 chip at the faire, not Jobs. "Wozniak wrote a.compiler called Sweet16, but that flopped"? And so on and so forth. I gave up early. The page itself has a header which keeps moving down, covering what you're trying to read.

-Tor

There is a lot of history in there and I'm actually enjoying reading it. It answers a lot of questions.

In addition to the inaccuracies that Tor noted, the page was a pain to read. I abandoned it after a few screens.

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It's mostly due to what chuck said, he claimed that the Apple computer was Jobs' idea and was saying the initial Apple 2's were Assembly/Sweet16 only? no basic? (I wasn't around in those days, so I'm not clear on it) but chuck himself never said Sweet16 failed or was abandoned to my recollection.

I do remember hearing chuck himself claim that it was Jobs that came up with the idea for the Apple computer on the podcast.

The page only has a brief description of what chuck talked about, the podcast was quite long but still enjoyable.

It's understandable to me that Chuck might not remember every minute detail correctly after all this time.

It's correct that selling a commercial Apple computer was Job's idea, but Wozniak had the idea of making one in the first place - I don't think that conflicts with what you heard on the interview (I haven't heard it yet, only looked at the web page. But I have read several long interviews with Peddle in the past). However, the web page claims that Jobs bought a 6502 at the show - that was Woz, not Jobs (but the $25 price is correct). Jobs, on the other hand, was essential in getting components from vendors later, he managed to get credit as well as samples where Woz said he could never have managed that - he's an engineer, he just wants to build. Jobs complemented him nicely that way.
And the page said that SWEET 16 was a compiler, which flopped - Peddle would never have said that. SWEET 16 is a virtual machine built-in in the ROM, and it did exactly what it was meant to do - to let Woz do 16-bit processing from 8-bit 6502 code, to shrink the code size. And where that statement about the TRS-80 failing came from.. I don't know. I can't imagine Peddle said that either. The TRS-80 outsold just about everything else at the time. It was wildly successful. In any case I don't think Peddle has started to forget things from back then.. *I* haven't forgotten so it's not that long ago!

However, it looks like the web page has been improved since the first time I looked at it, now the annoying black field that covered what I wanted to read when scrolling doesn't do that anymore. So I was able to read many more of the bullet points. And those seem to be reasonably OK as far as I can tell (there are things there that I don't know about so I can't evaluate everything).

I may try to download and listen to the podcast.. but it's three hours, right? I don't know how I can get the time - in general I prefer to read interviews, not listen to them, because I can read many times faster than I can listen.

-Tor

Yeah, I think a good chunk of it was poorly written/interpereted by the hosts.
Dunno why they'd say the TRS-80 failed, I think Dave even owned a couple himself so *shrugs*

I can't remember what happened at work a couple of years ago, kinda assumed things from 40 years ago would be difficult to remember! but I guess I'll find out someday

As a C-64 user, I was kind of scared that the TRS-80 could in theory take over because I remember when there were at least six people in line at Radio Shack to see their computers and the quantity of Radio Shack stores meant instant support and instant access. And then they had a catalog that you could see their computers in and their salesmen were confident on top of it. Even if you didn't know anything about their computers, they had a salesman willing to demonstrate it. I can remember their screens being on and running behind the counter.

I googled why the TRS-80 failed and couldn't find a definite reason but I remember users were paying a price for the machine and there was a lot of hardware and software associated with it but I also remember when the Coco (Color Computer) stopped selling as well in a glutted market with Atari, Apple, Commodore, Amiga and others. It is like everything, the computer industry invested billions of dollars and a lot of companies couldn't keep up.

I own a CoCo2 and six games I purchased on eBay for next to nothing ($30 plus shipping). The video and sound hardware is sub-par compared to the Atari 800 or C64, its cartridge based expansion is a mixed bag compared to Atari's SIO or Commodore's IEC interface, and there was a lack of third party software support.

But it's a 6809e based machine with 64K RAM, so it's worth owning from a noodling point of view.

But that's the point, it did not fail. The TRS-80 was the most-selling personal computer over most of its lifetime, from the start (10,000 units sold the first month or so, way more than the company expected -- according to Wikipedia they had hoped for 3,000 a *year*) and nearly until it was discontinued. In 1980 it's estimated to still have outsold the Apple II by a factor from three to five, depending on the source. Whatever way you look at the numbers, it's clear that it did not fail, it was an instant success. So what's stated on that website is simply *wrong*.

It's a great interview but just like other interviews with Peddle, the hosts tend to interrupt him and that throws him off. When you do an interview with Chuck Peddle, you just have to let him tell his stories at his own pace, and maybe help him sometimes when he forgets a name or something. I hope when Jason Scott finishes his 6502 documentary, he'll do the right thing.

I've listened to about 2/3rds of the podcast so far and it's been amazingly interesting, though I already knew a lot from various books about Commodore and MOS Technology and the history of the 6502, and Woz' autobiography and whatnot. The interesting parts to me were about the time when Chuck was running Sirius Computers, a brand that I'd never even heard of until a few years ago. From the interview, it sounds like they were the first to add a hard disk to the IBM PC architecture (though I think with devices like the Corvus, it's probably debatable) and they helped Microsoft implement the hard disk APIs for MS-DOS 2.0.

Anyway, highly recommended if you want to take a 3 hour walk, or have a long commute, or something

===Jac

Good idea Jac - I'll download it and keep it for my next intercontinental flight! Usually I read a book or two, or watch a silly movie.

Ah, the hosts.. that reminds me of the Bill Mensch video interview on silicongenesis.. the host tried his best to destroy it. You know which one I mean I'm sure, because I saw you commented on exactly that somewhere. Mensch is of course the other really interesting person in the history of the 6502 microprocessor, and thus the history of the whole industry.

The Sirius.. I remember the Sirius brand from glorious ads back then, for the Victor 9000. But I had no idea Chuck Peddle was behind it. On the other hand back then I wasn't really aware of the actual CPU designers (Peddle, Mensch, Faggin, Wilson etc.), only those a step up - I knew about Wozniak, and even Gates, those guys.

-Tor

Interesting, from the interview: Chuck, at age 78, still runs an hour a day. His new SSD chip has eleven 6502's in it.

I finally got through it. It took many sessions of a few minutes here and there as I was able to listen.

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http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources
The "second front page" is http://wilsonminesco.com/links.html .
What's an additional VIA among friends, anyhow?