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The Real Story of Hacking Together the Commodore C128
szczys writes "Bil Herd was the designer and hardware lead for the Commodore C128. He reminisces about the herculean effort his team took on in order to bring the hardware to market in just five months. At the time the company had the resources to roll their own silicon (that's right, custom chips!) but this also meant that for three of those five months they didn't actually have the integrated circuits the computer was based on."
I went from a Vic20 to C128 instead of a C64. I was amazed that I could use CPM and a very advanced basic. The power of this machine enabled me and a good friend to build a robot in college made of nothing but old car parts, DC motors, relays, and plates with holes drilled in them for encoders. That directly led to my first job as an automation engineer.
The C128 also was the last computer that fueled my dreams. I went to college to become a computer engineer so I could build what I called the "compatibility machine". This machine could execute all the major 8-bit computer software (they all had Z80's or 6502) without the user intervening or worrying what version of software they purchased. The C128 showed me it could be possible!
By the time I left school the writing was on the wall that Mac / IBM style PCs would rule the world. It didn't stop me from getting an Amiga, but it was pretty clear that CBM was on the way out.
I love the sound of distortion in the morning -- webcommando
True. I was one of those guys initially. I was a CS major in 1985 and my computer experience consisted of mainframes, CP/M machines and IBM PCs. Anything else was a "toy". I had a new girlfriend who suggested I could do my CS homework at her house because her dad "had a computer". She didn't know what kind it was, but he was an engineer so I figured it was probably pretty nice. I took her up on her offer, figuring that the suggestion was nothing more than a ploy to get me to come over to her house. When we got to her house she took me to the room he used as his office and pointed. I literally guffawed. It was a Commodore 64. She was somewhat offended at my reaction and I quickly apologized. Over the next few weeks I was a frequent visitor to her house and I began playing with the C64. The more I worked with it, the more respect I had for the platform. I especially liked the serial interface and how components could be daisy-chained. Far from being a toy, the C64 had the capability to do some pretty advanced stuff. And it was a LOT less expensive than an IBM PC. Eventually, the girlfriend became my wife, and her dad gave me the Commodore after he moved on to a PC. The wife and I broke several years ago. I still have the C64.
Proverbs 21:19
I was in 5th or 6th grade, and I woke up to a new computer in my room. The printer immediately broke and I noticed the desk was half up-side down. My dad had assembled it and the desk in the dark, during the night, while I was asleep (I'm a heavy sleeper). He was no technician, but I appreciated the effort. I traded c64 games with kids at school and stacks of 5.25 floppies via mail. Commodore games were fantastic; much better than NES. Junior year of High School, I finally had the initiative to figure out what my dad had done to the printer, and it turned out to be a simple problem that I fixed. I used 80 column mode to type and print essays for school for the next two years. Much praise to my old man. Granted, first year of college and he helped me acquire a 386 with Windows 3.0, which I had for three years, then built my own. I'll never forget my C=128. Thanks, dad!