They lacked completely the sophisticated design tools of today’s engineering workstations, but they had one readily available design tool found almost nowhere else in the home-computer industry: a chip-fabrication line on the premises. With this, Winterble explained, a circuit buried deep inside the chips could be lifted out and run as a test chip, allowing thorough debugging without concern for other parts of the circuitry. David A. Ziembicki, then a production engineer at Commodore, recalls that typical fabrication times were a few weeks and that in an emergency the captive fabrication facility could turn designs around in as little as four days.
Creating the Commodore 64: The Engineers’ Story
11–20 of 56 posts
Re: Creating the Commodore 64: The Engineers’ Story
#12The soundtrack for the C64 game Lazy Jones [1] is a pretty good demo for the legendary SID sound chip. When I experienced it, my computer has a bleepy PC speaker, and my cousin's C64 had a much more "adult" sound. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWxlYYA8yrg
While the Lazy Jones soundtrack is a pretty good demonstration of how early SID music sounded like, it does not even come close to what more recent music players are able to produce - on the same hardware. If you want to be blown away by the sounds the SID chip can produce, I would recommend some of LMan's work. This is one impressive tune: https://youtu.be/h0qMNfpiLmE And this is done with the hardware that Bob Yann…
Wow, that's impressive. The tones are remarkably clear, I wouldn't have guessed it was a Sid (apart from the 3 voices)
Edit: on second listen, it sounds like it has a bit of reverb applied? I wonder if it was recorded from real hardware.
Re: Creating the Commodore 64: The Engineers’ Story
#13Love the subtle use of apostrophe in this story title
Aka correct usage.
Re: Creating the Commodore 64: The Engineers’ Story
#14Re: Creating the Commodore 64: The Engineers’ Story
#15They lacked completely the sophisticated design tools of today’s engineering workstations, but they had one readily available design tool found almost nowhere else in the home-computer industry: a chip-fabrication line on the premises. With this, Winterble explained, a circuit buried deep inside the chips could be lifted out and run as a test chip, allowing thorough debugging without concern for other parts of the ci…
A solid argument for vertical integration if ever there was one
Re: Creating the Commodore 64: The Engineers’ Story
#16> And outside suppliers were not always reliable. “One provided a power supply for engineering approval,” Ziembicki recalled. “It got approved, and then the supplier changed the design and didn’t tell anybody.” I wonder if this is why C64 power supplies have a tendency to fail, taking the computer with them? https://retrogamestart.com/answers/replace-c64-power-supply-...
Seems like implementation would be pretty hard to validate with the whole lot encased in epoxy!
Re: Creating the Commodore 64: The Engineers’ Story
#17Wow!
I have so many times hear about people too much concentrated on one thing so loose all others! I thought, it is known at least from 1970th (The Mythical Man-Month), but again and again see cases of the same..
Re: Creating the Commodore 64: The Engineers’ Story
#18They lacked completely the sophisticated design tools of today’s engineering workstations, but they had one readily available design tool found almost nowhere else in the home-computer industry: a chip-fabrication line on the premises. With this, Winterble explained, a circuit buried deep inside the chips could be lifted out and run as a test chip, allowing thorough debugging without concern for other parts of the ci…
A solid argument for vertical integration if ever there was one
Only for people, who have not seen dying giants of Soviet industry, which where like large ships - when sink, pull to bottom everybody and everything near them.
Other known problem - "too large to fall" - government try to save such large enterprises so hard, that lead to default.
Re: Creating the Commodore 64: The Engineers’ Story
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
A solid argument for vertical integration if ever there was one
Only for people, who have not seen dying giants of Soviet industry, which where like large ships - when sink, pull to bottom everybody and everything near them. Other known problem - "too large to fall" - government try to save such large enterprises so hard, that lead to default.
Same thing happened to the auto manufacturers in Detroit. Used to be one of the richest cities in the world, now one of the poorest and most violent in America.
Re: Creating the Commodore 64: The Engineers’ Story
#20It's not very clear, but this is a reprint likely from 1985.
I did wonder when I got the line about production of the C-64 "volume shipments began in August 1982 and have continued unabated". I mean, it was good, but good enough to last 40 years?