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            MOS Technology
                 from
             On The Edge:
       The Spectacular Rise and
          Fall of Commodore
           by Brian Bagnall

                Part I

             1974 to 1976

    Hi-tech companies need three
players in order to succeed: a
financier, a technology-God, and a
juggernaut with a type-A personality.
Commodore would require these three
ingredients to take them to a new
level. They had Irving Gould, with his
financial expertise and deep pockets.
They had Jack Tramiel, so aggressive
people sometimes referred to him as
the scariest man alive. All Commodore
needed was a visionary engineer to
take Commodore into a new field of
technology.


The Grey Wizard of the East

    In the 1970's, the image of a
computer genius was not in the mold of
the young hacker we are familiar with
today. Teenaged tycoons like Bill
Gates had not filtered into the public
consciousness, and WarGames (1983,
MGM) was not yet released, with the
prototypical computer hacker portrayed
by Matthew Broderick. The accepted
image of a technological genius was a
middle-aged man with graying hair and
glasses, preferably wearing a long
white lab coat.

    Chuck Peddle was the image of a
technology wizard, with his wire-frame
glasses, white receding hairline, and
slightly crooked teeth. At two hundred
and fifty pounds, the five foot eleven
inch engineer always struggled with
his weight. Peddle describes himself
at that time as "totally out of
shape," but he was characteristically
optimistic and never without a joke or
story to tell.

    Peddle possessed the ability to
see further into the future than most
of his contemporaries and he
obsessively searched for the next big
innovation. His mind was always
active, sometimes to the point of
causing sleep deprivation. "I don't
sleep much," says Peddle. "Never did."
In fact, the pattern of sleeplessness
went back to his earliest days.

    Peddle's father was one of 21
kids. His family originated in the
Canadian Maritimes but the poor region
made it difficult to support a family.
"The whole area is very depressed,"
says Peddle. The family moved to the
United States in search of a better
economy.

    Charles Peddle was born in Bangor
Maine in 1937, one of eight children.
"My mother said that when I was young
I used to lie awake in my crib. I
would cry and fuss and didn't sleep as
much as the other kids," he says.

    Peddle was raised in the state
capital of Augusta, Maine, with a
population of just over 20,000.
Unfortunately, the move from the
Maritimes to Maine only marginally
improved the family prospects. "There
is a tremendous amount of leakage
across the border (from the
Maritimes)," he says. "People are
willing to work for nothing because
they are starving to death at home. So
it keeps wages down (in Maine) and
it's always been a poor state."

    In his senior year of high school,
Chuck thought he found his calling.
"In high school I worked in a radio
station," he says. "I really wanted to
be a radio announcer. For you, now,
that really doesn't mean very much,
but back then that was pre-TV and
radio announcers were big."

    Nearing the end of high school,
Chuck traveled to Boston to try out
for a scholarship in broadcasting. For
the first time in his life, he saw his
competition and realized he did not
have enough natural talent. With a
sense of relief, he recalls, "I failed
as a radio announcer." Returning to
Augusta, Chuck talked things over with
the radio station owner, who told him,
"I'll employ you as a radio announcer,
but you will always be stuck in Maine
because you are not good enough."

    Peddle spent some time in the
military as he contemplated his
future. "I went into the Marine Corps
just before I got out of high-school
in 1955 and I went in active reserves
in 1960," he recalls.

    During this time, Peddle's former
science teacher recognized a gift in
Peddle and encouraged him to enter
engineering. Peddle listened to his
advice, but was unsure he wanted to
enter the sciences.

    "I didn't want a pick and shovel
job," he says. "I wasn't sure what I
was going to do and I was dirt poor.
Luckily, in Maine you can be dirt poor
and still get by." Unable to earn
enough to pay for tuition fees, he
applied for student loans.

    At the end of summer, Peddle
entered the University of Maine and
enrolled in engineering and business
courses. "When I started, I didn't
have a clue what I wanted to do. I
just knew I didn't want to do pick and
shovel jobs anymore," he says. Partway
through the first year, the university
required students to choose a
discipline. "I really loved physics,
so I took engineering physics with an
electrical minor."

    Peddle remembers the dismal state
of computing. "There wasn't a computer
on campus, nor was there anyone on the
campus who was computer literate," he
says. In his final year, things began
to change. "On the entire campus,
there was one analogue computer, which
had been bought in the last four
months," he recalls. "The analogue
computer was so primitive and they
didn't know how to use it. There was
zero knowledge about computers on that
campus."

    Peddle received a standard
education in engineering, devoid of
computers. Over 200 miles away, at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT), a revolution was occurring
which would soon change his situation.

