Chuck Peddle

Chuck Peddle
File:Chuck Peddle (cropped).jpg Peddle in 2013
Born	Charles Ingerham Peddle (1937-11-25)November 25, 1937 Bangor, Maine, U.S.
Died	Santa Cruz, California, U.S.
Nationality	American
Other names	Chuck Peddle
Citizenship	United States
Education	B.Sc.; University of Maine
Occupation	Electrical engineer
Years active	1970–2015
Known for	Personal computer pioneer Sirius Systems Technology founder
Notable work	6502 microprocessor KIM-1 SBC Commodore PET PC

Charles Ingerham Peddle (November 25, 1937 – December 15, 2019) was an American electrical engineer best known as the main designer of the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, the KIM-1 single-board computer (SBC), and its successor, the Commodore PET personal computer (PC), both based on the 6502.

Biography

Peddle was born in Bangor, Maine, United States on November 25, 1937. He worked in a radio station while in high school.

In 1955, Peddle joined the United States Marine Corps. He attended the University of Maine where he earned a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) degree in engineering physics. Afterward, he went to work for General Electric working with time-sharing systems.

In 1973, Peddle worked at Motorola on developing the 6800 processor.

Peddle recognized a market for an very low price microprocessor and began to champion such a design to complement the $300 Motorola 6800. His efforts were frustrated by Motorola management and he was told to drop the project. He then left for MOS Technology, where he headed the design of the 650x family of processors; these were made as a $25 answer to the Motorola 6800. The most famous member of the 650x series was the 6502, developed in 1975, which was priced at 15% of the cost of an Intel 8080, and was subsequently used in many commercial products, including the Apple II, Commodore VIC-20, Nintendo Entertainment System, Atari 8-bit computers and arcade video games, Oric computers, and the BBC Micro from Acorn Computers.

The 6502 microprocessor design was also modified to support other computers while maintaining backward compatibility. The 6507 is the CPU of the Atari 2600, and of peripherals such as the Atari 850 Interface, and 810 and 1050 disk drives. Atari used a custom in-house derivative, the 6502C "Sally" in the XL/XE computers and 7800, which is based on the 6502B but with added logic to disable the clock signal, called HALT. Using direct memory access (DMA), this allows a second microprocessor ANTIC to shut off the CPU whenever it needed the data/address bus, allowing them to coexist. The 6510 is in the Commodore 64.

In 1980, Peddle left MOS Technology, together with Commodore Business Machines (CBM) financer Chris Fish, to found Sirius Systems Technology. There, Peddle designed the Victor 9000 personal computer.

Legacy

Peddle and Bill Mensch are regarded as personal computer pioneers, in that both the 6502 technology and business model were instrumental in helping launch the personal computer revolution. After Peddle's death, Mensch wrote in memoriam.

See also

• Group coded recording

External links

• The Legendary Chuck Peddle, Inventor of The Personal Computer