1 00:00:50,700 --> 00:00:56,640 My name is Steven Fletcher and I’m a documentary film maker but most of my working life I’ve 2 00:00:56,770 --> 00:01:01,400 been a computer programmer For me the love affair of the computer started 3 00:01:01,400 --> 00:01:07,080 at the age of 14 when I got my first computer the VIC-20 closely followed by the Commodore 4 00:01:07,080 --> 00:01:13,390 64 and then of course the Amiga Now 35 years later I want to take you on a 5 00:01:13,390 --> 00:01:19,060 journey back to the birth of the home computer by following the Commodore story discovering 6 00:01:19,060 --> 00:01:25,980 the origins and what lead up to the Commodore 64 being the best ever selling computer in history 7 00:01:28,460 --> 00:01:35,530 It’s remarkable that in my lifetime technology has advanced so much from computers once the 8 00:01:35,530 --> 00:01:40,240 size of a room to mobile phones that fit in your pocket 9 00:01:42,000 --> 00:01:48,710 You don’t have to go back too many years and computers just didn’t exist but now 10 00:01:48,710 --> 00:01:53,320 we find computers filling every aspect of our lives 11 00:01:53,320 --> 00:01:59,990 We will be travelling around Europe and across America interviewing many legends from Commodore 12 00:01:59,990 --> 00:02:00,990 and Amiga 13 00:02:02,000 --> 00:02:05,320 A half a million dollars March 7th 1984 14 00:02:06,480 --> 00:02:09,320 You invented something that changed my life 15 00:02:09,920 --> 00:02:13,440 And there’s a bunch of Z8000 programmers you know looking like I just shot a sheep or something 16 00:02:14,240 --> 00:02:19,040 On the other side rather than panicking because your ball grid array or something was inverted 17 00:02:19,040 --> 00:02:20,800 and there’s nothing you can do about it 18 00:02:20,800 --> 00:02:23,680 A meeting with Jack Tramiel was often called a Jack attack 19 00:02:24,640 --> 00:02:28,640 Do you ever get a jump where it’s ten times better these days – no 20 00:02:29,600 --> 00:02:33,120 Welcome to R J Mical’s house of construction 21 00:02:35,200 --> 00:02:40,460 We will also be attending Commodore and Amiga events plus retro shows to see how alive the 22 00:02:40,460 --> 00:02:50,660 Commodore and Amiga scene is in today’s modern world 23 00:03:11,360 --> 00:03:15,600 Just arriving in San Francisco We’re going to be doing the Commodore Story documentary 24 00:03:15,840 --> 00:03:21,440 and the first thing we see is from a museum and it’s all about the typewriter 25 00:03:22,240 --> 00:03:27,520 and potentially the first chapter; the first part of the documentary we are going 26 00:03:27,520 --> 00:03:33,520 to call ‘The Typewriter Man’ because it’s all about Jack Tramiel and where he came from 27 00:03:34,520 --> 00:03:35,760 And here we are 28 00:04:41,620 --> 00:04:46,940 My name’s Leonard Tramiel and I was involved in the personal computer industry for quite sometime 29 00:04:46,940 --> 00:04:52,960 I was on the team that developed the Commodore PET 30 00:04:52,960 --> 00:04:58,080 and then actually went off to graduate school and didn’t have any direct involvement 31 00:04:58,080 --> 00:05:05,440 in the VIC-20 or Commodore 64 Had some indirect work with some of the engineers 32 00:05:05,440 --> 00:05:08,930 and marketing folk and of course with my dad 33 00:05:08,930 --> 00:05:13,790 The way Commodore got into the computer business was completely by accident 34 00:05:13,790 --> 00:05:19,910 So let’s let’s take a couple of historical steps back 35 00:05:19,910 --> 00:05:29,100 My father when he left the US army had a some had some experience repairing typewriters; he was trained 36 00:05:29,100 --> 00:05:36,100 to do that in the army and one of his first jobs after leaving was he got the contract 37 00:05:36,100 --> 00:05:41,660 to continue doing the typewriter repair for the army base 38 00:05:41,660 --> 00:05:49,720 And his business went from repairing typewriters to importing and selling typewriters and then 39 00:05:49,720 --> 00:05:55,590 from typewriters into other office equipment like adding machines and then from adding 40 00:05:55,600 --> 00:05:57,360 machines to electronic calculators 41 00:05:58,200 --> 00:06:01,840 This is where Commodore started; Jack Tramiel made these things and made his money with it 42 00:06:03,360 --> 00:06:07,480 Interesting story about this piece of equipment, everybody knows that jack Tramiel didn’t 43 00:06:07,500 --> 00:06:12,220 have really a lot of interest in the computer business; he wanted to sell calculators like 44 00:06:12,220 --> 00:06:16,510 this one And a lot of people will recognise this specific 45 00:06:16,510 --> 00:06:21,720 chiclet keyboard And it was Chuck Peddle who engineered the 46 00:06:21,720 --> 00:06:27,570 first computer for Commodore but because real keyboards were really expensive at the time 47 00:06:27,570 --> 00:06:31,840 Jack Tramiel designed it as this keyboard should be used 48 00:06:32,840 --> 00:06:40,700 Virtually every calculator was designed around a calculator chip produced by Texas Instruments 49 00:06:40,700 --> 00:06:47,080 and our friends at TI decided that they wanted to get into the calculator business so they 50 00:06:47,080 --> 00:06:53,100 produced calculators and sold them for roughly the cost that they were selling the calculator 51 00:06:53,100 --> 00:07:04,320 chip for, which drove everybody out of business My father said; so he told this story a couple 52 00:07:04,320 --> 00:07:11,850 of times; he said that in his in his mind his reaction was ‘well they can die but 53 00:07:11,850 --> 00:07:18,710 I’m not going to die that easily’ Being a holocaust survivor survival was an 54 00:07:18,710 --> 00:07:20,720 important thing for him 55 00:07:20,720 --> 00:07:29,180 So he found a calculator chip company or a company that made calculator chips and it 56 00:07:29,180 --> 00:07:34,720 turned out they were not doing all that well financially and bought them 57 00:07:34,720 --> 00:07:40,870 And one of the projects that this company was involved in was a little thing that he 58 00:07:40,870 --> 00:07:49,650 knew nothing about called the microprocessor the MOS technology 6502, which was probably 59 00:07:49,650 --> 00:07:58,600 the most used microprocessor of all time All the Commodore machines in that series, 60 00:07:58,600 --> 00:08:07,000 the PET, the VIC-20 and Commodore 64, all of those, all of the Apple 8-bit machines, 61 00:08:07,000 --> 00:08:14,510 all of the Atari 8-bit machines, including the Atari video entertainment system and the 62 00:08:14,510 --> 00:08:21,760 Nintendo machine all use that same chip, which is really quite amazing 63 00:08:21,760 --> 00:08:25,260 How do you make it work? You’ve got to have some programming going 64 00:08:25,260 --> 00:08:31,320 along with it; needs to have some memory; needs to have some I/O so Chuck designed the 65 00:08:31,320 --> 00:08:40,700 KIM which Keyboard Interface Module if I remember correctly 66 00:08:40,700 --> 00:08:52,190 And it had a 16-button keyboard that allowed you to enter commands, program the thing in 67 00:08:52,190 --> 00:08:57,200 in Assembly language, or actually in binary in hexadecimal code 68 00:08:57,200 --> 00:09:03,150 Lots of fun because that’s the way all programming should be done 69 00:09:03,150 --> 00:09:07,810 And that was the first personal computer I ever used, I had a KIM in my bedroom 70 00:09:09,100 --> 00:09:14,760 MOS Technology was in in Norristown and I’d actually visited MOS Technology when I was 71 00:09:14,760 --> 00:09:22,260 in high school and met Chuck Peddle and bought a KIM 1 directly from the factory so Commodore, 72 00:09:22,260 --> 00:09:27,340 since they owned MOS technology, I figured that was a you know be a perfect fit for me 73 00:09:27,340 --> 00:09:36,010 So when Neil gave me a call I applied and got a job with the VIC-20 team, headed by 74 00:09:36,010 --> 00:09:37,080 Michael Tomczyk 75 00:09:38,080 --> 00:09:44,820 Chuck had designed the chip as a first step in a process where he wanted to make; and 76 00:09:44,820 --> 00:09:50,570 this is going to sound pretty funny, he wanted to make household robots a thing 77 00:09:50,570 --> 00:09:57,790 So the first thing he needed was a really inexpensive microprocessor and he met with 78 00:09:57,790 --> 00:10:06,850 my dad and said “I’m going to make this computer, if you want Commodore to make this 79 00:10:06,850 --> 00:10:09,900 computer I’ll work for you and Commodore will make this computer” 80 00:10:09,900 --> 00:10:17,900 Dad said, “Ok, let me think about it” and he came home and spoke to me and said, 81 00:10:17,900 --> 00:10:24,240 “I have no idea what he’s talking about” “Come meet this guy, talk to him about it 82 00:10:24,240 --> 00:10:30,920 and tell me what you think” So this you know punk kid at twenty goes to 83 00:10:30,920 --> 00:10:39,260 meet the designer of what is probably one of most influential pieces of technology ever; 84 00:10:39,260 --> 00:10:45,610 Chuck Peddle the designer of the 6502 And Chuck and I sit down in a booth at an 85 00:10:45,610 --> 00:10:51,500 embedded computer system fair and they had as an example of a marvellous thing that you 86 00:10:51,500 --> 00:10:57,690 can build with this; a pinball machine And Chuck and I sit down to talk about computers 87 00:10:57,690 --> 00:11:01,130 and we spent most of the time talking about science fiction 88 00:11:01,130 --> 00:11:06,550 A science fiction story by Robert Heinlein called ‘The Door Into Summer’; which is 89 00:11:06,550 --> 00:11:13,460 all about a world full of personal computers and Chuck wanted to live in that world 90 00:11:13,460 --> 00:11:18,940 So if no one else was going to make that world he was going to build it and the first step 91 00:11:18,940 --> 00:11:25,570 was the PET So after the meeting talked to dad and I said, 92 00:11:25,570 --> 00:11:29,880 “this guy knows what he’s talking about” and Commodore went into the computer business 93 00:11:34,680 --> 00:11:39,680 I joined Commodore in 1981 in the United Kingdom despite this American accent 94 00:11:40,680 --> 00:11:45,490 My first computer was the Commodore VIC-20 I was six years old when I got that 95 00:11:46,490 --> 00:11:50,590 I managed to augment my meagre savings and we went out and bought a second hand Commodore 96 00:11:50,590 --> 00:11:51,590 64 for my birthday 97 00:11:52,590 --> 00:11:55,930 I got my first computer, home computer, which was the Commodore 64 98 00:11:56,930 --> 00:11:59,320 My first computer started with the Commodore 64 99 00:12:00,320 --> 00:12:03,650 I remember Christmas morning 1988; I think it was 100 00:12:03,650 --> 00:12:05,650 I unwrapped a Commodore Plus/4 101 00:12:06,650 --> 00:12:11,840 For me my brand spanking new Commodore 64 computer, eager to go downstairs and play 102 00:12:11,840 --> 00:12:17,200 on it in the lounge, unfortunately being Christmas Day there was a James Bond film on in the 103 00:12:17,200 --> 00:12:22,830 afternoon and because we were a one TV family I had to wait until that had that had finished 104 00:12:23,830 --> 00:12:26,550 We are here in Atlanta, Georgia and my first computer was the Commodore 64 105 00:12:27,550 --> 00:12:30,080 I’ve wrote a lot of music on the C64 back in the 80’s 106 00:12:31,080 --> 00:12:35,180 I had a real synthesizer sound chip, the SID chip 107 00:12:35,180 --> 00:12:38,490 I was like beside myself I had to have one 108 00:12:39,490 --> 00:12:43,360 I’m from that little window of people that worked for Jack Tramiel and then worked there 109 00:12:43,360 --> 00:12:49,700 after Jack Tramiel left so I call this a Commodore Greek tragedy in three acts and I’m from 110 00:12:49,700 --> 00:12:51,090 act two, right in the middle of it 111 00:12:52,090 --> 00:12:58,950 Jack’s past was known in the company but not in great detail at least not generally 112 00:12:58,950 --> 00:13:03,840 People knew he’d been through a tough time in Germany 113 00:13:03,840 --> 00:13:09,840 Got his start in Toronto and so on but it wasn’t a topic of general conversation 114 00:13:10,840 --> 00:13:17,510 His experiences in the Second World War were rather horrific 115 00:13:17,510 --> 00:13:26,830 So he he often told the story of, I guess it was September 1st 1939 when the Germans 116 00:13:26,830 --> 00:13:32,180 invaded Poland He remembers seeing these squadrons of airplanes 117 00:13:32,180 --> 00:13:38,940 flying over, he thought that was really cool and he you know went outside and saluted it 118 00:13:38,940 --> 00:13:44,010 He didn’t think all that highly of them after they after they came into town 119 00:13:44,010 --> 00:13:50,080 Lodz was very close to the border in fact so close that they wound up annexing that 120 00:13:50,080 --> 00:13:58,260 part of Poland into Germany All the Jews were rounded up and sent to live 121 00:13:58,260 --> 00:14:06,050 in one particular section of the city called the Ghetto conveniently not too far from the 122 00:14:06,050 --> 00:14:13,980 Jewish cemetery and they were basically slave labour 123 00:14:13,980 --> 00:14:23,210 I don’t actually remember what dad did during the ghetto years but it would have been you 124 00:14:23,210 --> 00:14:33,630 know odd jobs and manual labour of some sort because he was pretty young 125 00:14:33,630 --> 00:14:41,630 And then the the Lodz ghetto was one of the last if not the last ghetto in Poland to be 126 00:14:41,630 --> 00:14:53,570 liquidated and sent have all its; we’ll call them inhabitants sent to Birkenau, a 127 00:14:53,570 --> 00:14:59,900 huge camp part of the Auschwitz complex where people were sorted out into those who could 128 00:14:59,900 --> 00:15:09,010 work and those that couldn’t and those that couldn’t were rapidly dispatched 129 00:15:09,010 --> 00:15:21,570 He wound up going with his dad to a work camp named Ahlem just outside of Hannover 130 00:15:21,570 --> 00:15:30,080 And it’s funny he he said that he remembers trying to never talk about this as we were 131 00:15:30,080 --> 00:15:35,740 growing up so as far as he was concerned he never mentioned it 132 00:15:35,740 --> 00:15:44,060 As far as us kids were concerned they talked about it all the damn time because; and there’s 133 00:15:44,060 --> 00:15:49,480 nothing inconsistent about that because there’s there’s not a lot of story of that level 134 00:15:49,480 --> 00:15:57,290 that a kid can tolerate and compared to what was bubbling in his mind I’m sure he said 135 00:15:57,290 --> 00:16:03,980 nothing Very emotional, really hard to get through 136 00:16:03,980 --> 00:16:16,640 but at the end of the war he was deathly ill, too weak to move 137 00:16:16,640 --> 00:16:29,390 So as the Americans were advancing into Germany, the Germans said “OK they’re coming in, 138 00:16:29,390 --> 00:16:34,840 they’re going to kill everyone so if you want to live come with us” 139 00:16:34,840 --> 00:16:39,260 And everyone that could move got up and left, went with the Germans 140 00:16:39,260 --> 00:16:42,630 and when they were out of town they were all shot 141 00:16:42,630 --> 00:16:53,420 And the so dad told the story that he remembers; and it’s almost certainly not true but he 142 00:16:53,420 --> 00:17:00,900 remembers this black American soldier, who he thought was about seven and a half feet tall 143 00:17:00,900 --> 00:17:07,470 came in and you know just you know busted busted down the door, looked around to see 144 00:17:07,470 --> 00:17:13,130 what was going on and quickly got everything going 145 00:17:13,130 --> 00:17:21,240 People in the in that squadron said there were no blacks 146 00:17:21,240 --> 00:17:31,640 Memory is a funny thing And very quickly you know medical attention 147 00:17:31,640 --> 00:17:37,930 was given, the people were taken care of They wound up, there were a large number of 148 00:17:37,930 --> 00:17:46,960 what were called DPs, or displaced persons camps where people were rejuvenated and and 149 00:17:46,960 --> 00:17:54,340 allowed to heal and come back to some semblance of their humanity 150 00:17:54,340 --> 00:18:02,370 And my father decided; my parents were married by this point decided he wanted to come to 151 00:18:02,370 --> 00:18:09,720 the US So the guy asked him “how old are you?” 152 00:18:09,720 --> 00:18:13,850 to which my father responded “how old do I need to be?” and he said “eighteen” 153 00:18:13,850 --> 00:18:18,940 he said, “good I’m eighteen” He was seventeen 154 00:18:18,940 --> 00:18:27,930 So you may find an interesting one-year discrepancy in the year of my father’s birth whether 155 00:18:27,930 --> 00:18:34,410 it’s 1927 or 1928 On all those papers his birth date was 1927 156 00:18:34,410 --> 00:18:43,220 because that made him eighteen at the time, in fact he was born in 1928 157 00:18:43,220 --> 00:18:48,930 So he arranged to come to the US, joined the US army 158 00:18:48,930 --> 00:18:57,300 My mother came to the US Worked in the army mostly because he wanted 159 00:18:57,300 --> 00:19:02,340 to learn about the country, learn about the people and wanted to learn English 160 00:19:02,340 --> 00:19:09,670 You mentioned Ahlem? A soldier from Sioux Falls, Iowa; if I remember 161 00:19:09,670 --> 00:19:17,210 correctly, by the name of Vernon Tott took pictures of the camp that day 162 00:19:17,210 --> 00:19:28,800 A survivor, who lived across the bay in Oakland, when he retired said “you know I’m going 163 00:19:28,800 --> 00:19:39,470 to find these guys” and from memory drew the patch that he remembered on their shoulder 164 00:19:39,470 --> 00:19:47,600 and sent it off to the Pentagon and said what group is this? 165 00:19:47,600 --> 00:19:58,440 He found out, sent a letter to the that squadron and said does anyone have any memories, any 166 00:19:58,440 --> 00:20:07,530 recollection about this? And Vernon read the the newsletter from his 167 00:20:07,530 --> 00:20:14,050 squadron and said, “You know I think I still have those pictures” 168 00:20:14,050 --> 00:20:28,690 So there’s a documentary called the ‘Angel of Ahlem’ about that which is pretty amazing 169 00:20:28,690 --> 00:20:39,020 Yeah we we met Vernon in Germany I did, my parents had met of course before 170 00:20:39,020 --> 00:20:47,020 but there was a ceremony for; I think it was the, lets see, would have been the 60th anniversary 171 00:20:47,020 --> 00:20:54,650 of the clearing of the Warsaw, of