The number of computers that were launched and number of people who learned to program on his chips was amazing. Hitting the market with a low cost chip allowed a whole generation to be able to afford to program.
Rest in Peace and thanks for building the road that allowed me to get on the programming highway.
Indeed - from the earlier, pioneering home computers like the PET and Apple II, through to the generation that followed, with the likes of the Commodore 64, VIC-20, and BBC Micro, the 6502 influenced a boggling number of programmers, myself included.
(And without the BBC Micro, would Acorn have eventually designed the Acorn RISC Machine, itself having since proven quite influential?)
It is sad to learn Chuck Peddle has died. I remember him at WESCON in 1975 selling single units of the 6502 off the floor for $20 cash. He was an iconic visionary character, nearly always excited. His efforts created Apple and a bunch of other computer companies and introduced the joys of computing to lots of people. We need more people like him.
The 6501 was almost the same thing as the 6502. However it was more-or-less pin compatible with the Motorola 6800 while the 6502 wasn't. The 6501 never became popular because
a) Motorola objected
b) the 6501 needed two-phase non-overlapping 5V rail-to-rail clocks, so it needed external clock generator circuitry, while the 6502 had a single TTL compatible clock input.
RIP Chuck Peddle, co-creator of the 6502 CPU, and a true Silicon Valley pioneer.
His story is as pure a SV story as it gets, from white-shirt Motorola engineer, to cost-cutting start-up entrepreneur, to legend with a cemented place in history.
Reading this and reflecting on my own history, I realized that it doesn’t make much sense to current learners to even know what CPU is in the computer they’re learning on. It was almost unthinkable to not know when I learned.
Personal 6502 anecdote:
My first paid programming gig was an XModem CRC calculator function in 6502 assembly for a local BBS. When 1200baud modems first came out, the upload on this BBS was gated by the speed of CRC calculation in Atari BASIC. I got $20 and “level 7” on the BBS for what was probably under 20 bytes of relocatable machine code plus the BASIC USR$ invocation wrapper. (Imagine if we made $1/byte for shipping code today. ;) )
Well that's unexpected, it seems like it was just yesterday I was listening to his interview on The Amp Hour[0] and he was touting his excellent health, running daily, and how different age is today.
So sad. I learned to program with my Atari 130XE, mainly in 6502 Assembly. Truly respected him and his constant engineering and entrepreneurship efforts.
Big, long-held salute to Mr. Peddle and his team for their remarkable achievement. Their chip changed the lives of millions of us. We can only imagine the number of friendships and careers spawned by their little startup.
Agreed. I was sad to hear of Chuck's passing. His MOS Technology was a huge thorn in Intel's side in the early days. That company punched way above its weight class because the chip was so simple it made a huge number of things possible.
I got to meet him when he did this interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enHF9lMseP8) with the Computer History Museum and really was impressed at how he understood and expressed computation.
