some finds...

From: Lawrence Walker <lwalker_at_mail.interlog.com>
Date: Wed Feb 10 03:32:25 1999

On 9 Feb 99 at 12:56, Cameron Kaiser wrote:

> ::The internals of one of the C-128 chips led to the stories at Commodore of
> ::employees who would randomly pick up a phone to see if someone was there.
> ::It seems that a chip designer left off an interrupt from some facet of the
> ::video system, and when asked why said that the programmers didn't have to
> ::wait for an interupt, they could just check the status bit on the chip. The
> ::programmers responded by walking over to the phone repeately to "check the
> ::status". It became such a joke that it even carried over to after-hours
> ::sessions at the local bar.
>
> That's the VDC :-) The designer brightly explained to Bil Herd that you didn't
> need the chip to send an IRQ when the screen was done drawing because you
> could just poll it over and over. Even my computer-illiterate mother laughed
> her head off when I told her about the Commodore engineers in the bar and
> "ringer-less telephones" (just pick it up over and over and over ...).
>
> These same engineers were also responsible for the pretty please register
> on the Magic Voice cartridge. To get it to say anything, you have to write
> the registers on the DSP chip twice (hence 'pretty please'). Apocryphal
> reports state they were run out of town pursued by engineers with pickaxes.
>
> ::This and more is detailed on Dave Haynie's Deathbed Vigil video tape. A
> ::must-see.
>
> Anywhere I can get it from? Dave was indispensible for the 7501/Plus4 sections
> of Secret Weapons of Commodore.
>
It would be interesting to see it on video, but I have the files culled from
the cbm newsgroup if anyone wants them(I'm lazy , and slow, but if you
don't have access to newsgroups... ) Bill re-emerged on the CBM newsgroup
not long ago and elaborated on this. Just Bill Herd reminiscing on the time he
headed up the Commodore development team, and the pressures to produce.
 Very delightful and as Cameron says quite funny. You can find them on
dejanews under a search for Bill Herd in the comp.sys cbm newsgroup.. Really
good stuff on how the development of new systems took place in the wild and
wooly earlier days. There should be a word for Tramiel-style development and
product marketing (if he wasn't still there, his style was) . In the army it
was SNAFU. and Tramiel added "milk it for all it's worth". The Henry Ford or
Edison of the computer generation. ( Objections ? Edison was as predatory as
Bob Dylan and likely less creative. Read any thing about Tesla)

ciao larry



lwalker_at_interlog.com
Received on Wed Feb 10 1999 - 03:32:25 GMT