Pioneer of home computers and frugal processors Chuck Peddle has passed away

Charles ‘Chuck’ Peddle passed away on December 15, 2019. The American worked on the cheap and popular 6502 processor at MOS Technology and thus laid the foundation for the home computer.

Peddle worked on the 6800 processor at Motorola in the early 1970s, but found the price of that chip too high. He then decided, together with colleagues Harry Bawcom, Wil Mathys, Rod Orgill, Ray Hirt, Mike Janes, Terry Holdt and Bill Mensch, to switch to competitor MOS Technology, describes a son of one of them on Team 6502.

At MOS Technology, Peddle led the work on the MOS 6502 processor. The goal was to make an 8-bit processor with 16-bit address bus with dimensions of 3.9 x 4.3 mm at 8 µm. The size was small in order to extract as many chips as possible from wafers and thus to keep the price low. Bill Mensch, with whom Peddle worked on the 6800, describes how Intel’s $29 4040 in particular was seen as a competitor and not the more expensive Motorola 6800 or Intel 8080.

The prize was 25 dollars when it was published in 1975. The processor and variants thereof have been used in a large number of home computers and other systems including the Atari 2600, Atari 800, Apple II, Nintendo Entertainment System, Commodore PET, Commodore VIC-20, Commodore 64, Atari Lynx, BBC Micro and also in the original Tamagotchi.

In 1976, Peddle worked on the KIM-1, a low-cost single-board computer consisting of a 6502 and two 6530 chips. After MOS Technology was acquired, in 1977 Peddle led the development of the Commodore PET, Commodore’s first mass-market computer.