the Lodz Ghetto and Vernon was in the process of dying 172 00:20:54,650 --> 00:21:03,420 of cancer but he came to Germany and participated with us in this 173 00:21:03,420 --> 00:21:05,960 Really quite moving 174 00:21:17,120 --> 00:21:18,560 “Lets focus on ‘business is war’” 175 00:21:19,120 --> 00:21:22,280 “Right” don’t you want to speak about sex?” 176 00:21:22,960 --> 00:21:23,480 “Maybe later” 177 00:21:24,020 --> 00:21:25,020 “OK” 178 00:21:26,020 --> 00:21:32,870 My father, for him, business was his life On the other hand it was very important for 179 00:21:32,870 --> 00:21:42,830 him that family be supported and be involved in, he was he was quite keen on the idea of 180 00:21:42,830 --> 00:21:44,670 his sons working for him 181 00:21:45,670 --> 00:21:53,500 And I went to see him and I walked into his office and Jack was this short, rotund, bald, 182 00:21:53,500 --> 00:22:01,040 swarthy, sort of had large, protruding eyes and a deep booming voice that actually make 183 00:22:01,040 --> 00:22:06,400 the walls vibrate it was so baritone and he was very intimidating 184 00:22:07,400 --> 00:22:16,540 I don’t know of many other people that could run things quite the way he did 185 00:22:16,540 --> 00:22:22,170 The most surprising thing when you look at the way companies are structured between the 186 00:22:22,170 --> 00:22:28,370 lowest level person and the top there’s two or three levels and that’s it and no 187 00:22:28,370 --> 00:22:36,490 one’s that far away and and this wound up with an enormous number of people that reported 188 00:22:36,490 --> 00:22:37,490 directly to my father 189 00:22:38,490 --> 00:22:44,490 He hired me and he said “but your job will not be to assist me, your job will be to follow 190 00:22:44,490 --> 00:22:50,680 me around and learn the religion” Jack’s philosophy of business, he called 191 00:22:50,680 --> 00:22:51,990 it the religion 192 00:22:52,990 --> 00:22:58,340 There are lots of ways to run a business and if you are going to run a business where the 193 00:22:58,340 --> 00:23:10,080 CEO is this warm, gentle, encouraging, mentoring person who leads people through a path of 194 00:23:10,080 --> 00:23:15,880 internal and emotional development while they generate a wonderful life-changing product 195 00:23:15,880 --> 00:23:19,310 – great And I’m sure there are companies that do 196 00:23:19,310 --> 00:23:24,460 very well under that model, that wouldn’t work with my dad as CEO 197 00:23:25,460 --> 00:23:30,810 In my personal job was not to tell them how good they are but to tell them what they are 198 00:23:30,810 --> 00:23:36,420 doing wrong so they can improve We live today in a different world 199 00:23:36,420 --> 00:23:41,240 It’s such a good job – my God 200 00:23:42,640 --> 00:23:48,970 I went to the CES show, Jack Tramiel was on the stand, he was barking orders to everybody, 201 00:23:48,970 --> 00:23:52,590 was quite aggressive I had about thirty seconds with him, I just 202 00:23:52,600 --> 00:23:56,160 said “hello I’m Dave from the UK” he shook my hand and then dismissed me with his eyes 203 00:23:57,040 --> 00:24:04,200 My father was put in touch with a financier in Toronto by the name of Irving Gould who 204 00:24:04,200 --> 00:24:08,970 I think at that time got twenty percent of the company 205 00:24:09,970 --> 00:24:14,000 Very bluntly asked him one day I said “Irving I know you’re a wealthy 206 00:24:14,000 --> 00:24:19,850 man, obviously you invested heavily into Commodore and other companies 207 00:24:19,860 --> 00:24:21,200 Would you mind telling me how you made your money?” 208 00:24:21,240 --> 00:24:25,600 And I thought he was just going to throw me out but he didn’t, he said “yes I’ll tell you” 209 00:24:25,980 --> 00:24:28,480 And I’ll tell you exactly the words he used 210 00:24:28,520 --> 00:24:32,260 He said, “David I took the best piss of my life” 211 00:24:32,270 --> 00:24:37,780 “And I’m just just stood at the urinal and a young man came in and the young man 212 00:24:37,780 --> 00:24:43,940 is going ‘so well these guys have invented a system of twenty foot and forty foot containers 213 00:24:43,940 --> 00:24:48,700 that can get picked up and carried on lorries and they can get put onto special container 214 00:24:48,700 --> 00:24:53,090 ships, cargo ships’ And he said ‘and I just brought to my company 215 00:24:53,090 --> 00:24:58,700 to the table the opportunity to have the rights for North America for the containers and they’ve 216 00:24:58,700 --> 00:25:02,870 just turned it down’ and Irving just said “you’ve just found your man” 217 00:25:03,870 --> 00:25:09,340 Commodore programmers put together a game called ‘Jack attack’ and they named it 218 00:25:09,340 --> 00:25:10,340 after Jack 219 00:25:11,340 --> 00:25:15,300 You know at Commodore we have something that’s sort of urban legend and yet has it’s basis 220 00:25:15,300 --> 00:25:19,440 in truth and it’s called a ‘Jack attack’ And ‘Jack attacks’ can actually occur 221 00:25:19,440 --> 00:25:23,940 one on one, right Where you you might say, “I just can’t 222 00:25:23,940 --> 00:25:27,640 work this way ”you know You’d be the president of Commodore and 223 00:25:27,640 --> 00:25:30,900 say “I can’t work this way” and Jack would say, “Well then don’t” 224 00:25:30,900 --> 00:25:35,670 That meant you’re fired you’re just out We lost an entire office one time because 225 00:25:35,670 --> 00:25:36,670 they wanted royalties 226 00:25:37,670 --> 00:25:42,300 I went to lunch, came back, I looked at the twelve offices and they were all empty 227 00:25:42,300 --> 00:25:46,800 I went up to the receptionist and I said, “Where’s the marketing department?” 228 00:25:46,800 --> 00:25:52,220 And she’s looking she’s looking down and writing on a yellow notepad and I and she 229 00:25:52,220 --> 00:25:57,330 said “oh they’re gone, Jack came and fired them just before lunch” 230 00:25:58,330 --> 00:26:02,300 The ‘Jack attack’ I’ve know idea where the term came from 231 00:26:02,300 --> 00:26:12,210 The term the first time I heard it was long after Commodore ceased to be but as as I said 232 00:26:12,210 --> 00:26:20,210 when my father was ‘displeased’ he made made no secret of it 233 00:26:20,210 --> 00:26:27,620 There were I remember as early as the times I was working in the warehouse that I would 234 00:26:27,620 --> 00:26:34,400 be you know in the warehouse you know moving pallets around and I could hear dad 235 00:26:34,400 --> 00:26:39,910 yelling in his office And I knew someone was, someone had not done 236 00:26:39,910 --> 00:26:41,600 exactly what he wanted 237 00:26:42,600 --> 00:26:49,280 Jack was thought of as being ruthless sometimes because he held you to your word 238 00:26:49,280 --> 00:26:56,000 A young engineering manager once promised to deliver something to him and he wanted 239 00:26:56,000 --> 00:27:00,050 six months to do it So he built up a staff of thirty people and 240 00:27:00,050 --> 00:27:04,680 he started working on it Six months later to the day Jack showed up 241 00:27:04,680 --> 00:27:09,770 and said, “Is it done?” The engineer said, “no, we had some complications, 242 00:27:09,770 --> 00:27:14,450 we won’t have it done for another six months” Jack fired everybody and closed down the operation 243 00:27:14,450 --> 00:27:20,330 immediately Later that afternoon I was in Jack’s office 244 00:27:20,330 --> 00:27:24,300 when one of the engineers came in, storming in 245 00:27:24,300 --> 00:27:29,860 He was in his twenties And he said “I been here for five years, 246 00:27:29,860 --> 00:27:35,610 I’m not leaving, I helped build this company, I’m going to sit in the hallway if I have 247 00:27:35,610 --> 00:27:41,780 to I’m not being fired” And Jack said, “fine, go find yourself another job” 248 00:27:41,780 --> 00:27:44,200 And you know what if the twenty-nine other 249 00:27:44,200 --> 00:27:48,280 people in that group were smart enough to come and do that they would still have their jobs 250 00:27:48,800 --> 00:27:55,520 If he thought you were giving him nonsense he would let you know at usually fairly high 251 00:27:55,530 --> 00:28:03,890 volume levels So along with percussion on the nearest horizontal 252 00:28:03,890 --> 00:28:10,270 surface So and and when he was displeased it was it 253 00:28:10,270 --> 00:28:17,170 was obvious If you were emotionally resilient enough to 254 00:28:17,170 --> 00:28:26,280 handle that and to realize that the that the criticism what not criticism of you as a person 255 00:28:26,280 --> 00:28:33,780 but criticism of the job you had done and could grow and learn from it then you wind 256 00:28:33,780 --> 00:28:37,220 up with a group of people that will work very well under those circumstances 257 00:28:38,220 --> 00:28:43,930 My best Jack story happened in Germany I had one of the Mercedes for the show and 258 00:28:43,930 --> 00:28:51,720 my job was to chauffeur Jack and Sig around They’d spend a lot of time talking, spend 259 00:28:51,720 --> 00:28:55,650 a lot of time touring the show, spent a lot of time in bars 260 00:28:55,650 --> 00:29:02,070 So one time they’d both gotten really drunk They were both sitting in the back seat singing 261 00:29:02,070 --> 00:29:10,560 German songs; they were having a great time And Jack told the story of how he built this 262 00:29:10,560 --> 00:29:15,530 road that we were on because he was a prisoner of war in Germany 263 00:29:16,530 --> 00:29:22,040 Everyone talks about him designing all these machines, which he neither designed nor actually 264 00:29:22,040 --> 00:29:28,460 knew how to use The first computer that he was actually comfortable 265 00:29:28,460 --> 00:29:37,580 using was an I-pad and when he got comfortable using it he just took to it immediately but 266 00:29:37,580 --> 00:29:42,670 he never learned to program, never was interested in doing any of that stuff 267 00:29:42,680 --> 00:29:49,270 He knew it wasn’t magic but assumed that if he needed any expertise he would just hire it 268 00:29:49,280 --> 00:29:53,280 or he had a son that could do it for him so it was fine 269 00:30:55,620 --> 00:31:01,350 My dad brought home, in 1977, a Commodore PET 2001 270 00:31:01,350 --> 00:31:03,990 Much like the gamers today that spend all of their time in their bedrooms 271 00:31:03,990 --> 00:31:05,360 That’s what I did with a PET 272 00:31:06,360 --> 00:31:07,860 My first computer was a Commodore PET 4032 273 00:31:08,880 --> 00:31:12,560 My first experience of computers was the Commodore PET 274 00:31:18,000 --> 00:31:22,040 The Commodore PET has certain characteristic sounds when you get to know it 275 00:31:22,050 --> 00:31:25,460 First of all there’s the sound and the feel of your fingers on the keyboard 276 00:31:25,460 --> 00:31:31,760 A sort of crunching sound, a comforting sound really once once you get used to it not like 277 00:31:31,760 --> 00:31:35,950 keyboards today or anything God forbid flat, glass screens that make no sound, where you 278 00:31:35,950 --> 00:31:40,910 have to put a synthesized sound in place The actual touch from the touch-typing was 279 00:31:40,910 --> 00:31:46,270 an important feedback mechanism for the machine It was as I think about quite nostalgically 280 00:31:46,270 --> 00:31:47,280 it was a very comfortable way 281 00:31:48,280 --> 00:31:56,770 Chuck moved out to California, assembled a small team of people to work on the PET 282 00:31:56,770 --> 00:32:04,220 He did an awful lot of the work himself but there were a few incredibly talented engineers 283 00:32:04,220 --> 00:32:09,820 involved, Chuck and me Chuck knew that it needed to come with a programming 284 00:32:09,820 --> 00:32:14,790 language that you could use it fresh out of the box and the the best one available at 285 00:32:14,790 --> 00:32:19,920 the time, to some extent the only one, was Microsoft BASIC 286 00:32:19,920 --> 00:32:29,300 You know Gates comes in and says he wants a dollar a machine and my father’s response 287 00:32:29,300 --> 00:32:36,530 was “I’m already married” So he offered Bill what at the time must have 288 00:32:36,530 --> 00:32:43,600 seemed like an enormous amount of money - $50,000, which he took 289 00:32:43,600 --> 00:32:51,290 Couple of years later Bill is walking around with this entourage of Japanese businessmen 290 00:32:51,290 --> 00:32:59,670 And he comes up to the Commodore booth If you typed WAIT6502 the next number would 291 00:32:59,670 --> 00:33:04,990 be the number of times the word Microsoft was printed on the screen 292 00:33:04,990 --> 00:33:11,150 And that’s what he expected to happen, instead the machine just hung 293 00:33:11,150 --> 00:33:16,280 And I leaned over to Bill and said “you know there’s nothing at that address, it’s 294 00:33:16,280 --> 00:33:22,000 just going to hang there’’ and he gave me the if looks could kill look 295 00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:27,280 And then I realised what he was doing and said, “Your BASIC has been incredibly important 296 00:33:27,280 --> 00:33:31,520 to the to the success of this machine It’s a great product and I’m really glad 297 00:33:31,520 --> 00:33:37,390 we have it in our computers” and as a result he let me live 298 00:33:37,390 --> 00:33:42,370 You may remember the first thing one of these machines did would say COMMODORE BASIC with 299 00:33:42,370 --> 00:33:51,110 so many bytes free; so we had the we loaded the program that would read the number of 300 00:33:51,110 --> 00:33:58,200 bytes free off of the screen, decode that If it wasn’t the right number it meant that 301 00:33:58,200 --> 00:34:08,010 the memory had failed its online power test So the the very first PETs actually self-diagnosed, 302 00:34:08,010 --> 00:34:09,580 which was pretty remarkable 303 00:34:09,580 --> 00:34:14,790 The first model PET had this little or as they called it chiclet keyboard with the little 304 00:34:14,790 --> 00:34:21,110 plastic things that came off on your fingers and a cassette tape 305 00:34:21,110 --> 00:34:26,070 The next model had a larger full typewriter spacing keyboard and then you would use an 306 00:34:26,070 --> 00:34:28,840 external cassette drive 307 00:34:28,840 --> 00:34:37,410 My main sort of single contribution to the system was the graphics character set and 308 00:34:37,410 --> 00:34:44,210 the only instruction I got from Chuck was four of those images have to be hearts, diamonds, 309 00:34:44,210 --> 00:34:47,240 spades and clubs because I want to play blackjack 310 00:34:47,240 --> 00:34:56,760 I think the goal was to have the machine running for the winter CES, Consumer Electronics Show, 311 00:34:56,760 --> 00:35:01,450 which didn’t work We eventually figured out what was wrong, 312 00:35:01,450 --> 00:35:08,490 there was a resistor missing on the main circuit board otherwise everything worked perfectly 313 00:35:08,490 --> 00:35:11,840 but we didn’t know that until a couple of weeks later 314 00:35:11,840 --> 00:35:19,460 So enormous amounts of work went into meeting the deadline of these shows 315 00:35:19,460 --> 00:35:22,400 Yes so there was a lot of pressure at that first Hannover fair so I guess that would 316 00:35:22,400 --> 00:35:27,860 have been spring of 1977 It was my job to take the PET 317 00:35:27,860 --> 00:35:31,630 It got it’s own seat on the airplane next to me, which was lots of fun 318 00:35:31,630 --> 00:35:37,070 Then we had to go through German customs “What do you mean this is a computer? Computers 319 00:35:37,070 --> 00:35:41,940 are ten of millions of dollars and they’re the size of a room 320 00:35:41,940 --> 00:35:44,060 No it can’t be a computer, what are you talking about?” 321 00:35:44,060 --> 00:35:48,160 It went back and forth a couple of times In the meantime we had missed the connecting 322 00:35:48,160 --> 00:35:56,790 flight from Frankfurt to Hannover So we rented a VW microbus and drove from 323 00:35:56,790 --> 00:36:02,440 Frankfurt to Hannover Took the PET, popped it down on the table, 324 00:36:02,440 --> 00:36:09,010 plugged it in and it didn’t work So on the phone we had to diagnose what was 325 00:36:09,010 --> 00:36:15,500 going on and repair the machine Got it working and that was a lot of fun 326 00:36:16,500 --> 00:36:20,580 VIC-20 with 8K expansion probably could have got away with it at the time so that was all good 327 00:36:20,580 --> 00:36:25,950 Fat graphics – yes we like the fat graphics 328 00:36:25,950 --> 00:36:37,080 20 was it 20, 20, 22? 