GLENN BECK TV THREAD! Friday, October 16, 2009

Fox News ^ | October 16, 2009 | Glenn Beck

[DoctorBulldog]

Wow! I didn’t think anyone would notice that! Glad someone was paying attention and smart enough to question it.

Obviously, my very cerebral jab at MOS Technologies didn’t translate too well and is a humorous joke only in my own mind.

The microprocessor division of MOS Technologies was headed up by a team of ex-Motorola engineers who actually stole their 6501 microprocessor technology from, who else but, Motorola. Motorola sued them, and MOS had to do some redesigning on the 6501. They changed it a little and renamed it the 6502.

To my knowledge, MOS never produced a 3.58 Mhz 6502 (even though, whenever I would call and ask, they kept promising me that they would as soon as they worked out a few design issues). Back in the day, the joke around the coffee pots in Silicon Valley was that MOS wasn’t producing a faster 6502 because they were probably still waiting for Motorola to solve their design problems for them. Ergo, I’m still waiting for Motorola to ship me a 3.58 Mhz version for my PET computer because, quite obviously, MOS Technologies couldn’t design one on their own.

Like I said, it’s a very cerebral jab and falls flat if you don’t remember the big legal battle between Motorola and MOS Technologies. But, be that as it may, I threw the cerebral jab at MOS out there to amuse myself more than anything-—didn’t even expect anyone to catch it.

You done good, Clinging Bitterly. It does my heart proud to see that someone was sharp enough to notice the prickly point and question it.

Cheers

[Clinging Bitterly]

I guess I didn't know of the MOS/Motorola dispute. Still, I think MOS developed a more capable CPU/chipset combo than any of the other old 8 bit designs. But the bus sort of ran off the road, didn't it?

[DoctorBulldog]

Yes, MOS ran the “bus” (I enjoyed your pun, by the way) off the road due to office politics.

The older MOS engineers and supervisors were jealous of the ex-Motorola team that had invaded their office space and taken over. So, the older MOS employees staged a coup, of sorts, and severely hampered the ex-Motorola team whenever they proposed new designs-—pretty much stagnating the company.

I just Googled around to see if I could find anything about the infighting. About the only thing I could find on the web was the following:

http://www.commodore.ca/history/company/mos/mos_technology.htm

“As might happen today in your work environment, it irked the existing MOS staff to have an entire team of highly qualified and recognized people parachuted into the organization. Bill [Mensch] says that “it was painful, I had two flat tires in my first week at MOS.” An MOS staffer of Italian decent told him “you don’t mess with the Godfather”, referring to one of the MOS Vice Presidents who was unhappy with the recent conversion of Motorola staff. The existing staff wanted to work on development of a microprocessor and correctly felt they would be largely left out of the process.”

But, that pretty much sums up the office politics that were going on at MOS. And, that’s why Bill Mensch couldn’t get MOS Technologies (which was owned by Commodore by this time) to support his vision of a CMOS version of the 6502 microprocessor, so he left MOS and formed WDC (Western Design Center) in order to have the freedom to create the 65C02.

Cheers