    Chuck Peddle's main influence was
the legendary inventor and
mathematician, Claude Elwood Shannon.
Though virtually unknown to the world,
Shannon was the founding father of the
modern electronic communications age.
Shannon was an eccentric, who
terrified people by riding his
unicycle through the hallways at night
while juggling.

    Shannon also built a reputation
for inventions that were of little
practical value to anyone. Over the
years, he filled his beachside house
with juggling robots, maze-solving
robot mice, chess playing programs,
mind-reading machines, and an electric
chair to transport his children down
to the lake.

    In 1948, while working at Bell
Labs, Shannon produced a
groundbreaking paper, A Mathematical
Theory of Communication. In it,
Shannon rigorously analyzed the
concept of Information Theory and how
we transmit pictures, words, sounds,
and other media using a stream of 1's
and 0's. Chuck Peddle was enchanted
with Shannon's theories.

    "Today, you take this for granted,
but you have to remember that someone
had to dream all this up," he says.
"Shannon was one of those guys that
dreamed up from nothing the idea of
the way information goes back and
forth. Everyone else's work stands on
his shoulders and most people don't
even know it."

    In 1958, Shannon returned to MIT
at Lincoln Labs as a lecturer and
Artificial Intelligence researcher.
While there, he spread his concepts on
Information Theory. "He changed the
world," says Peddle. "Shannon was not
only a pioneer but a prophet. He
effectively developed a following,
almost like a cult." One of Shannon's
cultists would soon spread the word to
the University of Maine.

    During Peddle's senior year, the
University of Maine accepted a
lecturer from MIT who studied under
Claude Shannon. According to Peddle,
"He had a nervous breakdown, so he
left MIT.

    The University of Maine was so
happy to get him because he was so
superior to the type of instructor
they could normally get. They gave him
the opportunity to teach only four
classes per week between the hours of
eleven o'clock and noon. The guy was
being totally babied and should have
been since he was a great instructor.
He decided to put together a class to
teach people about Information
Theory."

    At the time, Peddle was enrolling
for his final year and the Information
Theory class happened to fit into his
schedule. As Peddle recalls, "It
changed my life."

    The class began with the
instructor discussing the eyes and
ears as the primary sensors for
receiving information. "He started
teaching us about Boolean algebra and
binary logic, and the concept of
Information Theory," recalls Peddle.
"I just fell in love. This was where I
was going to spend my life."

    "The whole thing about how
information moves back and forth is
essential to almost everything I've
done," he says. However, the topic
that interested Peddle the most was
computers. "You have to understand how
exciting it was," explains Peddle.
"Information Theory was interesting,
and I've used it from time to time,
but the computer stuff this guy taught
me was life changing."

    Though this new revelation came
late, Peddle immersed himself in
computer theory for his final year. "I
got an A on my senior paper in physics
class by giving a discussion on binary
and Boolean arithmetic. I was trying
to build an and-gate in my senior
class (from early transistors) and the
top electrical engineers on campus
couldn't help me figure out the
structures and why my and-gate didn't
work," he recalls. Peddle and a friend
even tried growing a transistor
crystal but soon gave up.

    As graduation approached, Peddle
began searching for a place of
permanent employment. He had married
while in College and already had a
family. "I came out of college and I
had three kids; two and a half,
actually. I had the third one right
after (graduation)." The new
responsibilities motivated Peddle to
find a better life.

    Peddle knew he wanted to live in
California and he wanted to work in
computers. "I only interviewed
computer companies," he recalls. "At
all of the companies of any size, like
GE and RCA, you went to work on a
training program for a year or two.
You really were just interviewing to
join their training program."

    Of all the companies, GE made the
best impression on Peddle. "I kind of
fell in love with GE," he says. "When
I got my offer, I thought I would take
it, because they had such a good
training program."

    Peddle and his young family moved
to California to start a new life with
General Electric. Before long, Peddle
was working at GE's computing facility
in Phoenix, Arizona. Peddle worked
with massive mainframe computers,
similar to those seen in the 1965 film
Alphaville. The first computer Peddle
used was a GE-225, which he describes
as a "very old, very slow machine with
small capacity."

    Peddle entered programs into the
GE-225 computer by feeding a stack of
punch cards into a card reader. Peddle
recalls, "I would set up long six or
seven hour runs, drive across the city
and go to bed with the instructions,
QIf this breaks, call me.' People
would wake me up in the middle of the
night, I would find a solution in ten
minutes and go back to sleep."

    In 1961, Peddle and two of his
coworkers developed the concept for
variable sector disk formatting. They
even filed a patent for their idea.
Years later, Peddle would use this
idea to give Commodore disk drives
more data storage than the
competition.