22, 22 yes Yes it was, I mean the difference between 329 00:36:37,080 --> 00:36:41,770 the VIC and the Commodore’s graphics, yes the Commodore was better but sometimes the 330 00:36:41,770 --> 00:36:44,930 VIC version is better Oh look at that! 331 00:36:45,930 --> 00:36:50,480 Commodore was a very international company We were the third largest personal computer 332 00:36:50,480 --> 00:36:57,430 company in the world but we were we were number three in the US but were number one in Europe 333 00:36:57,430 --> 00:37:02,880 So as a result of having sold the Commodore PET computer which was very popular especially 334 00:37:02,880 --> 00:37:07,890 in schools So here we were at this meeting and it was 335 00:37:07,890 --> 00:37:13,930 a large room with about twenty-five people seated around a square table that was open 336 00:37:13,930 --> 00:37:18,920 in the centre So Jack came in and the engineers they wanted 337 00:37:18,920 --> 00:37:26,360 to do a colour computer like an Apple and Jack said “I want a small introductory computer, 338 00:37:26,360 --> 00:37:33,630 I want a small computer that plays games and for for the masses not the classes” 339 00:37:33,630 --> 00:37:37,090 And as soon as he said that the whole room erupted and everybody said, “no we have 340 00:37:37,090 --> 00:37:41,240 to do a business computer, we have to compete with Apple, we have to do a personal computer, 341 00:37:41,240 --> 00:37:46,190 we have to do larger computers not smaller” And Jack said, “I want the small computer 342 00:37:46,190 --> 00:37:50,130 but you talk about it and I’ll come back tomorrow, I have some business” so he left 343 00:37:51,180 --> 00:37:54,590 Dad calls and he says the engineers have come up with a new machine 344 00:37:54,590 --> 00:37:58,490 I’d like you to come and take a look and see what you think of it 345 00:37:58,490 --> 00:38:05,110 Go to Chicago go to the the Commodore booth So there’s this little machine in a rectangular 346 00:38:05,110 --> 00:38:12,250 box hooked up to a TV showing all sorts of PET graphics you know character sets stuff 347 00:38:12,250 --> 00:38:15,760 but in colour And that was the birth of the of the VIC-20 348 00:38:17,070 --> 00:38:20,140 And that became the first generation of home computers 349 00:38:20,140 --> 00:38:23,750 The first million-seller of home computers that seeded the market 350 00:38:24,750 --> 00:38:30,220 I came on as part of the VIC commando team, which was the VIC-20 product launch team 351 00:38:31,220 --> 00:38:36,720 So we launched the VIC-20 at the Consumer Electronics Show in 1981 352 00:38:36,720 --> 00:38:42,940 It was a hit It actually went on to become the first million-seller 353 00:38:42,940 --> 00:38:47,010 home computer; it’s the first microcomputer of any kind to sell one million units 354 00:38:48,010 --> 00:38:49,790 When we first got the VIC-20 I had to share it with my brother 355 00:38:49,790 --> 00:38:54,320 It was actually my parents bought it for me and my brother; he’s three years older than me 356 00:38:54,320 --> 00:38:56,350 And we we didn’t have anything else; we 357 00:38:56,350 --> 00:39:00,450 just had the computer and the TV So we didn’t have any games for it, we didn’t 358 00:39:00,450 --> 00:39:03,980 have any software for it, all we had was the computer and the manual 359 00:39:03,980 --> 00:39:09,510 And so we started playing around trying to figure out how to program in BASIC using the, 360 00:39:09,510 --> 00:39:12,810 you know they had some example programs in the manual and it would teach you how to do things 361 00:39:12,810 --> 00:39:14,960 And then you know once I learned that I started 362 00:39:14,960 --> 00:39:16,100 making my own programs 363 00:39:17,100 --> 00:39:23,650 The VIC could be programmed but it only had 5K of RAM memory 364 00:39:23,650 --> 00:39:29,390 When you turned it on the 5K shrunk down to 3.5K 365 00:39:29,390 --> 00:39:32,840 3.5K is basically one sheet of typing papers worth of memory 366 00:39:32,840 --> 00:39:34,140 Today we have gigabytes 367 00:39:35,140 --> 00:39:38,160 The fat graphics really added to some of the shooters 368 00:39:38,160 --> 00:39:43,050 They were just chunky but fun Yes and the sort of sound effects were just 369 00:39:43,050 --> 00:39:47,400 sort of raucous and just Well you’re firing everything out the sound 370 00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:50,020 chip Why isn’t it blowing up? 371 00:39:50,020 --> 00:39:55,030 But it was it was that good The sound’s massively loud through the speakers 372 00:39:55,030 --> 00:39:57,940 thinking is this real? Is this going to really happen? 373 00:39:57,940 --> 00:40:01,520 But that was how it was you know it got your attention 374 00:40:01,520 --> 00:40:05,590 Some massive overly loud zapping sound, that’ll draw you straight in you know Ooh playing 375 00:40:05,590 --> 00:40:08,540 this then You would always have to be wary of the fact 376 00:40:08,540 --> 00:40:14,180 of ‘oh can this game run on unexpanded VIC or do I need 8K or 16K expansion?’ 377 00:40:14,180 --> 00:40:17,400 And thankfully a lot of games companies realised that you didn’t want to take a chance with 378 00:40:17,400 --> 00:40:19,690 the game and realise it doesn’t work so they’d always put ‘Unexpanded VIC-20’ 379 00:40:19,690 --> 00:40:22,720 in nice big bold letters on the cover 380 00:40:23,960 --> 00:40:30,080 We wired up the memory externally to the VIC-20 and that gave us a full 8k of RAM to develop 381 00:40:30,120 --> 00:40:33,400 cartridges Once we got that we could actually start developing 382 00:40:33,420 --> 00:40:42,420 more significant cartridges, more complicated games like Omega Race, Gorf, Sargon II Chess, 383 00:40:42,420 --> 00:40:49,920 the adventure games and things like that Couldn’t do those on 3.5K but 8K was bare enough 384 00:40:51,920 --> 00:40:55,920 Some of our family members gave us some Christmas presents that were VIC-20 cartridge games 385 00:40:55,920 --> 00:41:00,310 We got Omega Race, some kind of Sea Battle or something like that 386 00:41:00,310 --> 00:41:07,380 Omega Race was definitely the best one I still have that cartridge 387 00:41:08,380 --> 00:41:12,050 The real winner of course was the Commodore 64 388 00:41:12,050 --> 00:41:16,430 Yes so the Commodore 64, which was the natural outgrowth of the VIC 389 00:41:16,430 --> 00:41:23,250 The same people that designed that VIC chip designed the VIC-II, which is what powered 390 00:41:23,250 --> 00:41:27,530 the Commodore 64 And then it had an absolute brilliant sound chip 391 00:42:38,650 --> 00:42:44,740 And the Commodore with it’s Sound Interface Device or the SID chip, as it’s affectionately known 392 00:42:44,740 --> 00:42:48,740 really bundled up a hardware synthesizer inside a home computer 393 00:42:48,740 --> 00:42:54,290 And I knew then that that was a computer that I just had to get my hands on 394 00:42:55,310 --> 00:43:01,100 A lot of the music on the games at that time in the very early eighties was just really awful 395 00:43:03,100 --> 00:43:07,330 And he did a couple of VIC-20 things then we kind of went on to the 64 really, which 396 00:43:07,330 --> 00:43:10,090 was indeed obviously the SID chip 397 00:43:11,390 --> 00:43:17,710 The Commodore 64 sound chip it was it was it was a decade ahead of everything else 398 00:43:17,710 --> 00:43:22,290 So even to the stage of where the Amiga came out the Amiga couldn’t do the sounds that 399 00:43:22,290 --> 00:43:24,060 the Commodore 64 was doing It was that good 400 00:43:25,060 --> 00:43:30,930 I just had to choose the C64 because of the 64K memory and the fact that it had a sound 401 00:43:30,930 --> 00:43:32,240 chip where none of the others did 402 00:43:33,240 --> 00:43:39,220 Hearing a piece of Rob’s I think it was his arrangement of English Country Gardens 403 00:43:39,220 --> 00:43:41,680 for was it for Hover Bother or something like that? 404 00:43:41,680 --> 00:43:47,210 You know yum de da dum da da dum but it’s a lovely arrangement and had some lovely little 405 00:43:47,210 --> 00:43:48,210 sounds, little twiddles in it 406 00:43:49,210 --> 00:43:55,570 The 64 was a huge eye-opener and it was also a bit of an equalizer at home in terms of 407 00:43:55,570 --> 00:43:57,790 the different age groups getting people together and playing a game 408 00:43:57,790 --> 00:44:01,490 You know where the youngest in the family could beat the oldest or something you know 409 00:44:02,490 --> 00:44:05,900 You know there was no Internet at the time There was no easy way, even getting to the 410 00:44:05,900 --> 00:44:08,760 library was difficult It was hard for your parents to haul five 411 00:44:08,760 --> 00:44:16,260 kids to the library but you know there was these gems of resources that we would find 412 00:44:16,260 --> 00:44:19,900 just on trips to the grocery store I knew there was a big store that was nearby, 413 00:44:19,900 --> 00:44:24,760 bring a pad and paper and actually write the machine code myself, copying it because I 414 00:44:24,760 --> 00:44:28,440 couldn’t buy the book And so I would sit there while my mom was 415 00:44:28,440 --> 00:44:32,760 shopping or while she was doing her thing I would come home and have a piece of it, 416 00:44:32,760 --> 00:44:37,130 bring it to my Commodore 64 and have that stored and I would have to wait another week 417 00:44:37,130 --> 00:44:38,820 to go by to get that next little piece 418 00:44:39,820 --> 00:44:44,610 First Commodore 64 for I think three to fours years and bearing in mind it was second-hand 419 00:44:44,610 --> 00:44:50,880 anyway but it got to the point where it would only load games if the cassette deck was upside down 420 00:44:50,880 --> 00:44:53,950 And sometimes I had to bang the computer on 421 00:44:53,950 --> 00:44:57,440 the desk to get it to work And I guess I was seating the chips back in 422 00:44:57,440 --> 00:45:01,650 their sockets but as a as a twelve/thirteen year old I had no idea about that sort of thing 423 00:45:03,650 --> 00:45:08,690 I’ve been a Commodore 64 fan since 1985 and in that time I’ve been involved in programming, 424 00:45:08,690 --> 00:45:16,960 composing music, running a disc magazine and have also written a book about Commodore 64 games 425 00:45:18,960 --> 00:45:22,490 Commodore 64 was an amazing machine My best friend Shaun at school, he had a Commodore 64 426 00:45:22,490 --> 00:45:25,450 and I was sort of envious because it was actually one of the newer ones that came out 427 00:45:25,450 --> 00:45:30,340 the little you know sleek-looking white ones Joe Blade was a brilliant game on the Commodore 64 428 00:45:30,340 --> 00:45:32,690 It was actually set in like you know the far 429 00:45:32,690 --> 00:45:37,890 distant future in the year 1997 when London had been taken over by thugs 430 00:45:37,890 --> 00:45:40,920 And we got really far in that game and I remember we actually left this Commodore 64 on for 431 00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:44,140 about a week because you know we didn’t want to lose our high score 432 00:45:45,140 --> 00:45:51,350 And when I got the Commodore the technology of the sound chip meant that I could explore 433 00:45:51,350 --> 00:45:56,880 musical ideas that perhaps lay just beyond my technical playing ability 434 00:45:56,880 --> 00:46:03,600 I was really, really in to Ragtime for example and I heard a couple of Ragtime-y kind of 435 00:46:03,600 --> 00:46:08,830 tracks in Rob Hubbard’s soundtrack to Action Biker and then Martin Galway’s soundtrack 436 00:46:08,830 --> 00:46:13,140 to Kong Strikes Back And that was the point really when I realised 437 00:46:13,140 --> 00:46:20,780 that the Commodore 64 could be a vehicle for exploring composition and performance in a 438 00:46:20,780 --> 00:46:24,620 way that didn’t necessarily rely on instrumental technique 439 00:46:25,620 --> 00:46:30,860 I love music and you know we wanted to do something different with music 440 00:46:30,860 --> 00:46:38,120 And I remember seeing this advertisement in one of the computer magazines from this guy 441 00:46:38,120 --> 00:46:42,600 Rob Hubbard who basically was you know ‘I’ll write games I’ll write music for your games’ 442 00:46:42,600 --> 00:46:47,640 and and I think he even posted us a cassette to say you know ‘here’s some of the stuff I've done 443 00:46:47,700 --> 00:46:53,800 Eventually it clicked as to you know as to how it worked and what it was actually doing 444 00:46:54,740 --> 00:47:01,100 And then once you get, once you get that stuff working without the computer crashing then 445 00:47:01,110 --> 00:47:04,040 basically it was like Pandora’s box opening up 446 00:47:04,040 --> 00:47:09,340 I was thinking much more about the about the SID chip 447 00:47:10,340 --> 00:47:13,910 It kind of became like a popularity contest really the more games you had the cooler you 448 00:47:13,910 --> 00:47:16,390 were at school And if you were that kid that would come in 449 00:47:16,390 --> 00:47:19,700 with that you know new game that had just come out in the shop on Monday morning that 450 00:47:19,700 --> 00:47:23,300 every kid in school was asking for you’d be the most popular kid in school that week 451 00:47:24,300 --> 00:47:27,130 Commodore gaming was promoted through the use of clubs 452 00:47:27,130 --> 00:47:32,380 Whoever had the faster ability of doing…tap, tap, tap, click… or click, click, click… 453 00:47:32,380 --> 00:47:36,670 or this - would obviously be the winner Whoever got the most points we used to buy 454 00:47:36,670 --> 00:47:42,600 prizes as opposed to sweets, obviously the Greek element would be buying a pile of souvlaki 455 00:47:43,600 --> 00:47:46,350 At school there were lots of people with different machines 456 00:47:46,350 --> 00:47:51,090 I had a friend who had a Spectrum and I had friends who had the Commodore 64 as well and 457 00:47:51,090 --> 00:47:55,160 we would occasionally swap games to try something out 458 00:47:55,160 --> 00:48:01,340 I remember one lunch time running home from school with Ghostbusters, the tie in to the 459 00:48:01,340 --> 00:48:05,190 film and playing that for about half an hour instead of having lunch 460 00:48:06,190 --> 00:48:12,240 There was a real awful sample that was used on the Ghostbusters, so it became apparent 461 00:48:12,240 --> 00:48:18,200 that you could do samples 462 00:48:18,200 --> 00:48:25,020 What I wanted to do was try to find a way to got the be able to play a sample not just 463 00:48:25,020 --> 00:48:31,490 a little speech sample with nothing else going on but to get a musical, get something integrated 464 00:48:31,490 --> 00:48:36,300 in the music so distorted rock guitar was an obvious choice 465 00:48:37,300 --> 00:48:44,130 What could I do sound you know with the technology to get more out of the sound chip 466 00:48:44,130 --> 00:48:47,060 And one of the things that I developed was sampling 467 00:48:47,060 --> 00:48:54,430 I realised you can play the the SID voices, the three voices whilst the sampling plays 468 00:48:54,430 --> 00:48:57,980 over it And that was a revelation and they did it 469 00:48:57,980 --> 00:48:59,610 with the volume register 470 00:49:00,610 --> 00:49:06,000 The Commodore 64 now was the one that myself and my brother we we sort of saved up our money 471 00:49:06,000 --> 00:49:08,690 We worked overtime, we heard this machine 472 00:49:08,690 --> 00:49:14,510 was coming out and it was going to be the greatest, most wonderful new thing and we 473 00:49:14,510 --> 00:49:18,740 we saved up our money and we, as teenagers, and bought a Commodore 64 474 00:49:18,740 --> 00:49:23,750 And my goodness we were very happy with it, an absolutely amazing machine 475 00:49:24,750 --> 00:49:25,750 What was the the culture like at Commodore UK? 476 00:49:25,750 --> 00:49:28,070 Was was it hard work? Was it a lot of partying? 477 00:49:28,070 --> 00:49:29,340 What went on? 478 00:49:30,340 --> 00:49:39,370 There was always partying We, we really I guess supported the the the 479 00:49:39,370 --> 00:49:41,760 idea that ‘you work hard, you play hard’ 480 00:49:42,760 --> 00:49:47,790 Soon as David joined, I met David Pleasance when he first joined the company in sales 481 00:49:47,790 --> 00:49:58,780 I was already there and David was a master of creating interesting bundles for retail 482 00:49:58,780 --> 00:50:06,640 Great, great program that was developed was, while I was there, was International Soccer 483 00:50:07,640 --> 00:50:14,390 I walked past a computer store and I saw a game playing in the window and it was International 484 00:50:14,390 --> 00:50:18,200 Soccer on the Commodore 64 And there was colour, there was sound, there 485 00:50:18,200 --> 00:50:21,550 was animation, there was graphics I just had to have that machine 486 00:50:22,550 --> 00:50:28,550 This game was unbelievable and it was only possible because the 64 had sprites 487 00:50:28,550 --> 00:50:32,050 No other computer had these programmable, movable objects 488 00:50:42,990 --> 00:50:47,640 So the SID station was a project at Chalmers University of Technology where a couple of 489 00:50:47,640 --> 00:50:52,360 guys had this course to make something that involved programmable logic 490 00:50:52,360 --> 00:50:57,880 And they had two ideas; one was like a MIDI CD converter and the other was something called 491 00:50:57,880 --> 00:51:03,330 SIDomania And SIDomania was a synthesizer based on the 492 00:51:03,330 --> 00:51:06,200 SID chip The SID station is a tabletop synthesizer 493 00:51:06,200 --> 00:51:10,780 module So it’s got a few direct controls that control 494 00:51:10,780 --> 00:51:11,780 sound parameters 495 00:51:11,780 --> 00:51:18,400 It’s got a few things for entering tables and stuff that you would do on a on a regular 496 00:51:18,400 --> 00:51:21,340 Commodore 64 and a tracker but in a hardware box 497 00:51:22,400 --> 00:51:26,540 Hey, there’s this company called Commodore hiring 498 00:51:26,540 --> 00:51:30,920 Yes I need to get out of here So without really knowing; I was saving my 499 00:51:30,920 --> 00:51:35,140 money for an Atari 400, I couldn’t even afford an 800 back then 500 00:51:35,140 --> 00:51:41,030 So I I didn’t know much about Commodore and I was about to become an Atari fan but 501 00:51:41,030 --> 00:51:42,610 that stopped the day I got to Commodore 502 00:51:43,610 --> 00:51:51,180 We brought this Commodore 64 and it totally amazing because we had a PDP 23 I think it was 503 00:51:51,180 --> 00:51:53,630 And the boss was very “Oh you know you have 504 00:51:53,630 --> 00:51:57,900 to be very careful around the PDP 23” And here’s Bil with this Commodore 64 and 505 00:51:57,900 --> 00:52:04,850 you can type in ‘LOAD, $8, 8’ or whatever but you know it would do a disc drive in a 506 00:52:04,850 --> 00:52:09,400 directory and all these things And that was like you know ‘working on computers 507 00:52:09,400 --> 00:52:12,800 seems a little bit more interesting than building scales’ 508 00:52:13,800 --> 00:52:21,000 So I go to interview with Bob Russell who you know worked on parts of the VIC-20 and C64 509 00:52:21,000 --> 00:52:24,440 And you know it’s going OK and stuff but 510 00:52:24,440 --> 00:52:28,040 then at one point he said “why am I LOADX immediate 02?” and I’d go “8502” 511 00:52:28,040 --> 00:52:33,360 And he looks at me and he goes “then I’d store immediate” and I’m like “8D109” 512 00:52:33,360 --> 00:52:38,500 I’m muttering the opcodes that I know from having worked on the 6502 so closely 513 00:52:38,500 --> 00:52:42,140 And I saw his body language change you know He’s like “Ok we’ll have you down to 514 00:52:42,140 --> 00:52:47,930 the plant type thing” Well he he phrased it so nonchalantly, just 515 00:52:47,930 --> 00:52:52,220 swing by the plant I thought I was going for burgers or something 516 00:52:52,220 --> 00:52:55,900 right So I don’t even bring my resume and I’m 517 00:52:55,900 --> 00:52:58,720 in like corduroys or something when I swing by 518 00:52:58,720 --> 00:53:02,590 And first thing I do is when I go to interview with Shiraz Shivji who’s the guy who’s 519 00:53:02,590 --> 00:53:06,800 either going to hire me or not He had his desk turned around the wrong way 520 00:53:06,800 --> 00:53:10,550 and I didn’t know so I run I walk in and pop myself in his chair 521 00:53:10,550 --> 00:53:14,610 And he walks in and has to like “excuse me, you are in my chair” 522 00:53:14,610 --> 00:53:17,360 Oh right And then goes “where’s your resume?” 