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            MOS Technology
                 from
             On The Edge:
       The Spectacular Rise and
          Fall of Commodore
           by Brian Bagnall

                Part I

             1974 to 1976

    Hi-tech companies need three
players in order to succeed: a
financier, a technology-God, and a
juggernaut with a type-A personality.
Commodore would require these three
ingredients to take them to a new
level. They had Irving Gould, with his
financial expertise and deep pockets.
They had Jack Tramiel, so aggressive
people sometimes referred to him as
the scariest man alive. All Commodore
needed was a visionary engineer to
take Commodore into a new field of
technology.


The Grey Wizard of the East

    In the 1970's, the image of a
computer genius was not in the mold of
the young hacker we are familiar with
today. Teenaged tycoons like Bill
Gates had not filtered into the public
consciousness, and WarGames (1983,
MGM) was not yet released, with the
prototypical computer hacker portrayed
by Matthew Broderick. The accepted
image of a technological genius was a
middle-aged man with graying hair and
glasses, preferably wearing a long
white lab coat.

    Chuck Peddle was the image of a
technology wizard, with his wire-frame
glasses, white receding hairline, and
slightly crooked teeth. At two hundred
and fifty pounds, the five foot eleven
inch engineer always struggled with
his weight. Peddle describes himself
at that time as "totally out of
shape," but he was characteristically
optimistic and never without a joke or
story to tell.

    Peddle possessed the ability to
see further into the future than most
of his contemporaries and he
obsessively searched for the next big
innovation. His mind was always
active, sometimes to the point of
causing sleep deprivation. "I don't
sleep much," says Peddle. "Never did."
In fact, the pattern of sleeplessness
went back to his earliest days.

    Peddle's father was one of 21
kids. His family originated in the
Canadian Maritimes but the poor region
made it difficult to support a family.
"The whole area is very depressed,"
says Peddle. The family moved to the
United States in search of a better
economy.

    Charles Peddle was born in Bangor
Maine in 1937, one of eight children.
"My mother said that when I was young
I used to lie awake in my crib. I
would cry and fuss and didn't sleep as
much as the other kids," he says.

    Peddle was raised in the state
capital of Augusta, Maine, with a
population of just over 20,000.
Unfortunately, the move from the
Maritimes to Maine only marginally
improved the family prospects. "There
is a tremendous amount of leakage
across the border (from the
Maritimes)," he says. "People are
willing to work for nothing because
they are starving to death at home. So
it keeps wages down (in Maine) and
it's always been a poor state."

    In his senior year of high school,
Chuck thought he found his calling.
"In high school I worked in a radio
station," he says. "I really wanted to
be a radio announcer. For you, now,
that really doesn't mean very much,
but back then that was pre-TV and
radio announcers were big."

    Nearing the end of high school,
Chuck traveled to Boston to try out
for a scholarship in broadcasting. For
the first time in his life, he saw his
competition and realized he did not
have enough natural talent. With a
sense of relief, he recalls, "I failed
as a radio announcer." Returning to
Augusta, Chuck talked things over with
the radio station owner, who told him,
"I'll employ you as a radio announcer,
but you will always be stuck in Maine
because you are not good enough."

    Peddle spent some time in the
military as he contemplated his
future. "I went into the Marine Corps
just before I got out of high-school
in 1955 and I went in active reserves
in 1960," he recalls.

    During this time, Peddle's former
science teacher recognized a gift in
Peddle and encouraged him to enter
engineering. Peddle listened to his
advice, but was unsure he wanted to
enter the sciences.

    "I didn't want a pick and shovel
job," he says. "I wasn't sure what I
was going to do and I was dirt poor.
Luckily, in Maine you can be dirt poor
and still get by." Unable to earn
enough to pay for tuition fees, he
applied for student loans.

    At the end of summer, Peddle
entered the University of Maine and
enrolled in engineering and business
courses. "When I started, I didn't
have a clue what I wanted to do. I
just knew I didn't want to do pick and
shovel jobs anymore," he says. Partway
through the first year, the university
required students to choose a
discipline. "I really loved physics,
so I took engineering physics with an
electrical minor."

    Peddle remembers the dismal state
of computing. "There wasn't a computer
on campus, nor was there anyone on the
campus who was computer literate," he
says. In his final year, things began
to change. "On the entire campus,
there was one analogue computer, which
had been bought in the last four
months," he recalls. "The analogue
computer was so primitive and they
didn't know how to use it. There was
zero knowledge about computers on that
campus."

    Peddle received a standard
education in engineering, devoid of
computers. Over 200 miles away, at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT), a revolution was occurring
which would soon change his situation.

    Chuck Peddle's main influence was
the legendary inventor and
mathematician, Claude Elwood Shannon.
Though virtually unknown to the world,
Shannon was the founding father of the
modern electronic communications age.
Shannon was an eccentric, who
terrified people by riding his
unicycle through the hallways at night
while juggling.

    Shannon also built a reputation
for inventions that were of little
practical value to anyone. Over the
years, he filled his beachside house
with juggling robots, maze-solving
robot mice, chess playing programs,
mind-reading machines, and an electric
chair to transport his children down
to the lake.

    In 1948, while working at Bell
Labs, Shannon produced a
groundbreaking paper, A Mathematical
Theory of Communication. In it,
Shannon rigorously analyzed the
concept of Information Theory and how
we transmit pictures, words, sounds,
and other media using a stream of 1's
and 0's. Chuck Peddle was enchanted
with Shannon's theories.

    "Today, you take this for granted,
but you have to remember that someone
had to dream all this up," he says.
"Shannon was one of those guys that
dreamed up from nothing the idea of
the way information goes back and
forth. Everyone else's work stands on
his shoulders and most people don't
even know it."

    In 1958, Shannon returned to MIT
at Lincoln Labs as a lecturer and
Artificial Intelligence researcher.
While there, he spread his concepts on
Information Theory. "He changed the
world," says Peddle. "Shannon was not
only a pioneer but a prophet. He
effectively developed a following,
almost like a cult." One of Shannon's
cultists would soon spread the word to
the University of Maine.

    During Peddle's senior year, the
University of Maine accepted a
lecturer from MIT who studied under
Claude Shannon. According to Peddle,
"He had a nervous breakdown, so he
left MIT.

    The University of Maine was so
happy to get him because he was so
superior to the type of instructor
they could normally get. They gave him
the opportunity to teach only four
classes per week between the hours of
eleven o'clock and noon. The guy was
being totally babied and should have
been since he was a great instructor.
He decided to put together a class to
teach people about Information
Theory."

    At the time, Peddle was enrolling
for his final year and the Information
Theory class happened to fit into his
schedule. As Peddle recalls, "It
changed my life."

    The class began with the
instructor discussing the eyes and
ears as the primary sensors for
receiving information. "He started
teaching us about Boolean algebra and
binary logic, and the concept of
Information Theory," recalls Peddle.
"I just fell in love. This was where I
was going to spend my life."

    "The whole thing about how
information moves back and forth is
essent