    In 1963, John G. Kemeny developed
the Basic computer language at
Dartmouth College in New Hampshire,
along with Tom Kurtz. They developed
Basic for the GE-235 mainframe
computer, and as a result, Peddle was
almost immediately aware of it. "I
taught Basic the day after it was
invented," claims Peddle. "I got one
of the original Basic manuals from a
guy in Dartmouth and taught my people
in Phoenix."

    A year later, Kemeny and Kurtz
created the revolutionary Dartmouth
Time-Sharing System (DTSS) for the
GE-235. With the time-sharing system,
multiple users could interact with the
mainframe computer simultaneously
using terminals. General Electric
immediately recognized the value of
this new system and used it to form
the basis of a new multi-million
dollar business. "Two years later, GE
goes into the time-sharing business,"
recalls Peddle. "They're selling
time-sharing to everybody and GE was
selling more computers than they could
build. It was a big goddamned deal."

    With the time-sharing business
suddenly ballooning, General Electric
sent Peddle to their largest computing
center in Evendale, Ohio to set up
time-sharing systems for General
Electric's jet engine business. The
massive computer facility contained
ten IBM-7094 mainframe systems, five
GE-600's, and 25 GE-225's. Peddle
recalls, "We were running time-sharing
for about 4000 engineers and
programmers." The refrigerated
computing facility seemed futuristic
in the mid-sixties, with white tiled
walls, raised floors, and rows and
rows of mainframe computers.

    Setting up the time-sharing
systems was time consuming, and Peddle
often stayed at the computer facility
around the clock. During this time,
Peddle picked up a habit originated by
GE founder Thomas Edison. "I stole the
idea of cots from him," he says.
"Everyone understood that if I'm
tired, I go to my office and take a
half hour nap."

    After Peddle set up the
time-sharing systems, he became
administrator for two of the systems.
The experience gave Peddle valuable
knowledge that he would later use to
develop his own computers. "I got a
really good understanding of what
worked on time-sharing and what didn't
work, and what people wanted," he
says.

    While working with GE, Chuck met
John Pavinen and Mort Jaffe, computer
pioneers who would later become
involved with him at Commodore. "John
Pavinen was my manager at GE. He's the
guy who put GE in the computer
business," says Peddle. "A lot of the
pioneers in the computer industry came
out of GE."

    Peddle also remembers some darker
moments in the computer scene. "People
used to be able to get their hands on
computers," he recalls. "Then, in the
late 60's and early 70's, there was a
big revolt against technology. People
were attacking computer centers with
axes, claiming computers were taking
over our lives. We're talking about
serious hippy-type stuff. So all of
the computer rooms locked the doors."

    The need for security drastically
reduced the freedom people previously
enjoyed. "If you wanted to get a
computer run, you walked up with your
punch cards and left them on someone's
desk," says Peddle. "They went from
these time-sharing friendly,
I-can-do-everything systems to having
zero access to the computer." Peddle
detected a strong demand from users to
own their own computers.

    The time-sharing business Peddle
helped develop at GE was phenomenally
successful, but in the late sixties,
it started failing due to increased
competition. By this time, Peddle had
risen to a high-level management
position. GE sent him to Phoenix to
start another time-sharing company.

    Suddenly, "Time-sharing crashed;
out of business; goodbye," says
Peddle. "Companies started figuring
out how much money they were spending
on these time-sharing services and it
was millions. GE was just cleaning up,
but it just wasn't cost effective the
way it was being done, so companies
kept cutting it off and they moved the
computers internally."

    GE gave Peddle an assignment to
work on cash registers, which made
Peddle start to think about the
concept of distributed intelligence.
At the time, shared computing kept the
brains of the computer at one central
location and people could only
interact with the computer system
using dumb-terminals (a keyboard and
monitor).

    Peddle envisioned distributed
intelligence, where he would transform
the dumb-terminal into an
intelligent-terminal that could have a
printer connected to it, or other
peripherals and data entry devices. "I
sat down and derived the principles of
distributed intelligence during a
four-month period," says Peddle.
"There was a focus on five or six
stations around a minicomputer in a
centralized architecture. My concept
was you moved the intelligence to the
place where you used it." It was a
step towards networked computers.

    "Then I started trying to teach GE
about it," says Peddle. Unfortunately,
in 1970 GE decided they were no longer
interested in computers. "I was
getting nowhere with GE because they
were getting ready to sell the
computer business. Two months later,
they sold the company to Honeywell."

     [Continued in MOS - Part II]