523 00:53:17,360 --> 00:53:20,730 I’m going “I didn’t bring one” And it’s over, the interview is over at 524 00:53:20,730 --> 00:53:24,920 that point but now Frank Hughes stops by; the guy who did work he goes “oh Shiraz 525 00:53:24,920 --> 00:53:28,370 I got it” So he brings it in and I’m starting to you 526 00:53:28,370 --> 00:53:33,820 know kind of hit my stride, talking and stuff And I just happen to mention a the K-Tron 527 00:53:33,820 --> 00:53:38,660 the vibrating wire technology, I know its one of our competitors, but I went into the 528 00:53:38,660 --> 00:53:41,960 detail you know if you if you say you’re a satellite, you know satellite, you better 529 00:53:41,960 --> 00:53:45,330 be able to talk satellite Well I’m weighing instrumentation so I better 530 00:53:45,330 --> 00:53:47,840 talk it And what I did there was I said, “it uses 531 00:53:47,840 --> 00:53:51,710 a reference weight verses a regular weight and it can even work on the moon” 532 00:53:51,710 --> 00:53:56,520 And Shiraz looked at me and said “you meant mass” and I was hired because he got to 533 00:53:56,520 --> 00:53:58,100 correct me 534 00:53:58,100 --> 00:54:04,310 I was early enough when I joined Commodore where we were still up in the MOS building 535 00:54:04,310 --> 00:54:11,580 And so it’s these tiny rooms painted psychotic blue and there was three engineers in there 536 00:54:11,580 --> 00:54:15,370 and you didn’t need the door you could’ve put a forth engineer in there 537 00:54:15,370 --> 00:54:19,470 And none of cared because like there’s a chip fab right below our feet and stuff 538 00:54:19,470 --> 00:54:23,300 So that’s where I did what became known as the TED series of computers 539 00:54:23,300 --> 00:54:28,420 I did that while working at the MOS building And then after we moved down to Westchester 540 00:54:28,420 --> 00:54:35,610 into that huge facility there, we got got Hedley and a guy named Terry Fisher ‘Fish’ 541 00:54:35,610 --> 00:54:41,350 who joined us and he did all the PC boards So we had like the cream of the crop of the 542 00:54:41,350 --> 00:54:42,700 skill company was now down here 543 00:54:43,700 --> 00:54:48,610 One of the very first tasks I was given, well it came from a guy named Andy Finkel 544 00:54:48,610 --> 00:54:57,660 And he told me to re-write the cassette loader code for the C128 to make it run faster and 545 00:54:57,660 --> 00:55:00,300 run better than the code that was used on the C64 546 00:55:00,300 --> 00:55:06,750 But he put this one perverse constraint ‘you cannot move any labels’ 547 00:55:06,750 --> 00:55:10,720 So every label in the assembly code had to stay in exactly the same place because Andy 548 00:55:10,720 --> 00:55:15,130 was of the opinion that programmers would randomly jump to any label that had gotten 549 00:55:15,130 --> 00:55:21,070 out there and they were all public So it was a very odd thing to have to do but 550 00:55:21,070 --> 00:55:22,240 that’s what I ended up doing 551 00:55:23,240 --> 00:55:27,080 The John Lennon looking guy from the from the outside was there and that was Bil Herd 552 00:55:27,080 --> 00:55:34,860 And he proceeded to ask me some technical questions about about saturation limiting 553 00:55:34,860 --> 00:55:39,680 diodes on the input of op-amps and also about Laplace transforms, which he didn’t know 554 00:55:39,680 --> 00:55:45,160 how to do And it was like yes so I think we had a really 555 00:55:45,160 --> 00:55:49,460 good interview and sure enough a day or so later they called me in to visit Commodore 556 00:55:49,460 --> 00:55:52,710 on Monday and offered me a job on the spot 557 00:55:53,710 --> 00:55:56,720 I had the long hair going so I looked like Floyd the drummer of the Muppet Show, the 558 00:55:56,720 --> 00:56:02,430 way he walked and so you know So I was unlike most people you know because 559 00:56:02,430 --> 00:56:06,800 in California I might have been more normal but here out here on the East coast our engineers 560 00:56:06,800 --> 00:56:12,120 had actually turned into a pretty stodgy bunch and I was able to help turn it back into animal house 561 00:56:12,120 --> 00:56:13,880 And then we had fun 562 00:56:14,880 --> 00:56:17,750 A guy I used to work with was a guy named George Robbins 563 00:56:17,750 --> 00:56:22,480 He was a character I say we lived at Commodore, we worked at 564 00:56:22,480 --> 00:56:25,520 Commodore, we would go home at night and at least sleep in our bed, occasionally take 565 00:56:25,520 --> 00:56:30,000 as shower and show up the next day George lived at work 566 00:56:30,000 --> 00:56:33,160 George had two cubicles where the rest of us had one 567 00:56:33,160 --> 00:56:34,740 George had a nest 568 00:56:35,740 --> 00:56:41,830 George had managed to get caught once driving a car with no driver’s licence, an expired 569 00:56:41,830 --> 00:56:45,090 registration and no insurance 570 00:56:46,090 --> 00:56:51,450 I parked the truck against a telephone pole After the cops were done with me and I’d 571 00:56:51,450 --> 00:56:53,890 like take care of a little detail like call Hedley 572 00:56:53,890 --> 00:56:59,260 So he gave me a ride into Commodore you know not long after I became known as the resident 573 00:56:59,260 --> 00:57:00,260 Commodore person 574 00:57:02,760 --> 00:57:05,650 So George just decided he was going to live at Commodore 575 00:57:05,650 --> 00:57:10,330 Greg Berlin and I had discovered that down in the factory area up like in this weird 576 00:57:10,330 --> 00:57:14,230 sort of mid-floor area in the factory there was a place where they would stash stash all 577 00:57:14,230 --> 00:57:18,930 the Herman Miller furniture to improve our offices by putting up doorways and things 578 00:57:18,930 --> 00:57:23,180 that weren’t ever supposed to be there And George had done the same thing only even 579 00:57:23,180 --> 00:57:27,300 more so that he had kind of made himself a little room that he could close off, which 580 00:57:27,300 --> 00:57:28,300 we called his nest 581 00:57:29,300 --> 00:57:33,620 Yes well the, I was the one who coined the phrase ‘nesting’ 582 00:57:33,620 --> 00:57:37,660 You know whereas I had the air mattress and stuff George would sleep in bubble wrap 583 00:57:37,660 --> 00:57:40,750 And then he’d get up and he’d be walking around and he’d have these red rings, blinking 584 00:57:40,750 --> 00:57:45,120 his eyes and stuff but he’d have these little impressions all over his face from the bubble wrap 585 00:57:45,120 --> 00:57:47,290 And when you went to look for George, because 586 00:57:47,290 --> 00:57:50,820 he didn’t always sleep in the same place, you’d look under something see like a foot 587 00:57:50,820 --> 00:57:55,370 sticking out of bubble wrap – found him You know it was literally like a mouse nest 588 00:57:55,370 --> 00:57:57,530 at that part, so we called it nesting 589 00:57:58,530 --> 00:58:00,860 I kept a sleeping bag I could sleep under my desk when I needed 590 00:58:00,860 --> 00:58:04,690 to but I wasn’t planning to live there full-time but George kind of was 591 00:58:04,690 --> 00:58:09,360 And he’d also take, he’d also take sort of sponge baths in the, in the bathroom 592 00:58:09,360 --> 00:58:15,060 We didn’t have a shower and so yes he was kind of a character, that’s just part of it 593 00:58:15,060 --> 00:58:17,780 George got paid in cash, he didn’t have 594 00:58:17,780 --> 00:58:21,840 direct deposit and at some point they found out that he had like six months of un-cashed 595 00:58:21,840 --> 00:58:28,360 pay cheques in his drawer, in his office because he was never leaving and you know maybe to 596 00:58:28,360 --> 00:58:32,270 eat he’d drive you know, I mean all of us would had cars and we’d go out 597 00:58:33,270 --> 00:58:35,840 And you know we are all in our twenties and thirties and we’re getting paid good money 598 00:58:35,840 --> 00:58:40,300 we think and you know we’re doing okay And George has decided he needs money 599 00:58:40,300 --> 00:58:45,270 And he reaches into his pocket and he pulls out six months worth of pay cheques 600 00:58:45,270 --> 00:58:50,990 What that George? He said, “Oh I need to cash out some” 601 00:58:50,990 --> 00:58:52,720 Because he needs a deposit, because he didn’t spend any money, because he didn’t have 602 00:58:52,720 --> 00:58:54,720 any expenses, he lived in the building you know 603 00:58:54,720 --> 00:58:58,730 So he had this huge pile He filled out six months of pay cheques and 604 00:58:58,730 --> 00:59:02,070 of course I’m sitting there going “oh man what I could” you know we are all like 605 00:59:02,070 --> 00:59:04,100 “wow that’s a, that’s a chunk of change” 606 00:59:05,100 --> 00:59:11,360 So he was forced by personnel to open an account with direct deposit because I guess they didn’t 607 00:59:11,360 --> 00:59:18,580 like the idea of cheques not being cashed Yes it was funny, that’s a, I mean there’s, 608 00:59:18,580 --> 00:59:21,660 you could you could come up with a lot of different George stories if you thought about it 609 00:59:22,080 --> 00:59:23,540 Yes George, George was, he was a character 610 00:59:23,920 --> 00:59:29,360 We worked to go to CES and George was an engineer, a key engineer on the product, actually it 611 00:59:29,560 --> 00:59:34,980 might have been when the A500 came out and the mandate came down that everybody going 612 00:59:34,980 --> 00:59:40,120 to CES had to wear a suit So you had to have a tie and a suit and you 613 00:59:40,120 --> 00:59:42,440 had to look good And all of George’s attire were were you 614 00:59:42,440 --> 00:59:48,410 know blue jeans with battery acid holes in them and ripped T-shirts just because he didn’t 615 00:59:48,410 --> 00:59:53,980 feel that dressing up was sort of his thing But he wanted to go to CES and so he needed 616 00:59:53,980 --> 00:59:58,130 to get a suit So he goes out and he buys this, this synthetic 617 00:59:58,130 --> 01:00:04,710 material, polyester suit, sort of tan coloured right and he’s got the suit 618 01:00:04,710 --> 01:00:08,130 So now we are in the labs and we have to figure out how to get to CES 619 01:00:08,130 --> 01:00:14,000 So the rest of us have this thing called luggage that we put our clothes in but George doesn’t 620 01:00:14,000 --> 01:00:17,490 possess any of this so he’s not sure exactly what he’s going to do 621 01:00:17,490 --> 01:00:23,640 So literally he takes a grocery bag and he jams his suit in the grocery bag 622 01:00:23,640 --> 01:00:29,580 He rolls the grocery bag over and he puts duct tape on the outside of the bag and this 623 01:00:29,580 --> 01:00:33,630 is his luggage So he takes this thing and I’ll never forget 624 01:00:33,630 --> 01:00:37,180 sitting there in Las Vegas waiting for the luggage to come down and it’s coming down 625 01:00:37,180 --> 01:00:41,890 and here comes rolling George’s bag So then what happened? 626 01:00:41,890 --> 01:00:46,280 Well it’s a polyester suit and it’s been all scrunched up and compressed 627 01:00:46,280 --> 01:00:50,210 So he puts the suit on and now the sleeves are like up to here and he’s got this wrinkly 628 01:00:50,210 --> 01:00:54,270 suit on And he shows up and so management finally 629 01:00:54,270 --> 01:00:57,820 said “George you don’t have to work the booth, you know, you don’t have to wear 630 01:00:57,820 --> 01:01:04,270 the suit, you know, go see CES” and and they never really fought him on that again 631 01:01:04,270 --> 01:01:05,930 One of the best engineers I ever worked with 632 01:01:06,930 --> 01:01:10,810 It took a few years to get around this and now I have my own car and my own house and 633 01:01:10,810 --> 01:01:18,710 I don’t live at Commodore anymore but I love it anyway 634 01:01:19,970 --> 01:01:24,970 Commodore stock went through the ceiling, the Commodore stock went up and split a couple 635 01:01:24,970 --> 01:01:31,610 of times In fact Jack and his three sons had a tradition 636 01:01:31,610 --> 01:01:36,660 that whenever the stock went up ten points they would all stop and share a bottle of 637 01:01:36,660 --> 01:01:41,020 Dom Perignon champagne And I I’m privileged to say I was with them 638 01:01:41,020 --> 01:01:45,940 several times when they did that That was pretty cool and it’s a, it’s 639 01:01:45,940 --> 01:01:50,810 a kind of an interesting symbol of the growth we were achieving 640 01:01:50,810 --> 01:01:58,670 We were not just growing the market We weren’t just giving millions of people 641 01:01:58,670 --> 01:02:04,010 a computer that couldn’t afford before We were also making a lot of money for investors 642 01:02:04,010 --> 01:02:06,750 and showing that this was a profitable enterprise 643 01:02:07,750 --> 01:02:10,530 Jack Tramiel done his Apple killer and it was the Commodore 64 644 01:02:10,530 --> 01:02:14,220 He was done with Apple We used to say Apple who? 645 01:02:14,220 --> 01:02:17,590 I mean that’s just that was it, they were, they were cooked in our book 646 01:02:17,590 --> 01:02:21,830 And like it’s true and we did twenty-seven million C64’s where as Apple 2 might have 647 01:02:21,830 --> 01:02:28,070 sold five and a half million or something So we didn’t need another games machine 648 01:02:28,070 --> 01:02:34,510 what, what, what Jack wanted was Sir Clive Sinclair’s spot now you know 649 01:02:34,510 --> 01:02:39,540 And he had the little Spectrum and things and he’s like I want him next, right, I 650 01:02:39,540 --> 01:02:43,560 want that And so the, the C116 if you saw when Shiraz 651 01:02:43,560 --> 01:02:47,140 pulled it out and showed it to me It was this big; it was the Raspberry Pi of 652 01:02:47,140 --> 01:02:50,500 the day It was supposed to cost $49 and it had chiclet 653 01:02:50,500 --> 01:02:55,970 keys but it had 121 colours, had built in sound, all in one chips, basically a chip 654 01:02:55,970 --> 01:03:00,060 with a computer built around it Which back then it used to be lots of chips right 655 01:03:01,480 --> 01:03:08,880 As the company got more and more successful and more and more perks came up like, as my 656 01:03:08,880 --> 01:03:13,820 father called it the PET jet Although it probably should have been called 657 01:03:13,960 --> 01:03:19,240 the Commodore 64 jet but that didn’t sound as good 658 01:03:19,240 --> 01:03:29,330 Irving would demand use of the PET jet whenever he could and dad didn’t like this, it did 659 01:03:29,330 --> 01:03:38,320 not fit with his you know morals of what the right thing for a company asset to be used for 660 01:03:38,660 --> 01:03:42,340 Then there was the one with the full size keyboard and TED meant text display 661 01:03:42,340 --> 01:03:46,710 It was supposed to be a business machine You want to play games get a 64 662 01:03:46,710 --> 01:03:51,750 In a matter of fact the price is completely different right but we’re not, we’re not 663 01:03:51,750 --> 01:03:57,150 trying to compete with ourselves So Jack had that, had that focus that he knew 664 01:03:57,150 --> 01:03:59,030 what, what he wanted to do with the market 665 01:04:00,030 --> 01:04:13,420 I think both Commodore and Apple had in 1983, so the CES was in January of 1984, had just 666 01:04:13,420 --> 01:04:21,020 each cost a billions dollars in annual sales As I like to point out Commodore doing it 667 01:04:21,020 --> 01:04:24,990 with machines that cost a tenth as much as the Apple machines 668 01:04:24,990 --> 01:04:27,040 So a few more machines being sold 669 01:04:28,040 --> 01:04:34,910 An argument going on between Jack and Irving upstairs in the booth and I was there and 670 01:04:34,910 --> 01:04:40,290 suddenly I got this, I was demonstrating and suddenly I got, somebody came over and said 671 01:04:40,290 --> 01:04:45,160 you got to come up and explain you know the plus/4 to them 672 01:04:45,160 --> 01:04:54,000 So I went up and I I didn’t really know Irving I know Jack a lot better and so I went 673 01:04:54,000 --> 01:04:59,960 through my spiel you know explaining what, what it was, what are, what we wanted it to 674 01:04:59,960 --> 01:05:03,890 do How it was going to prop up the price of the 675 01:05:03,890 --> 01:05:10,320 C64 and you know they both, the people in the room listened and then I was dismissed 676 01:05:11,320 --> 01:05:16,840 There was a celebration for Commodore’s; I guess it was 25th anniversary 677 01:05:16,860 --> 01:05:19,840 at the time or the 30th, if I do the math quickly 678 01:05:22,220 --> 01:05:32,360 And dad gave Irving an ultimatum and said, “You can’t use company assets as if they’re 679 01:05:32,360 --> 01:05:36,740 your own As long as I’m president you can’t, you 680 01:05:36,740 --> 01:05:42,680 have to stop So either you stop doing it or I quit” 681 01:05:42,680 --> 01:05:49,800 To which Irving said “goodbye” and dad quit 682 01:05:49,800 --> 01:05:59,370 Just you know left the room and quit Walked by my wife on the, in the hall and 683 01:05:59,370 --> 01:06:13,000 looking rather stern and upset She was kind of shocked and that’s, he just quit 684 01:06:14,000 --> 01:06:18,200 There are allsorts of stories I think the official Commodore story is that 685 01:06:18,200 --> 01:06:24,820 there was a board meeting in New York a couple of weeks later where they fired him 686 01:06:24,820 --> 01:06:27,980 I’m pretty sure he wasn’t at the meeting 687 01:06:29,150 --> 01:06:33,490 When Jack leaves and he leaves literally at a CES 688 01:06:33,490 --> 01:06:40,880 Jack has a disagreement with Irving Gould, they part ways literally at the CES show and 689 01:06:40,880 --> 01:06:47,240 at that point TED literally died because now there is nobody to focus all those things 690 01:06:48,530 --> 01:06:54,620 The new generation Corvettes So the three of us got together and bought 691 01:06:54,620 --> 01:07:01,700 him one of these Corvettes at that same Consumer Electronics Show 692 01:07:01,700 --> 01:07:09,120 So Sam and Garry drove it down to Las Vegas for that same show and unbeknownst to us that 693 01:07:09,120 --> 01:07:14,610 you know this whole quitting Commodore thing was going to happen we were going to give 694 01:07:14,610 --> 01:07:20,830 him this this fun present So Garry arranges to have the car parked in 695 01:07:20,830 --> 01:07:26,340 the front of the hotel and then they went outside just on some pretence 696 01:07:26,340 --> 01:07:32,570 And dad walks out and sees the car and goes “that’s it, that’s the car, that’s 697 01:07:32,570 --> 01:07:34,860 what I want” And he walks up to it and he goes “it’s 698 01:07:34,860 --> 01:07:39,240 the right colour and it’s got all the right you know it’s got the right, right wheels 699 01:07:39,240 --> 01:07:43,050 and the right interior and the right everything and this is perfect” 700 01:07:43,050 --> 01:07:50,270 And Garry reaches into his pocket, pulls out the keys and says, “it’s yours” 701 01:07:50,270 --> 01:07:58,150 Yes and then a couple of days later he quits and hops in the car and drives home 702 01:07:59,150 --> 01:08:04,190 I didn’t really know him I you know, I’d seen him a couple of times but Jack was still 703 01:08:04,190 --> 01:08:09,820 there, he didn’t leave until after Consumer Electronics Show that January 704 01:08:09,820 --> 01:08:13,630 Couple of weeks after that is when he left so yes so I was there basically for the tail 705 01:08:13,630 --> 01:08:16,970 end of the Jack Tramiel era It didn’t, didn’t really have an impact 706 01:08:16,970 --> 01:08:20,840 A lot of the people who had made the Commodore 64 had left a long time ago 707 01:08:23,200 --> 01:08:28,720 But the, but without Jack around the sheep started multiplying without a wolf right and 708 01:08:28,720 --> 01:08:32,220 pretty soon we’re stepping in sheep shit everywhere right 709 01:08:32,220 --> 01:08:39,170 So and, and meanwhile you know we go from a core of about twelve people, eight to twelve 710 01:08:39,170 --> 01:08:42,820 people doing all the work The department blooms up to fifteen and it’s 711 01:08:42,820 --> 01:08:45,450 still the same core of eight to twelve of us doing all the work 712 01:08:45,450 --> 01:08:48,780 They didn’t know the new computer you have to start over again 713 01:08:48,780 --> 01:08:52,270 Get developers on board And this is more than marketing that that 714 01:08:52,270 --> 01:08:54,560 dropped the ball Anybody that had only been there a couple 715 01:08:54,560 --> 01:09:03,110 of years thought that C64’s sell themselves They sure acted like they did we sold 27 million 716 01:09:03,110 --> 01:09:07,240 But then they upped the price for the TED series and called it the Plus/4 and it became 717 01:09:07,240 --> 01:09:12,780 $300 Well it was designed to be $79 718 01:09:12,780 --> 01:09:18,550 So, so that thing now dies on the vine but what that shows then is you know with, with 719 01:09:18,550 --> 01:09:22,420 Jack we had a focus He didn’t think a distributor should make 720 01:09:22,420 --> 01:09:26,300 any money off hardware and he didn’t think we should make too much money off hardware 721 01:09:26,300 --> 01:09:30,860 He thinks, he thinks you should have, have a good price for a good product but not overcharge 722 01:09:30,860 --> 01:09:35,110 And distributors like “oh we want to make nice” no you’ll make that on the software 723 01:09:35,110 --> 01:09:41,230 but, but you don’t make it on my hardware So that, he would, he would enforce that so 724 01:09:41,230 --> 01:09:45,030 you know without him doing that then you know here’s a $300 thing, why is that? 725 01:09:45,030 --> 01:09:47,150 So he gets a hundred, he gets a hundred and he gets a hundred 726 01:09:48,310 --> 01:09:52,680 Fifty top executives, engineers and marketeers at Commodore all walked out of the company 727 01:09:52,680 --> 01:09:56,730 in one week It’s as if we set our time clock six months, 728 01:09:56,730 --> 01:10:00,950 we never talked to each other The six-month point came, we weren’t happy 729 01:10:00,950 --> 01:10:04,020 with what we saw at the company We weren’t being allowed to develop the 730 01:10:04,020 --> 01:10:08,470 new computers that we had in mind Had a lot of new, new stuff and prototypes 731 01:10:08,470 --> 01:10:14,300 in development, so we all walked out Greg Pratt the president of Commodore USA, 732 01:10:14,300 --> 01:10:21,890 me, all the VIC Commandoes, many of the engineers, the whole infrastructure just walked out in 733 01:10:21,890 --> 01:10:22,890 one week 734 01:10:23,890 --> 01:10:29,010 I jumped ship to what had be called the D128 and, and there’s a story with the day that 735 01:10:29,010 --> 01:10:35,030 happened But the, we ended up in engineering deciding 736 01:10:35,030 --> 01:10:41,250 to do the C128 because no one stopped us This wasn’t from on high, this wasn’t 737 01:10:41,250 --> 01:10:44,080 “there’s our project to plan for this year” 738 01:10:44,080 --> 01:10:48,670 Couple of engineers, I sat down at a table, I, I drew, I threw away the old guy’s design 739 01:10:48,670 --> 01:10:54,480 because it just wasn’t going to go anywhere used their little grid paper and hand drew 740 01:10:54,480 --> 01:10:57,780 a schematic that became the C128 741 01:11:03,200 --> 01:11:06,620 And as, we show it to management when we’d get a certain distance and they’re like 742 01:11:06,800 --> 01:11:10,510 “ this is great, I had a great idea” we’re like “I need another guy on my team “yes 743 01:11:10,510 --> 01:11:13,820 you’ve got it” you know And so we marched it down field by building 744 01:11:13,820 --> 01:11:19,280 up resources and things but it’s like we told them it’s now called the C128 you know 745 01:11:19,280 --> 01:11:25,440 because we decided, it was us that decided to make it Commodore compatible to the Commodore 64 746 01:11:25,440 --> 01:11:27,280 And we hadn’t said a hundred percent compatible, 747 01:11:27,280 --> 01:11:32,130 that was marketing once again drifting through the picture like they, like they were in a 748 01:11:32,130 --> 01:11:36,380 drunken haze “oh it’s a hundred percent compatible” well no, never said that but 749 01:11:36,380 --> 01:11:37,380 we’ll try 750 01:11:38,380 --> 01:11:41,840 Yes I, I, it’s hard to say, I think a lot of people are just like the idea it’s bigger, 751 01:11:41,840 --> 01:11:47,200 better, faster, more but is also runs my old programs so I don’t have to keep the Commodore 752 01:11:47,200 --> 01:11:51,640 64 around you know, which is, that’s a significant thing 753 01:11:52,640 --> 01:11:57,110 The 128 was there to fill a gap right We needed something for CES and we know the 754 01:11:57,110 --> 01:11:59,300 Amiga’s coming I’m actually one of the people they brought 755 01:11:59,300 --> 01:12:04,720 and I looked at the spec and said, “Why are there tanks instead of business icons?” 756 01:12:04,720 --> 01:12:11,260 So we saw the 128 as just basically if, if the main thrust of the allied forces was, 757 01:12:11,260 --> 01:12:15,530 was the Amiga it was me and my crew went up to the mountains and held the mountain pass 758 01:12:15,530 --> 01:12:18,340 for the winter you know that how I kind of look at it 759 01:12:18,340 --> 01:12:21,130 And so the 128 was only meant to sell one year 760 01:12:22,760 --> 01:12:29,800 And Yes I know we sold I know six or seven million of them at least and that was, it 761 01:12:29,800 --> 01:12:33,660 worked more than most people, you know most companies were selling as far as a single 762 01:12:33,660 --> 01:12:36,700 model of the computer It didn’t, you know it didn’t match the, 763 01:12:36,700 --> 01:12:40,900 you know the twenty-something million of the, of the C64 but nobody else did either 764 01:12:41,900 --> 01:12:45,490 There was supposed to a C128D and that was my favourite computer 765 01:12:45,490 --> 01:12:47,760 It was supposed to come out at the exact same time 766 01:12:47,760 --> 01:12:52,510 And that’s the one with the built-in drive, the keyboard clipped under it and it didn’t 767 01:12:52,510 --> 01:12:54,590 get made And I didn’t know it didn’t get produced 768 01:12:54,590 --> 01:12:59,520 until after I’d quit because I kind of wandered off after and I was burnt 769 01:12:59,520 --> 01:13:06,570 I was just fried, I, I, I, I had used a lot of me up in a very short period of time 770 01:13:06,570 --> 01:13:10,160 Do you know the hole Have you heard the hole 771 01:13:11,160 --> 01:13:12,160 No tell us it then 772 01:13:13,160 --> 01:13:16,500 Ok, so the hole-in-the-wall story We, we, as you know, we were working very 773 01:13:16,500 --> 01:13:21,170 hard and didn’t need delays that we didn’t need to be there in the first place and Commodore 774 01:13:21,170 --> 01:13:27,650 found a new way to throw one in front of us And I’d moved in to this one room with, 775 01:13:27,650 --> 01:13:33,030 where I had this big emulator and on the weekends they would turn off the, the air conditioner 776 01:13:33,030 --> 01:13:37,670 So I would wear a headband and no shirt and I would have to keep washing it off about 777 01:13:37,670 --> 01:13:40,780 every twenty minutes with spray because I‘d dripped sweat on it 778 01:13:40,780 --> 01:13:44,340 But none the less it was my room and that’s where I did my work 779 01:13:44,340 --> 01:13:47,820 Then one day I show up and the door’s locked on the weekend 780 01:13:47,820 --> 01:13:51,410 “Oh this is inconvenient” So I climb up over the ceiling and I get that 781 01:13:51,410 --> 01:13:54,210 white crap all over me and I open the door, right 782 01:13:54,210 --> 01:13:57,670 And we put up a sign that says ‘don’t lock this door, there is no key for it’ 783 01:13:57,670 --> 01:14:01,110 because you know it was a brand new facility for us and they’d never ever turned the 784 01:14:01,110 --> 01:14:05,360 key over we figured Well the security guards can’t resist a 785 01:14:05,360 --> 01:14:10,360 door than can be locked and locked it again Climb up over, get the white crap all over 786 01:14:10,360 --> 01:14:14,560 me again, put a sign that says ‘no don’t lock this door, there’s no key for it’ 787 01:14:14,560 --> 01:14:18,970 I may have said assholes or something So finally it’s locked again 788 01:14:18,970 --> 01:14:25,280 They said I could punch through the wall in one punch 789 01:14:25,280 --> 01:14:29,860 It was actually two, one for the inside layer, one for the outside layer to where I could 790 01:14:29,860 --> 01:14:34,300 reach in and unlock the door right So by the time I’ve got it open, then I 791 01:14:34,300 --> 01:14:37,280 got the white crap all over my arm now instead of me 792 01:14:37,280 --> 01:14:41,130 And there’s a bunch of Z8000 programmers you know looking like I just shot a sheep 793 01:14:41,130 --> 01:14:46,380 or something and the next day they locked the door again 794 01:14:46,380 --> 01:14:50,590 So I had to put a sign up that said ‘look assholes there’s a f****ing hole in the 795 01:14:50,590 --> 01:14:53,710 wall, stop locking the door’ That’s the hole-in-the-wall story 796 01:15:01,950 --> 01:15:04,660 You don’t get to bark We’re doing something important here where 797 01:15:04,660 --> 01:15:12,950 no barking is important Are we rolling? 798 01:15:12,950 --> 01:15:17,960 Welcome to RJ Mical’s house of construction, ha-ha ha-ha 799 01:15:17,980 --> 01:15:22,080 You know you probably won’t be able to get to show any of the house, will you? 800 01:15:22,180 --> 01:15:23,560 Don’t worry I can see it right now 801 01:15:23,740 --> 01:15:24,900 Yes, oh good, ok well 802 01:15:29,340 --> 01:15:36,060 I’m RJ Mical and I was one of the original engineers that invented the Amiga computer 803 01:15:36,070 --> 01:15:41,940 a long time ago and since then I’ve done a lot with my life 804 01:15:41,940 --> 01:15:46,220 I’ve done a lot with my career and managed to go a lot of places 805 01:15:46,220 --> 01:15:54,470 But I got to tell you that Amiga thing stands out as, as one of the most precious and and 806 01:15:54,470 --> 01:16:01,760 special periods of my life and I think the thing I’ve created that I’m most delighted about 807 01:16:04,040 --> 01:16:09,640 When I first got into Amiga I was I was a very young kid and this was a fantastic escape 808 01:16:09,870 --> 01:16:11,960 and that machine I absolutely loved 809 01:16:12,970 --> 01:16:19,460 The sound on the Amiga was a bit of a game changer so for the first time video game music 810 01:16:19,460 --> 01:16:24,910 and computer music began to sound like production music 811 01:16:25,910 --> 01:16:30,300 And when I saw the specs of the Amiga and some demos and stuff like that I was like 812 01:16:30,300 --> 01:16:32,550 this is this is the next level you know 813 01:16:33,550 --> 01:16:35,840 My love is the Amiga 500 and the CD32 814 01:16:36,840 --> 01:16:46,100 And I got an Amiga 1000 and I was I was probably mostly known for doing the Budbrain mega demos 1 and 2 815 01:16:50,350 --> 01:16:53,650 The first time I played the Amiga was when my cousin had it 816 01:16:53,650 --> 01:16:58,330 My cousin was four years older than me so he had this Amiga and we were going up to 817 01:16:58,330 --> 01:17:00,010 his house and there was just like this magic 818 01:17:01,010 --> 01:17:07,010 I’m at the University of Illinois and I’m an English major I’m I’m studying to to 819 01:17:07,010 --> 01:17:12,050 get an English degree, not sure exactly what I’m going to do with it, literature maybe, 820 01:17:12,050 --> 01:17:15,090 you know writing for newspapers or magazines or something like that 821 01:17:15,090 --> 01:17:18,840 But I didn’t want to do literature; I didn’t want to write for magazines 822 01:17:18,840 --> 01:17:22,880 I wanted to write books; I wanted to do my own my own creation 823 01:17:22,880 --> 01:17:27,390 But I was afraid of being a starving artist and then I was going to go out into the real 824 01:17:27,390 --> 01:17:34,110 world and be unable to be really successful and and have a you know have a great income 825 01:17:34,110 --> 01:17:37,570 and so on All the things I’d been taught that I really 826 01:17:37,570 --> 01:17:43,980 wanted which turned out to be not true but I was scared to go out and and get out into 827 01:17:43,980 --> 01:17:50,520 the real world with an English degree And I had this amazing fateful afternoon that 828 01:17:50,520 --> 01:17:55,370 I’m sitting in the computer lab and I’m about to graduate and I’m worried what am 829 01:17:55,370 --> 01:17:59,410 I going to do out there in the real world with an English language degree? 830 01:17:59,410 --> 01:18:02,960 And I’m sitting there in the computer lab worrying what am I going to do? What am I 831 01:18:02,960 --> 01:18:06,680 going to do? And then I take a break from my worrying to 832 01:18:06,680 --> 01:18:10,330 play some computer, some of my computer game; the Star Trek game that I played 833 01:18:10,330 --> 01:18:13,830 And I play the game for a while, then I’d stop and worry what am I going to do with 834 01:18:13,830 --> 01:18:17,340 my life Then I’d play the game and I’d worry what 835 01:18:17,340 --> 01:18:22,720 am I going to do with my life? And finally hey I know: I could do this stuff 836 01:18:22,720 --> 01:18:29,530 And, and realised all of instant in one afternoon that that really my calling was to go off 837 01:18:29,530 --> 01:18:31,570 and and to do software engineering 838 01:18:32,570 --> 01:18:39,990 In roughly December of 1982 Dave Morris convinced me that I should you know come work with him 839 01:18:39,990 --> 01:18:46,600 at at initial Amiga actually it was still Hi-Toro at the time; it was named Amiga I 840 01:18:46,600 --> 01:18:52,280 think a few months after I got there When I got there I was the first technical 841 01:18:52,280 --> 01:18:58,400 employee of any kind there Dave had eight other marketing and sales people 842 01:18:58,400 --> 01:19:02,830 working on the game controller and other things to prep the channel 843 01:19:02,830 --> 01:19:07,950 Jay Miner officially couldn’t be there because part of the deal was that he would stay at 844 01:19:07,950 --> 01:19:15,280 ZyMOS and finish the pacemaker So I arrived there by myself and then later 845 01:19:15,280 --> 01:19:21,740 on Jay and Joe Decuir would stop by And the team of the three of us were given 846 01:19:21,740 --> 01:19:28,090 a room with three very large wall-sized white boards to come up with a product 847 01:19:30,780 --> 01:19:34,630 Not only was working at Williams Electronics an amazing experience because it gave me this 848 01:19:34,630 --> 01:19:39,800 opportunity to really express myself as a computer scientist but also as an artist 849 01:19:39,800 --> 01:19:44,930 I’m a storyteller; I love creating music; I love creating graphics and special effects 850 01:19:44,930 --> 01:19:49,860 and it was a job that allowed me to tie all of that together and do something 851 01:19:49,860 --> 01:19:56,400 But even better than that I met a fellow there that got connected shortly after that with 852 01:19:56,400 --> 01:19:59,940 this new company out in California called Amiga Computer 853 01:20:00,940 --> 01:20:06,340 Dave Morris basically told us what the channel was and what he wanted to put in the channel 854 01:20:06,340 --> 01:20:09,570 and we were given a pretty much a clean slate to do it 855 01:20:09,570 --> 01:20:16,030 He wanted something that could produce animation more like the cartoons kids saw on TV 856 01:20:16,030 --> 01:20:23,490 And so we started on the whiteboard just drawing boxes and one of us would throw up an idea 857 01:20:23,490 --> 01:20:26,480 and you know Jay would shake his head and say “no feasible” 858 01:20:26,480 --> 01:20:32,970 Of course the forth person in the room was Mitchy Jay’s dog who would actually sit 859 01:20:32,970 --> 01:20:37,070 there watching You know the stories are that we would look 860 01:20:37,070 --> 01:20:42,110 at Mitchy and Mitchy would either nod or fall asleep and we would use that as a cue to the design 861 01:20:44,110 --> 01:20:47,440 And the original Amiga that I saw in the block diagram had game controller ports as part 862 01:20:47,440 --> 01:20:50,840 of its design And, and all of that it checked out as, as 863 01:20:50,840 --> 01:20:55,570 a proper game system but it also had these extra capabilities 864 01:20:55,570 --> 01:21:01,410 And it was that more than anything else that inspired me to join the company because the 865 01:21:01,410 --> 01:21:08,280 games stuff was interesting to me and to create a game platform I probably would have said 866 01:21:08,280 --> 01:21:09,730 yes if it was just that 867 01:21:10,730 --> 01:21:18,380 The Amiga is sort of the child of Commodore and Apple and Atari 868 01:21:18,380 --> 01:21:23,270 Jay and Joe Decuir had worked on Atari and of course they knew about the sprite engines 869 01:21:23,270 --> 01:21:29,570 that were in the Atari VCS The chips they had worked with were the 6502, 870 01:21:29,570 --> 01:21:35,030 which had come from Commodore of course; Chuck Peddle’s chip and then I had worked at Apple 871 01:21:35,030 --> 01:21:40,340 and learned the tricks that Woz and Burrell Smith used in the Apple 2 and the Mackintosh 872 01:21:40,340 --> 01:21:46,210 and of course the work that Lisa had reinvented from the Xerox Alto 873 01:21:46,210 --> 01:21:53,290 So we sort of combined ideas from that whole ecosystem of computers that had come before 874 01:21:53,290 --> 01:21:57,880 And I think that was one of the reasons the Amiga turned out so well, the cross-pollination 875 01:21:57,880 --> 01:22:02,330 of ideas from multiple predecessor designs 876 01:22:03,330 --> 01:22:10,190 What I saw more than anything else was the the quality, the strength of the people that 877 01:22:10,190 --> 01:22:16,220 were putting together the company And, and yes the engineering staff was superb 878 01:22:16,220 --> 01:22:22,660 and I was easily convinced by people like Dale and and Dale Luck and Ron Nicholson and 879 01:22:22,660 --> 01:22:28,150 of course Jay Miner But the but the business people really believed 880 01:22:28,150 --> 01:22:35,260 and and were extremely well experienced and had the right know how and and the right enthusiasm 881 01:22:35,260 --> 01:22:42,920 to be able to make the thing happen and so I said yes to joining Amiga Computer 882 01:22:43,920 --> 01:22:46,360 I am the chairman of the Dutch Commodore User Group 883 01:22:46,360 --> 01:22:53,380 Our club is more than 35 years old and still alive and kicking 884 01:22:54,380 --> 01:22:56,620 I like to collect old computers mainly Commodores 885 01:22:57,620 --> 01:23:05,430 We have almost four hundred members Our club meetings are visited by I think so 886 01:23:05,430 --> 01:23:13,570 about fifty to till hundred visitors every time and six times a year we are here in Maarssen 887 01:23:13,570 --> 01:23:19,530 in the Netherlands It’s a very nice place to be because we 888 01:23:19,530 --> 01:23:21,880 have a lot to do with innovation 889 01:23:27,860 --> 01:23:33,360 Somehow Dave Needle got introduced to us as a consultant who possibly could help with 890 01:23:33,360 --> 01:23:39,180 some of the general hardware design, logic design and chip design 891 01:23:39,180 --> 01:23:43,750 He came to interview actually they didn’t like him at the first interview and sent him 892 01:23:43,750 --> 01:23:47,520 away He sort of begged his way back in basically 893 01:23:47,520 --> 01:23:52,700 because he had seen the whiteboard and decided that whiteboard was better than anything else 894 01:23:52,700 --> 01:23:54,030 that he’d seen to work on 895 01:23:55,030 --> 01:23:59,860 When I joined Amiga I originally joined with the graphics staff, there’s a fellow named 896 01:23:59,860 --> 01:24:07,070 Dale Luck who was in charge of the graphics development for the Amiga and I joined to 897 01:24:07,070 --> 01:24:11,110 work for him and to work on graphics and it worked out well 898 01:24:11,110 --> 01:24:19,190 But as time went on and as the company continued to grow and to develop I ended up taking on 899 01:24:19,190 --> 01:24:24,670 more and more responsibilities for running the team with, with my boss at the time 900 01:24:25,670 --> 01:24:29,540 The technology these days is to put billions of transistors on a chip, few decades ago 901 01:24:29,540 --> 01:24:34,180 it was millions Back when we were designing the Amiga putting 902 01:24:34,180 --> 01:24:39,090 several thousand transistors on a chip was a very difficult task 903 01:24:39,090 --> 01:24:43,680 In retrospect we were trying to do a project that was nearly impossible for the team size 904 01:24:43,680 --> 01:24:44,680 that we had 905 01:24:45,680 --> 01:24:49,900 All computers at that point were switching to being user interface oriented 906 01:24:49,900 --> 01:24:55,770 It was, it was no longer good enough to have a computer where the user had to type cryptic 907 01:24:55,770 --> 01:25:01,780 text into a text window and command the computer to do things by knowing the right instructions 908 01:25:01,780 --> 01:25:06,500 to give The new world was one where it was a graphical 909 01:25:06,500 --> 01:25:13,730 user interface and you interacted with it with you hands and and it was a much more 910 01:25:13,730 --> 01:25:19,240 rich and enriching sort of environment that needed to be created and the Amiga had everything 911 01:25:19,240 --> 01:25:24,120 except that, the Amiga did not have a graphical user interface capability 912 01:25:24,120 --> 01:25:29,450 And so at that point in my career I quit being the director of software engineering for the 913 01:25:29,450 --> 01:25:36,270 Amiga Computers Company and instead I went back to work being an engineer and and I spent 914 01:25:36,270 --> 01:25:42,920 about seven months developing the user interface for the Amiga that I called intuition 915 01:25:43,920 --> 01:25:48,130 We’d have these big wall sized pieces of plastic that were essentially the layout for 916 01:25:48,130 --> 01:25:55,460 the chip and we were trying to put several tens of thousands of transistors down by hand 917 01:25:55,460 --> 01:26:00,340 and get it correct An engineer nowadays would say without design 918 01:26:00,340 --> 01:26:05,950 tools that is impossible; you will never succeed; it will never work 919 01:26:05,950 --> 01:26:12,260 So if you believe them the Amiga chipset is an impossibility that we managed to successfully create 920 01:26:12,260 --> 01:26:16,340 Now we also had to do this in a reasonable 921 01:26:16,340 --> 01:26:21,780 amount of time, several thousand transistors; a start-up company has a certain amount of funds 922 01:26:23,880 --> 01:26:32,220 It all came down to the trade shows and in particular the CES The Consumer Electronics Show 923 01:26:32,220 --> 01:26:35,780 where it was make or break time for Amiga We had all these other interesting little 924 01:26:35,780 --> 01:26:41,190 novelties going but the truth was that we either delivered or we were going to run out 925 01:26:41,190 --> 01:26:45,680 of money The money that we had going was good seed 926 01:26:45,680 --> 01:26:49,450 money that would get us to the point that we had something working but we had to go 927 01:26:49,450 --> 01:26:55,110 further, we had to find additional investors and turn it into a real system 928 01:26:55,110 --> 01:27:00,130 And the way to get additional investors was to show people that what we had thought we 929 01:27:00,130 --> 01:27:04,830 could get working was actually working And the place to do that was at CES, at the 930 01:27:04,830 --> 01:27:09,590 trade show And so it, it became one of those deadlines 931 01:27:09,590 --> 01:27:13,900 for us The CES was all-important; that that it became 932 01:27:13,900 --> 01:27:18,530 make or break for us That we knew that the investors, that the 933 01:27:18,530 --> 01:27:23,950 companies that would be interested in this And would show enough interest and it would 934 01:27:23,950 --> 01:27:27,950 inspire the investors to give us the money that we needed; that we had to have a good 935 01:27:27,950 --> 01:27:33,630 showing at CES And at the same time the company really was 936 01:27:33,630 --> 01:27:37,930 starting to run out of money, seriously starting to run out of money 937 01:27:37,930 --> 01:27:43,530 And I had already started to become part of more of the executive half of the company 938 01:27:43,530 --> 01:27:49,900 at that point, so I was privy to a lot of the conversations they were having about how 939 01:27:49,900 --> 01:27:53,890 desperate thing really were and how tight money was becoming 940 01:27:53,890 --> 01:27:57,990 But in general this wasn’t being discussed with the employees because we didn’t want 941 01:27:57,990 --> 01:28:03,650 people to feel panicky and nervous and and not work as well as they might or start looking 942 01:28:03,650 --> 01:28:06,070 for other jobs or something like that if they thought the company was going to fail 943 01:28:06,070 --> 01:28:12,450 And so they kept it low-key, they didn't talk a lot about how important these trade shows 944 01:28:12,450 --> 01:28:19,410 were but we all sort of knew And and and and I wasn't all that comfortable 945 01:28:19,410 --> 01:28:25,600 with keeping stuff from the employees and so I kind of told a lot of people some of 946 01:28:25,600 --> 01:28:29,180 to some extent what we're up against and why we needed to deliver 947 01:28:30,180 --> 01:28:35,470 Dave Morris had a trade show he went to target and so we rushed ahead with the design 948 01:28:36,470 --> 01:28:41,200 And as we were coming up to one of the early trade shows and and we were both realising 949 01:28:41,200 --> 01:28:46,430 how how desperate everything was and that we really needed to get our best foot forward 950 01:28:46,430 --> 01:28:51,900 But also that we were so close and with just a little extra work there were so many cool 951 01:28:51,900 --> 01:28:55,280 things we could show then we ended up just working all night long 952 01:28:55,280 --> 01:28:59,910 We often worked all night long and and Dale and I got into this thing where we would start 953 01:28:59,910 --> 01:29:05,370 playing rock music real loud in the middle of the night to help keep ourselves awake 954 01:29:05,370 --> 01:29:10,360 And when you had to do something like cue up a five-minute compile instead of sitting 955 01:29:10,360 --> 01:29:15,330 there and potentially falling asleep you would stand up and dance 956 01:29:15,330 --> 01:29:20,310 And the two of us would take turns standing up and dancing three, four, five o'clock in 957 01:29:20,310 --> 01:29:26,460 the morning in the software lab to keep ourselves awake while we did our work And the Led Zeppelin 958 01:29:26,460 --> 01:29:32,390 was blaring loud and we're dancing And finally the day came that that we lost 959 01:29:32,390 --> 01:29:38,000 track of time and our co-workers start showing up to the office and and there's this loud 960 01:29:38,000 --> 01:29:41,890 music blaring out of the software lab And they go back there to look to see what's 961 01:29:41,890 --> 01:29:48,370 going on and there's Dale and me dancing and dancing 962 01:29:48,370 --> 01:29:53,970 We got the reputation then for being the dancing fools that's where we got that nickname Dale 963 01:29:53,970 --> 01:30:01,180 and I we were known as the dancing fools at Amiga because of that 964 01:30:01,180 --> 01:30:08,710 What we did at Amiga was unprecedented they the strange hardware rig that we put together 965 01:30:08,710 --> 01:30:12,600 to create the effect of the Amiga computer 966 01:30:13,600 --> 01:30:18,830 We got lots of little parts that were individual NAND gates and registers wire wrapped them 967 01:30:18,830 --> 01:30:25,620 together and try to get them running in order to find out if the logic circuits that we 968 01:30:25,620 --> 01:30:28,480 had drawn in paper actually work 969 01:30:28,600 --> 01:30:30,640 Something as simple as an electrostatic shock 970 01:30:30,800 --> 01:30:35,540 would wipe them out And so they had them set up on this workbench 971 01:30:35,550 --> 01:30:42,850 in the software lab but they put chairs that forced you before you could approach the chips 972 01:30:42,850 --> 01:30:49,830 to walk along a certain corridor where you would step on the this electrostatic pad that 973 01:30:49,830 --> 01:30:54,530 we had on the ground that would take electro static electricity away from you so that you 974 01:30:54,530 --> 01:30:58,010 wouldn't zap the chips And anyone that got anywhere near the chips 975 01:30:58,010 --> 01:31:03,490 had to step over this pad to get to the chip So we had this little corridor like a like 976 01:31:03,490 --> 01:31:07,790 an aisle down the centre of a church going to the chips at the end 977 01:31:07,790 --> 01:31:12,570 And even better than that these chips the output of the chips we needed to make available 978 01:31:12,570 --> 01:31:15,580 to everyone that was in the software lab where we were 979 01:31:15,580 --> 01:31:19,530 And so we had these massive cables that were the the graphics and audio output of these 980 01:31:19,530 --> 01:31:26,020 chips and we ran them up into the air and then they draped across where the the electrostatic 981 01:31:26,020 --> 01:31:30,550 pad was and went off to the rest of the the software lab 982 01:31:30,550 --> 01:31:35,700 But where they draped across the walkway it kind of they draped down because it was loose 983 01:31:35,700 --> 01:31:38,700 and it was made you kind of stoop a little bit 984 01:31:38,700 --> 01:31:45,910 And so as you would approach these Amiga stacks that were one day would be the Amiga computer 985 01:31:45,910 --> 01:31:52,380 you were obliged to walk down this one corridor and just as you got up to the stacks you had 986 01:31:52,380 --> 01:31:56,560 to bow You had to bow your head in order to get under 987 01:31:56,560 --> 01:32:02,340 the wires and it was like this this religious experience that you would go through to approach 988 01:32:02,340 --> 01:32:05,800 the hardware And little did we know at the time that it 989 01:32:05,800 --> 01:32:10,790 was in fact quite a religious experience that we were creating not only for ourselves but 990 01:32:10,790 --> 01:32:12,970 for millions of people out there in the real world 991 01:32:14,140 --> 01:32:20,970 My part in that was I actually hand wired the original two motherboards for the Amiga 992 01:32:20,970 --> 01:32:27,620 I did get one working and that was the one they use primarily to test the first set of 993 01:32:27,620 --> 01:32:32,760 breadboard emulators for the chipset and that was the one that we took down to one of the 994 01:32:32,760 --> 01:32:37,760 major trade shows the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas 995 01:32:38,850 --> 01:32:44,790 Everyone in the company worked their their hearts out to get us to these trade shows 996 01:32:44,790 --> 01:32:51,440 and to have not just the technology but the best marketing presentation we could make 997 01:32:51,440 --> 01:32:57,320 And oh the geniuses were there, the booth we put together for CES was just remarkable 998 01:32:57,320 --> 01:33:02,870 it was an amazing thing that had enough goodness on the outside to inspire everyone 999 01:33:02,870 --> 01:33:08,310 But if you were lucky enough to get an invitation into the inner sanctum of where the actual 1000 01:33:08,310 --> 01:33:15,120 Amiga demo was going on then you were in for a real treat because man that Amiga demo was 1001 01:33:15,120 --> 01:33:16,120 so cool 1002 01:33:17,120 --> 01:33:22,720 A lot of people who who saw the demo thought that we must have a fairly large mini computer 1003 01:33:22,720 --> 01:33:28,600 or IBM mainframe in the next room emulating the output they saw because they said you 1004 01:33:28,600 --> 01:33:32,500 can't do this and anything that would you know fit inside a personal computer 1005 01:33:33,500 --> 01:33:37,790 Our sales and marketing team at at Amiga were just overjoyed with the 1006 01:33:37,790 --> 01:33:42,100 success that we had and they decided they're going to take us out and give us this amazing 1007 01:33:42,100 --> 01:33:47,350 dinner for for to celebrate the the fact that we have had such an awesome first day at the 1008 01:33:47,350 --> 01:33:52,200 Consumer Electronics Show And we did we eat a lot of spaghetti and drink 1009 01:33:52,200 --> 01:33:56,460 a lot of Chianti I suppose But then after that Dale and I were talking 1010 01:33:56,460 --> 01:34:00,160 on our way back from the dinner and we realised there was still so much more we could do 1011 01:34:00,160 --> 01:34:04,660 And that if the first day was a success the second day could be even better if only we 1012 01:34:04,660 --> 01:34:07,910 worked a little bit harder And so the two of us instead of going back 1013 01:34:07,910 --> 01:34:13,040 to our hotel rooms we went back to the CES tradeshow and we talked the guards into letting 1014 01:34:13,040 --> 01:34:16,880 us get back into the booth And the two of us sat down in that booth and 1015 01:34:16,880 --> 01:34:22,750 we stayed up all night long drinking warm beer and working on the demos to make the 1016 01:34:22,750 --> 01:34:27,140 demos better so that on day two not only were they great but there are even a little bit 1017 01:34:27,140 --> 01:34:30,830 greater than great I mean added just a little bit more extra 1018 01:34:30,830 --> 01:34:35,230 pizzazz and wonder wonderment to them 1019 01:34:36,230 --> 01:34:43,530 Towards the end of the chips being fabricated I think we actually got the chips back and 1020 01:34:43,530 --> 01:34:51,930 they all worked Money was not available any more 1021 01:34:51,930 --> 01:34:56,850 Stories that later came out that both Dave Morris and Jay miner took out mortgages in 1022 01:34:56,850 --> 01:35:00,140 there on their house I had only heard that later 1023 01:35:01,140 --> 01:35:08,720 I was actually still working on 64 and plus/4 things and I was working with various companies 1024 01:35:08,720 --> 01:35:16,600 like Infocomm to help them port their stuff to the C64 and the plus/4 and that they all 1025 01:35:16,600 --> 01:35:21,660 they all seemed to have a secret project going with some unnamed computer company 1026 01:35:21,660 --> 01:35:27,290 Who you know the locked room type stuff and while I was there hanging out with them there 1027 01:35:27,290 --> 01:35:29,500 were things that they would not talk about 1028 01:35:30,500 --> 01:35:37,780 Atari was in the process of losing two million dollars a working day 1029 01:35:37,780 --> 01:35:45,930 And they I don't know how contacted dad somewhere in the in his trip; I think he was in Singapore 1030 01:35:45,930 --> 01:35:50,950 or something like that And said “please come to New York we want 1031 01:35:50,950 --> 01:35:55,500 to talk to you about buying Atari” And Sam said “we just bought Atari come 1032 01:35:55,500 --> 01:36:04,700 home, come home now” And that was an interesting transition; graduate 1033 01:36:04,700 --> 01:36:10,520 student in physics; honeymooner; vice president of software for a fortune 500 company 1034 01:36:11,520 --> 01:36:19,300 I hate to say it but I've never pulled this punch before the way that Atari did business 1035 01:36:19,300 --> 01:36:25,590 back then was miserable I never abided by that way of thinking about 1036 01:36:25,590 --> 01:36:31,440 business That way of cutthroat making money and and 1037 01:36:31,440 --> 01:36:37,400 throw people to the side, nothing matters more than being successful at making money 1038 01:36:37,400 --> 01:36:46,130 I hated that But they originally gave Amiga Computer money 1039 01:36:46,130 --> 01:36:53,260 as a cheque It was not a great deal but it was an okay 1040 01:36:53,260 --> 01:36:57,990 deal and we were facing doom Everyone was finally resigning themselves 1041 01:36:57,990 --> 01:37:03,010 to the fate that Atari was going to get it our baby from us and then that we would all 1042 01:37:03,010 --> 01:37:09,330 be out of jobs and that that this thing that we have dreamed of for all of those years 1043 01:37:09,330 --> 01:37:15,270 was was failing And at the last moment when it seemed that 1044 01:37:15,270 --> 01:37:20,910 there was no hope left suddenly out of the blue came Commodore to the rescue 1045 01:37:20,910 --> 01:37:26,830 And and Commodore found out what Atari was offering us for the company and and Commodore 1046 01:37:26,830 --> 01:37:30,650 said “oh we can do much better than that” they said 1047 01:37:30,650 --> 01:37:36,180 And they proposed a very nice rich dollar amount for the company that sounded great 1048 01:37:36,180 --> 01:37:39,800 to all of us It was this awesome moment of negotiation 1049 01:37:39,800 --> 01:37:45,830 where they they offered us you know I think it was four four dollars or four and a quarter 1050 01:37:45,830 --> 01:37:47,630 or something I don’t remember the exact number now 1051 01:37:47,630 --> 01:37:53,570 But they Dave Morris our fearless leader turned to all of us and said “you know okay well 1052 01:37:53,570 --> 01:37:58,590 here's the offer do you accept it's better than zero, it's better than Atari” and everyone 1053 01:37:58,590 --> 01:38:02,620 that reported to him said “yes sounds good accept this deal’ 1054 01:38:02,620 --> 01:38:07,290 And then he turned back to Commodore and said, “no not quite enough we're going to have 1055 01:38:07,290 --> 01:38:13,140 to pass on your offer” And it’s like ‘Oh my goodness’ 1056 01:38:13,140 --> 01:38:21,200 To have the courage to be to have a gun pointed to your head like that and still say no to 1057 01:38:21,200 --> 01:38:24,620 the best offer you'd heard so far But they offered him I think it was originally 1058 01:38:24,620 --> 01:38:28,370 four and they offered him four and a quarter or something like that he said “okay” 1059 01:38:28,370 --> 01:38:34,090 and we and and the rest was history Commodore bought the company and and and Atari’s attempt 1060 01:38:34,090 --> 01:38:40,770 to get their hands on the technology was foiled and and and Dave Morris returned the cheque 1061 01:38:40,770 --> 01:38:45,840 to Atari I've heard recently that Atari still has that cheque 1062 01:38:46,840 --> 01:38:56,160 I would like the cheque but even 1063 01:38:56,160 --> 01:39:01,800 just a photocopy would be lovely 1064 01:39:02,800 --> 01:39:09,010 So I guess we have from we have Amiga Corporation’s account number on the back there 1065 01:39:09,010 --> 01:39:20,300 So yeah half a million dollars March 7th 1984 to Amiga from Atari 1066 01:39:20,300 --> 01:39:25,960 I discovered that it was the Amiga and Commodore had just bought them 1067 01:39:27,180 --> 01:39:32,920 Folk at Atari; oh and this is presumption I don't they didn't certainly didn't tell me 1068 01:39:32,920 --> 01:39:37,790 thought alright we'll fund these guys and they'll make a nice machine except they’re 1069 01:39:37,790 --> 01:39:42,680 not be going to able to pay back So if they don't pay us within six months 1070 01:39:42,680 --> 01:39:44,930 we own the technology 1071 01:39:45,930 --> 01:39:52,300 And Commodore infused our company with cash and suddenly overnight we were productive 1072 01:39:52,300 --> 01:39:56,540 citizens We had powerful, big computers that we could use 1073 01:39:56,540 --> 01:39:59,550 And we had mag tape drives built into the 1074 01:39:59,550 --> 01:40:02,580 computer so we could back up our work on a nightly basis 1075 01:40:02,580 --> 01:40:08,220 And all this like miracle stuff happened that made us more productive 1076 01:40:09,550 --> 01:40:16,280 Right after the purchase happened within less than a month my group was actually sent out 1077 01:40:16,280 --> 01:40:23,800 to California to work with the Amiga guys to get it ready for launch 1078 01:40:23,800 --> 01:40:31,390 We were doing things like printer drivers, device drivers, application software, just 1079 01:40:31,390 --> 01:40:35,330 generally filling in where they were they were light on people 1080 01:40:36,330 --> 01:40:40,950 They themselves embrace the Amiga as the next generation that that Commodore needed to go in 1081 01:40:40,950 --> 01:40:43,410 And so was this match made in heaven where 1082 01:40:43,410 --> 01:40:48,470 ‘oh it was great, the business was great, the hardware was great, our development environments 1083 01:40:48,470 --> 01:40:49,470 became great 1084 01:40:50,470 --> 01:40:59,210 You had the development team in Los Gatos who had created a product that they thought 1085 01:40:59,210 --> 01:41:02,870 would be a game machine They could not produce it the price that it 1086 01:41:02,870 --> 01:41:10,450 would take to compete in the games market And Commodore acquired the company because 1087 01:41:10,450 --> 01:41:16,580 they needed to move quickly into the next generation of computers and you had all these 1088 01:41:16,580 --> 01:41:19,630 sales and marketing people on the East Coast with totally different ideas 1089 01:41:19,630 --> 01:41:21,700 And it was quite a bit of friction 1090 01:41:22,700 --> 01:41:30,870 Amiga in California had this amazing technology that just needed to have a little bit of the 1091 01:41:30,870 --> 01:41:37,580 low cost computer from Commodore and the high tech technology from Amiga and put that together 1092 01:41:37,580 --> 01:41:40,660 to really come up with an amazing combination 1093 01:41:41,660 --> 01:41:46,220 Everybody in Los Gatos got to go to the launch as a reward 1094 01:41:46,220 --> 01:41:54,370 We had this last-minute substitution of Graphicraft Graphicraft Hat was a very early edition had 1095 01:41:54,370 --> 01:41:59,970 some bugs and one of the bugs that still wasn’t being tracked down was the flood fill 1096 01:41:59,970 --> 01:42:04,120 You could start a flood fill and it would flood; you can fill the screen and then keep 1097 01:42:04,120 --> 01:42:08,370 going and fill the whole of the memory and so it crashed the computer 1098 01:42:08,370 --> 01:42:14,260 And so you know during the demo was during the training when Pariseau trained Andy Warhol 1099 01:42:14,260 --> 01:42:18,850 don't don't do the flood fill And naturally during the demo, the live demo 1100 01:42:18,850 --> 01:42:23,850 he does the flood fill And the rows of engineers we were all sitting 1101 01:42:23,850 --> 01:42:30,260 together you know we're right we were ‘oh no’ because we we knew this couldn't work 1102 01:42:30,260 --> 01:42:35,880 but somehow it did It did not crash the machine and that's just 1103 01:42:35,880 --> 01:42:37,050 one of those miracles that happen 1104 01:42:43,680 --> 01:42:53,660 My first job was to make the PAL version of the Amiga 1000 and so I had to I was the token 1105 01:42:53,660 --> 01:43:00,430 guy from Commodore in Westchester, Pennsylvania They had to go talk to all the guys in Los 1106 01:43:00,430 --> 01:43:08,370 Gatos and say alright we got to make a PAL video output from this computer because the 1107 01:43:08,370 --> 01:43:10,120 first Amiga was only NTSC 1108 01:43:11,120 --> 01:43:14,500 But revolutionary at the time was its multitasking of the whole 1109 01:43:14,500 --> 01:43:20,050 A lot of the internal concepts, libraries, devices and so on were just much more advanced 1110 01:43:20,050 --> 01:43:22,830 than most home computers had at that time 1111 01:43:23,830 --> 01:43:31,620 I'd heard about the the Amiga coming out and I was like you've got the Developer Docs and 1112 01:43:31,620 --> 01:43:33,990 a photocopier I have to have them 1113 01:43:33,990 --> 01:43:39,390 The 128 was it was launched that summer and then Amiga in the fall but I wanted to find 1114 01:43:39,390 --> 01:43:41,870 out about it And you there were these green books you could 1115 01:43:41,870 --> 01:43:46,040 sign out you had to put your name on them And yet they were had serial numbers and everything 1116 01:43:46,040 --> 01:43:48,160 because they didn't want this information getting out 1117 01:43:48,160 --> 01:43:54,160 And Bil Herd got one and I think the the night or maybe the night after Bil Herd got his 1118 01:43:54,160 --> 01:43:56,900 I stayed late and photocopied the whole thing so I could learn it 1119 01:44:36,320 --> 01:44:37,400 Keep it going 1120 01:44:38,080 --> 01:44:39,800 This is awesome 1121 01:44:45,300 --> 01:44:46,400 Right, oh my god 1122 01:44:51,640 --> 01:44:53,640 Look at that 1123 01:45:02,920 --> 01:45:08,700 The waterfall right there in the corner We live we have a little house in the town 1124 01:45:08,700 --> 01:45:10,320 This is not ready to be lived in yet 1125 01:45:10,440 --> 01:45:12,740 I see what you’re saying, Okay 1126 01:45:14,100 --> 01:45:18,140 So I did everything you see, every single surface 1127 01:45:20,160 --> 01:45:25,120 Elevator goes down all three floors, if I ever build the thing 1128 01:45:31,160 --> 01:45:34,700 Deal with the plans they said just you know it it's too complicated so I said 1129 01:45:34,700 --> 01:45:36,760 okay I'll build a model and you can go by that so I did 1130 01:45:37,040 --> 01:45:42,380 I built a model of whole thing and they took the measurements during the quarter inch equals a foot 1131 01:45:42,380 --> 01:45:44,220 Everything in the model is actually to scale 1132 01:45:44,320 --> 01:45:49,160 and then I had it there in the house and a bear got in before I had this door and destroyed it 1133 01:45:49,300 --> 01:45:51,040 So this was a bear that did that 1134 01:45:51,180 --> 01:45:52,700 He didn’t like the design, I don’t know 1135 01:45:52,840 --> 01:45:55,100 Yes but I did ‘Defender of the Crown’ on this, sitting in there 1136 01:45:56,040 --> 01:45:59,580 We made cedar boxes there either side of the screen 1137 01:46:01,760 --> 01:46:08,360 And cold, so it heats and air conditions and then it flows down into the lot with underground 1138 01:46:08,420 --> 01:46:11,320 five feet down where it’s always fifty-five degrees 1139 01:46:11,760 --> 01:46:15,000 So heat and cool just for the price of the electricity 1140 01:46:20,600 --> 01:46:27,830 So I flew to Commodore headquarters in Westchester, Pennsylvania and grabbed one of the executives 1141 01:46:27,830 --> 01:46:33,710 and and I had a copy of my Saucer Tag game which looked pretty pretty professional you 1142 01:46:33,710 --> 01:46:37,490 know I'd nice packaging and stuff On the basis of that they gave me a developer 1143 01:46:37,490 --> 01:46:41,840 status on the Amiga I still had to buy one, they didn't give me 1144 01:46:41,840 --> 01:46:47,620 an Amiga but they gave me all of the tools that RJ and all the Dale Luck and everybody 1145 01:46:47,620 --> 01:46:52,160 had written in order to allow people to program on the Amiga 1146 01:46:52,160 --> 01:46:59,020 And went home and and immediately started doing graphics that neither I or anybody else 1147 01:46:59,020 --> 01:47:00,020 had ever seen before 1148 01:47:01,020 --> 01:47:05,130 I saw ‘Defender of the Crown’ it was as I remember it a full-colour spread 1149 01:47:05,130 --> 01:47:10,550 of the castle scene with a catapult of Defender of the Crown and it blew my socks off 1150 01:47:10,550 --> 01:47:17,990 It was a complete game changer to see something so beautiful, so artistic and almost photographic 1151 01:47:17,990 --> 01:47:24,380 from a computer was something that I had never seen before 1152 01:47:24,380 --> 01:47:27,520 My mind was made up then I obviously needed an Amiga 1153 01:47:28,520 --> 01:47:35,340 Defender of the Crown was was the scenario was written by Kellyn Beck and he was he approached 1154 01:47:35,340 --> 01:47:41,550 Bob Jacob who was a producer at the time with the idea of doing one of the first Amiga games 1155 01:47:41,550 --> 01:47:45,590 as a cinematic game based on the movie Ivanhoe 1156 01:47:46,590 --> 01:47:53,090 At that launch of the Amiga 1000 in Europe was pretty amazing and that really started 1157 01:47:53,090 --> 01:47:57,490 it all And because of those relationships I had both 1158 01:47:57,490 --> 01:48:04,580 with the factories and the vendors in the Far East, the engineers in Westchester, Pennsylvania, 1159 01:48:04,580 --> 01:48:09,900 the engineers in Los Gatos, California and all the customers for the Amiga in Europe 1160 01:48:09,900 --> 01:48:19,050 That's what brought me to the alignment of the planets that got the Amiga 500 to say 1161 01:48:19,050 --> 01:48:24,400 ‘okay let me see if I can get this to a point where we can dramatically make a difference 1162 01:48:24,400 --> 01:48:29,960 in terms of the cost of this product and make it available to a lot more people’ 1163 01:48:36,320 --> 01:48:41,640 Now I couldn't afford an Amiga 1000 but fortunately Commodore did then a wonderful thing they 1164 01:48:41,660 --> 01:48:49,860 introduced the Amiga 500; which allowed my mum to buy me one in 1987 I think it was 1165 01:48:49,940 --> 01:48:54,160 And what a wonderful machine the Amiga 500 was it brought the power of the Amiga to the masses 1166 01:48:54,200 --> 01:48:58,320 It really did create a software market; 1167 01:48:58,320 --> 01:49:04,340 a hardware market and brought wonderful technology to the average person 1168 01:49:04,960 --> 01:49:12,100 Batman of course set the set the whole barometer because it was a movie that was anticipated 1169 01:49:12,100 --> 01:49:18,300 probably like never before and probably never since as that as that one particularly was 1170 01:49:18,300 --> 01:49:25,050 And I've got the most amazing respect for ocean software having the guts to go along 1171 01:49:25,050 --> 01:49:30,770 with that idea but that's where that's where the I mean the whole idea the concept is correct 1172 01:49:30,770 --> 01:49:34,220 something which is bigger than the sum of the parts 1173 01:49:34,220 --> 01:49:40,550 And and we specifically had the Amiga as a very small ‘oh by the way there's an Amiga 1174 01:49:40,550 --> 01:49:44,170 in the Box’ It wasn't about selling; if you remember I 1175 01:49:44,170 --> 01:49:49,190 came up with a concept ‘from now on we don't sell computers we sell dreams’ and that's 1176 01:49:49,190 --> 01:49:51,780 what we did and everything we’d produce was a dream 1177 01:49:52,780 --> 01:49:58,280 We had Dale luck come to Westchester we had Bart Whitebook come to Westchester so you 1178 01:49:58,280 --> 01:50:02,980 know we didn't want to lose the software guys but unfortunately couldn’t help it 1179 01:50:03,000 --> 01:50:05,420 some people moved on 1180 01:50:05,620 --> 01:50:10,200 There’s a lot more to do on the on the Amiga 2000 because nothing had been done really 1181 01:50:10,200 --> 01:50:13,400 the the 500 I think at that point was pretty close to finished 1182 01:50:14,000 --> 01:50:19,880 The lightning storm in Texas; the Lightning came through the phone line and zapped my 1183 01:50:19,880 --> 01:50:24,520 128D Fortunately I had insurance so with the the 1184 01:50:24,520 --> 01:50:28,590 insurance money I purchased my first Amiga, it was Amiga 2000 1185 01:50:28,590 --> 01:50:33,210 So you could see my progression to Amiga was actually an act of God or at least that's 1186 01:50:33,210 --> 01:50:34,560 what it said in the insurance policy 1187 01:50:35,240 --> 01:50:39,880 No they did the sidecar for the A1000 but they wanted to they wanted to make an Amiga 1188 01:50:40,200 --> 01:50:46,020 that would just take a regular PC card and use slots that were like IBM slots 1189 01:50:46,030 --> 01:50:50,900 So they came up with this idea of the Amiga 2000, which at that time was really just the 1190 01:50:50,900 --> 01:50:55,980 A1000 design with the expansion board from the Zorro added on to it 1191 01:50:56,520 --> 01:51:01,380 At the same time that I was working on the Amiga 500 there was a team in Braunschweig 1192 01:51:01,380 --> 01:51:07,240 Germany building an Amiga 2000 Because really the 1000 was it was trying 1193 01:51:07,240 --> 01:51:11,680 to service two markets with one computer in it it couldn't really do that too well 1194 01:51:11,680 --> 01:51:16,800 You know it's too expensive for the home and not expandable enough for the for a serious 1195 01:51:16,800 --> 01:51:20,890 user So you ended up with a 500 and 2000 and that 1196 01:51:20,890 --> 01:51:25,850 was really a pivotal step in the Amiga to make that successful 1197 01:51:25,850 --> 01:51:32,030 So you had people like NewTek that made the Video Toaster in the United States they could 1198 01:51:32,030 --> 01:51:36,240 do amazing things with a 2000 because now they can plug a card in 1199 01:51:36,240 --> 01:51:45,120 And you had you know high school and college kids that could afford to buy an Amiga and 1200 01:51:45,120 --> 01:51:48,400 get into programming or graphic design where they couldn't do that before 1201 01:51:48,840 --> 01:51:57,100 I ended up getting getting a job at the Commodore working for Andy Finkel initially 1202 01:51:57,100 --> 01:52:00,780 I had thought about cutting my hair before that because I had long hair at the time 1203 01:52:00,780 --> 01:52:04,680 It's like you know ‘I think I'm just going to go down and see if they accept me as I 1204 01:52:04,680 --> 01:52:10,040 am’ and they did and so I I and Bryce Nesbitt both started around the same time 1205 01:52:10,440 --> 01:52:16,940 When the 600 was introduced; by the way it was supposed to be called the A300 because 1206 01:52:17,240 --> 01:52:23,030 it was supposed to cost less And it turns out that the team of engineers 1207 01:52:23,030 --> 01:52:29,450 that they put on designing this cost reducing the 600 couldn't out cost reduce Jeff’s 1208 01:52:29,450 --> 01:52:35,000 500 so they ended up having to call that a 600 because it actually cost more 1209 01:52:35,000 --> 01:52:41,070 So and they still went into production with it but so now you've got two computers that 1210 01:52:41,070 --> 01:52:47,140 are pretty much pretty similar right and how do you how do you market that 1211 01:52:47,140 --> 01:52:53,520 And so the Germans saw this and they said “well why do we need a 600 when the 500 1212 01:52:53,520 --> 01:52:57,000 is cheaper and does at least as good a job? 1213 01:52:58,000 --> 01:53:05,360 When Mehdi made the decision that probably put the final nail in the coffin of Commodore, 1214 01:53:05,360 --> 01:53:15,800 which was to launch the the 1200 with double A but but not commit to enough chips to make 1215 01:53:15,800 --> 01:53:20,110 the entire production for Christmas be the 1200 1216 01:53:20,110 --> 01:53:27,740 Instead he built like 300,000 old chips at five hundreds and most of which stayed in 1217 01:53:27,740 --> 01:53:31,890 the warehouse because who wants to buy the old machine when you can get the brand-new 1218 01:53:31,890 --> 01:53:35,640 machine with more colours and faster processor and everything else 1219 01:53:36,640 --> 01:53:44,130 The 1200 wasn't actually available in volume until like December and so you pretty much 1220 01:53:44,130 --> 01:53:52,620 missed the Christmas season So if you introduced the 1200 in November 1221 01:53:52,620 --> 01:53:57,120 and you only had a limited supply you're only going to frustrate people at Christmastime 1222 01:53:57,120 --> 01:53:59,500 that they can't buy the computer that they really want to buy 1223 01:54:00,080 --> 01:54:04,680 A lot of things that were going wrong at all at the same time in those days and it was 1224 01:54:04,690 --> 01:54:09,610 pretty it was pretty obvious to us all It's just you know you're technology people 1225 01:54:09,610 --> 01:54:14,180 and you've sort of gotten along thinking that every problem is solved by technology and 1226 01:54:14,180 --> 01:54:15,720 it's certainly not in that you know 1227 01:54:16,360 --> 01:54:24,700 The idea was that when we launched the CD32, which was planned for the late spring early 1228 01:54:24,710 --> 01:54:30,420 summer of the following year they would have had games that were written specifically for 1229 01:54:30,420 --> 01:54:36,620 CD32 And then he comes to me says “I want to 1230 01:54:36,620 --> 01:54:41,290 launch the CD32 for Christmas” and I fought and fought and fought against it said “are 1231 01:54:41,290 --> 01:54:43,450 you mad?’ He said “what's wrong with you? 1232 01:54:43,450 --> 01:54:46,330 I said “first of all you're going to kill the 1200” 1233 01:54:46,330 --> 01:54:48,850 “No don't be silly this is a completely different product” 1234 01:54:48,850 --> 01:54:53,350 “You’re going to kill it” I said “but not only that you're asking us to launch something 1235 01:54:53,350 --> 01:54:58,530 when there was no software written for it and that is not good for us that wouldn't 1236 01:54:58,530 --> 01:55:04,800 that's crazy let's just keep it as we planned” “I we need the money, we're in big financial 1237 01:55:04,800 --> 01:55:08,920 trouble, we need the extra sales” And I kept saying to him “they're not going 1238 01:55:08,920 --> 01:55:14,840 to be extra sales; they may replace 1200 sales but they're not going to be extra sales” 1239 01:55:14,840 --> 01:55:15,840 he wouldn't listen 1240 01:55:16,500 --> 01:55:21,940 So Commodore had this nasty habit of announcing bad news after the close of business on Friday 1241 01:55:21,950 --> 01:55:26,020 And in you know and so they announced their bankruptcy after the close of business on 1242 01:55:26,020 --> 01:55:28,700 Friday while a good portion of us were at Mike Sinz’ 1243 01:55:28,700 --> 01:55:32,640 wedding and did not know that You got to Randell's house and they had a 1244 01:55:32,640 --> 01:55:36,280 news article taped on the door so everyone who went in would notice that you know note 1245 01:55:36,280 --> 01:55:38,380 that comma had gone out of business the night before 1246 01:55:39,080 --> 01:55:45,320 We got a copy of the of the announcement that was made to the worldwide press that's how 1247 01:55:45,330 --> 01:55:48,980 significant we weren't We just got a copy the same as everybody else 1248 01:55:48,980 --> 01:55:53,910 did ‘Commodore announces liquidation and so on 1249 01:55:53,910 --> 01:55:58,600 And they hadn’t even got the guts to pick up the phone and say ‘thanks for all your 1250 01:55:58,600 --> 01:56:03,900 help but you know it didn't work we you know we're declaring bankruptcy’ 1251 01:56:03,900 --> 01:56:10,140 But there again you see I'm not surprised about that I didn't have any regard for the 1252 01:56:10,140 --> 01:56:16,290 management I said apart from I had a fair fondness for Irving Gould but I had no regard 1253 01:56:16,290 --> 01:56:22,660 for for the management side of Commodore International And so I'm not surprised at how they handled things 1254 01:56:23,620 --> 01:56:28,560 I left before the end I was lucky I got out whilst there were still severance money; my 1255 01:56:29,600 --> 01:56:39,850 stock options still had some value and not only that but I left and went without paying 1256 01:56:39,850 --> 01:56:44,590 admission to the Software Publicists Association meeting 1257 01:56:44,590 --> 01:56:51,120 And I went into a multimedia conference and I was sitting in the audience; having been 1258 01:56:51,120 --> 01:56:56,080 multimedia personality the year in the UK a few years before 1259 01:56:56,080 --> 01:57:02,520 And there's this panel discussion and that moderator at the end of the panel says “Gail, 1260 01:57:02,520 --> 01:57:08,390 we have the mother of multimedia application sitting in the audience, Gail is there anything 1261 01:57:08,390 --> 01:57:18,440 you would like to say?” and I thought ‘oh’ So I took a deep breath did one of the hardest 1262 01:57:18,440 --> 01:57:25,580 things I've ever done in my life I stood up and said “yes I'd like to say I'm looking 1263 01:57:25,580 --> 01:57:29,120 for a job” and I got one 1264 01:57:29,540 --> 01:57:35,580 We were able to create a machine that was low cost, so very powerful 1265 01:57:35,580 --> 01:57:42,130 Took the industry by storm for the longest time was the video editing platform of the world 1266 01:57:42,130 --> 01:57:46,620 And that's what we wanted we wanted to create 1267 01:57:46,620 --> 01:57:51,460 a machine that anyone could use and that anyone could afford; that anyone could understand 1268 01:57:51,460 --> 01:58:02,780 But it I didn't know that we would be as successful as we were and how many millions of lives 1269 01:58:02,780 --> 01:58:07,680 we ended up touching with the thing that we had created 1270 01:58:07,680 --> 01:58:16,980 And I often get emails from people who say something like you know ‘hi just wanted 1271 01:58:16,980 --> 01:58:22,610 to drop in and thank you for that Amiga computer thing that you did; it would inspired me to 1272 01:58:22,610 --> 01:58:27,870 get a job in computer graphics or it inspired me to get a job in commercial development 1273 01:58:27,870 --> 01:58:33,340 or game development And I get these wonderful letters from people 1274 01:58:33,420 --> 01:58:38,420 that each and every one of them is like gold to me 1275 01:58:38,480 --> 01:58:45,220 It's it validates what we believed from the beginning that we could create a machine that 1276 01:58:45,220 --> 01:58:49,860 would open up people to new capabilities that they they had 1277 01:58:49,900 --> 01:58:56,550 And to reveal to themselves the sorts of things they might be able to do with their lives 1278 01:58:56,550 --> 01:59:03,280 And and and we were so successful at that I'm delighted to say I'm I'm proud to say 1279 01:59:03,280 --> 01:59:07,120 that that that part of our mission we were able to accomplish 1280 01:59:07,700 --> 01:59:11,080 I'm at Amiga 32 Germany and just bloody look at it 1281 01:59:11,080 --> 01:59:14,590 How many people are here? It’s it's just absolutely crazy 1282 01:59:15,590 --> 01:59:20,970 They are still showing brand-new software they are writing for a computer that I developed 1283 01:59:20,970 --> 01:59:25,130 34 years ago that I thought would merely be a museum piece 1284 01:59:25,130 --> 01:59:30,500 And the gaming industry and the Amiga fans have kept it alive in a way that I could have 1285 01:59:30,500 --> 01:59:31,500 never imagined 1286 01:59:32,080 --> 01:59:37,220 I think that that 8-bit sound is the musical equivalent of candy 1287 01:59:37,220 --> 01:59:42,530 It speaks of childhood but it speaks of something more 1288 01:59:42,540 --> 01:59:50,140 It speaks of a kind of uplifting, joyous celebration of everything that childhood represents 1289 01:59:50,200 --> 01:59:55,060 It is safety, it is warmth and above all it's fun 1290 01:59:55,160 --> 02:00:01,580 Yes there has been quite a nice retro revival over the last few years 1291 02:00:01,580 --> 02:00:07,040 There's constantly games being released and you know like Steam and other platforms and 1292 02:00:07,040 --> 02:00:10,600 that recreate the vibe of the old days 1293 02:00:10,900 --> 02:00:15,000 Yes I some times look back and think if I’d have known this stuff was going to last this 1294 02:00:15,000 --> 02:00:17,920 long I'd probably have been taking it a bit more seriously 1295 02:00:18,520 --> 02:00:24,120 This crazy room with 500 plus people here in Germany 1296 02:00:24,120 --> 02:00:30,660 Thirty years later celebrating that amazing computer and the technology that went into it 1297 02:00:31,060 --> 02:00:36,020 You'll have this purple, throbbing Amiga monster in all your houses controlling everything 1298 02:00:36,020 --> 02:00:40,260 to get rid of these Macintoshes and these PCs and and I-Pads and all that 1299 02:00:40,260 --> 02:00:41,760 Let's go back to the roots of Amiga 1300 02:00:42,220 --> 02:00:46,620 We started a YouTube channel called the ‘Guru Meditation’ named after the famous guru 1301 02:00:46,620 --> 02:00:49,600 meditation error you get when your Amiga crashes and we have a sense of humour 1302 02:00:49,900 --> 02:00:54,600 My name is Mark Cale I’m from system 3 What does Commodore mean to me? Well it means 1303 02:00:54,600 --> 02:01:00,460 passion and it was a life changer for us all our best games came from the Commodore 64 1304 02:01:00,460 --> 02:01:01,460 and the Amiga 1305 02:01:03,780 --> 02:01:07,640 And they can look back and say ‘oh I had one of those’ or ‘I wanted something like that' 1306 02:01:07,680 --> 02:01:13,140 so it's it's really fun for me to be able to share what I have with everybody here 1307 02:01:13,820 --> 02:01:19,620 My name's Andy Spencer and I’m Dean Payne and we are the Retro Computer Museum 1308 02:01:19,820 --> 02:01:26,020 Next year March 2018 the home computer museum will be open in Helmond, The Netherlands 1309 02:01:26,100 --> 02:01:33,590 Me and some friends even visiting the Amiga 30 in Mountain View California; because why not? 1310 02:01:33,590 --> 02:01:38,960 And then to England, Germany and everywhere it was like crazy 1311 02:01:39,180 --> 02:01:45,720 I’m that passionate about Commodore and Amiga that I engraved my iPhone with the Amiga logo 1312 02:01:46,040 --> 02:01:53,280 We’re currently in Cardiff in Wales attending the A-EON DEVCON 2017 1313 02:01:53,280 --> 02:01:57,420 I'm hopeful of the work we're doing and the work the community is doing as a whole 1314 02:01:57,420 --> 02:02:02,500 will ensure the future of the Amiga you know for the next 10, 20, 30 years and I'm going to 1315 02:02:02,500 --> 02:02:08,020 make sure that my grandson knows about Amiga and and actually will have his own 1316 02:02:08,160 --> 02:02:14,720 I'm here at revival 2017 the Rivals with Dave Perry from Gamesmaster on stage behind me 1317 02:02:15,020 --> 02:02:20,080 I went onto the television shows and began doing TV and to this day the Commodore Amiga 1318 02:02:20,080 --> 02:02:21,740 is still my favourite gaming machine 1319 02:02:22,240 --> 02:02:25,240 My time with the Commodore 64 was usually at my friend's house 1320 02:02:25,240 --> 02:02:28,980 I used to go over there every day, every weekend play some games 1321 02:02:29,460 --> 02:02:34,660 There was this lovely shiny, beige bread bin sitting on the table with a few games 1322 02:02:34,660 --> 02:02:39,680 How little they knew what was going to happen for the next thirty years hence 1323 02:02:40,180 --> 02:02:47,560 This is the 1541 ultimate II what you can do with this is you can connect an SD card 1324 02:02:47,560 --> 02:02:53,060 or a USB flash drive to load Commodore 64 games 1325 02:02:53,180 --> 02:02:58,600 Yes I think right now we're looking at about four thousand ultimate ultimate tools that 1326 02:02:58,600 --> 02:03:00,720 are now in the field so that's quite quite many 1327 02:03:01,140 --> 02:03:05,680 They wanted to spend their fifty-pences and two pounds and three pounds whatever 1328 02:03:05,690 --> 02:03:10,430 I can't remember how much these games were And they they were they wanted to make this 1329 02:03:10,430 --> 02:03:14,500 device do something you know so that doesn't exist today 1330 02:03:14,820 --> 02:03:19,740 I got my first Commodore 64 and it was the first release of the 64C 1331 02:03:19,760 --> 02:03:25,180 So I had the slim line model and to begin with that slim line model I still have and 1332 02:03:25,180 --> 02:03:27,300 it still works to this day 1333 02:03:27,980 --> 02:03:35,980 64 bytes is a series of short videos released weekly that introduce a various aspect of 1334 02:03:35,980 --> 02:03:37,120 programming Commodore 64 1335 02:03:37,480 --> 02:03:42,980 I keep the actual C64 here for occasional testing even though I do most of my development 1336 02:03:43,020 --> 02:03:48,880 on the modern computer And I keep this old TV here because it actually 1337 02:03:48,960 --> 02:03:54,480 has a really blurry picture and so it's actually helped me redefine some of the graphics 1338 02:03:54,500 --> 02:03:56,440 a little bit to make them a little easier to view 1339 02:03:56,880 --> 02:04:02,340 This is where mega comes in This is the original C65 as mentioned; 1340 02:04:02,420 --> 02:04:06,860 the one where Zed Yago demo was coded on 1341 02:04:09,900 --> 02:04:15,580 And this is what we have made it's basically the same 1342 02:04:16,200 --> 02:04:19,600 Hi everybody Zach Weddington here; director of Viva Amiga 1343 02:04:19,600 --> 02:04:22,440 and I am on the set of the Commodore story 1344 02:04:22,820 --> 02:04:26,550 ‘Billion to nothing and just about three that's 1345 02:04:26,550 --> 02:04:33,460 a strange kind of genius that Mehdi Ali’ Because that was a billion dollar company; 1346 02:04:33,460 --> 02:04:35,560 three years down the tubes to nothing 1347 02:04:36,080 --> 02:04:42,700 We are looking back on the retro scene from technology of 30 years ago but even today 1348 02:04:42,700 --> 02:04:48,840 the technology of tomorrow is being developed And they're using the Amiga technology 1349 02:04:48,960 --> 02:04:53,840 And yes I’m sat here with my Amiga PI, which I built 1350 02:04:54,360 --> 02:04:57,300 It just shows you that what they did really was truly something very special 1351 02:04:58,320 --> 02:05:03,780 Don’t want some you know person walking down the street with an Atari t-shirt and 1352 02:05:03,780 --> 02:05:08,880 you know breaking out into a fight with some of the Commodore t-shirt that would be bad 1353 02:05:09,320 --> 02:05:15,980 ‘Jack Buster's who ya gonna call’ is an original Amiga t-shirt; very rare 1354 02:05:16,120 --> 02:05:21,040 This is actually from workbench 2.0 Computer people at that time were you know 1355 02:05:21,080 --> 02:05:25,780 had a bad sense of humour This is the famous ‘Commodore supports its floppy’s’ 1356 02:05:28,660 --> 02:05:35,160 So that trip that I mentioned, the 60th anniversary of the clearing of the Lodz Ghetto 1357 02:05:35,220 --> 02:05:45,680 So there were my parents, my aunt and uncle, my mother's sister's husband and a bunch of 1358 02:05:45,700 --> 02:05:51,080 that generations kids and then that generations kids 1359 02:05:51,080 --> 02:06:01,940 And there's a wonderful picture of us taken in Birkenau at the end of the railway line 1360 02:06:03,540 --> 02:06:08,340 I am here at the National Museum of Computing, which is located in the historic Block H of 1361 02:06:08,380 --> 02:06:11,740 Bletchley Park So behind me is the Harwell Dekatron - 1362 02:06:11,740 --> 02:06:15,660 it's original name It is now the world's oldest working computer 1363 02:06:16,100 --> 02:06:20,240 I'll be building a computer museum in my office In the second story of my office there's a 1364 02:06:20,240 --> 02:06:27,340 platform that will have a Commodore 64 running those games and several Amigas 1365 02:06:27,340 --> 02:06:30,160 I still have the original Amiga 1000 that I did all the graphics for ‘Defender of 1366 02:06:30,160 --> 02:06:35,710 the Crown’ on and it still works fine and it's all the monitors and everything that go with it 1367 02:06:35,710 --> 02:06:40,230 I've got CD32s; I've got CDTVs; I've got Amiga 4000 1368 02:06:40,230 --> 02:06:46,180 Amiga 2000s, just everything And so those will be lined up with all of their monitors 1369 02:06:46,180 --> 02:06:51,780 running in my little computer museum I can, anytime I want a bit of nostalgia, 1370 02:06:51,800 --> 02:06:55,020 I can just go up to the second story and look at that 1371 02:06:55,420 --> 02:07:00,480 Commodore indeed was a pioneering company and changed many, many lives 1372 02:07:00,490 --> 02:07:04,460 including mine The retro scene over the last few years seems 1373 02:07:04,460 --> 02:07:09,220 to be growing and growing And you know all I want to say is you should 1374 02:07:09,220 --> 02:07:15,620 embrace your inner 8-bit and 16-bit passion and continue on the retro ride 1375 02:08:05,520 --> 02:08:11,180 I'd like to dedicate this to my mom, without her I wouldn't be here today.