Hi ke4pjw , could you post the utube link separate, it has somthing to do with the button above, why the video doesn't get imbeded right. I got just a white screen.
I was at this presentation, and I sat THIS close:...
The correct spelling of his name is Bil Herd by the way (though I bet he's used to people inserting extra letters in his first and last name by now :-)
I had a little chat with him afterwards. He's a nice guy and has some great stories. There are lots of videos online of him presenting at retro computing events and other venues. I recommend you watch them all :-)
It was about what and who you had known back then, and some about where you lived. I had the long hair down to the middle of my back in the mid 70's, serious job hunting required that to be drastically adjusted. Never could stand long hair again, just too hot and uncomfortable.
Is what he said about the Commodore 64 being so unreliable that it basically reboots every 20 minutes the general consensus? Definitely some ugly workarounds mentioned in the video.
KeithE, of course not. It's hyperbole, and probably a very good story in itself.
Great to hear his fascinating stories of underappreciated heroism and creative problem solving under impossible deadlines. Some of the stories hit too close to home.
On the positive end, I've experienced what he calls the magic 2 weeks (31:20) where a design is completely open to any and all possible ideas and just comes together organically on paper.
Didn't watch the video (can't stand videos when it would take 1/10 of the time to read a text with the same content), but he has written about the background of the '64 and '128 several times in the past. From what I remember of that the high unreliability issues were mainly about the prototypes presented at shows - computers weren't ready and they were *this* close to have to use dummy props instead. Lots of last-minute fixes and workarounds.
I do understand your reservations about videos. Often one gets sucked into watching a long drawn out explanation of something by some characterless half wit droning on for far to long and wishing they had just take the trouble to write that info down instead.
On the other hand the magic happens when there is more to the video than the concentrated facts. It's about the character and style of the presenter. It's about the little asides and jokes that get thrown in, the questions people ask. Personality, atmosphere. It's great when an engaging presenter rolls out ideas at your level and at your pace.
A classic example for me this from Mathologer:
Or any lecture you can find by Richard Fynman. Or the "Mother of all Demos":
Anyway. I sort of remember the c128 passing by back in the day. I just thought that welding a Z80 onto a c64 so as to be able to run CP/M was a horrible clunky idea.
Oh, the Mother Of All Demos must definitely be watched - there's no way to transcribe that.
I never had a C=128, but I used a Basis-108 which was an Apple II clone with a z80 and 128K RAM. It was nice, I liked it. But it was like having two computers, you would run one or the other. But you could write UCSD Pascal programs for the 6502 (p-code, of course), and easily port it to run under CP/M Plus for the z80, with Turbo Pascal. Very versatile machine.
I remember when Commodore was camped out in my demo room at Gerber Scientific doing all night revisions of the PC boards on our PC800 design station. We couldn't ship the design station soon enough to them , so they came to us.
This was such a great talk! Bil is truly a brilliant engineer. I can't imagine the kind of stress that he must have been up against to provide these bug fixes on a nightly basis. The best part of the talk for me was around 50:00 where he talks about how he used a light pen on the screen to hunt down a memory corruption error.
The best part of the talk for me was around 50:00 where he talks about how he used a light pen on the screen to hunt down a memory corruption error.
I loved that too.
Reminds me of my building a TTL digital clock as a kid in the early 1970's. Of course after I got it all connected it did not work. What with having no oscilloscope and zero experience of such circuits I was stumped. Did not know where to start. My old dad, who had never used any digital logic either, said "Why don't you use this crystal ear phone and listen to what your circuit is doing". BINGO, soon it was up and running.
Sometimes a sideways approach to a problem works wonders.
My old dad, who had never used any digital logic either, said "Why don't you use this crystal ear phone and listen to what your circuit is doing". BINGO, soon it was up and running.
Sometimes a sideways approach to a problem works wonders.
Wow! I would have never thought to use a crystal ear phone to debug a circuit like that, but it makes perfect sense. It's almost like a stethoscope for an electronics circuit.
I remember working on a PCI graphics card, and when a new revision came back it prevented PCs from booting. It was lunchtime so I went out to lunch, and when I came back the experienced lab tech said there's a problem with this particular PCI pin on the board. I asked how he figured it out, and he basically did a binary search with masking tape on the edge connector. I forget the nature of the problem, but with his observation the problem was trivial to solve.
re: Is what he said about the Commodore 64 being so unreliable that it basically reboots every 20 minutes the general consensus?
I never found my C64 to be so unreliable. I blew it up a few times , like the first week after my initial purchase from Canadian Tire LOL I had built a home-brew circuit board for Ham Radio - Morse code TX and RX and the first time I plugged the board into the C64 , it quit. It was of course still under warranty but I was so curious to know what was inside it I was having trouble sleeping and debating what I should do. Finally I decided I had to know and took it apart. After poking around it for awhile I noticed an internal fuse. I replace the fuse and was so excited when it fired up again. Then I found the problem on my PC board , modified it and got it all working. They were sure fun times. I don't remember having much info on it at the time and it was years later I got a SAMS Photofact for the C64.
ke4pjw
Posts: 1,155
Comments
Thanks.
The correct spelling of his name is Bil Herd by the way (though I bet he's used to people inserting extra letters in his first and last name by now :-)
I had a little chat with him afterwards. He's a nice guy and has some great stories. There are lots of videos online of him presenting at retro computing events and other venues. I recommend you watch them all :-)
===Jac
Love the whole quality fight. LMAO!
This guy just offended them, but he was under the gun too. Nothing to do but go for it. Get that thing under the tree!
Great stuff!
By the way, you can read more about Tramiel in the book, "hackers" http://www.stevenlevy.com/index.php/books/hackers
He's a character. Would have been an adventure working with him
Great to hear his fascinating stories of underappreciated heroism and creative problem solving under impossible deadlines. Some of the stories hit too close to home.
On the positive end, I've experienced what he calls the magic 2 weeks (31:20) where a design is completely open to any and all possible ideas and just comes together organically on paper.
I do understand your reservations about videos. Often one gets sucked into watching a long drawn out explanation of something by some characterless half wit droning on for far to long and wishing they had just take the trouble to write that info down instead.
On the other hand the magic happens when there is more to the video than the concentrated facts. It's about the character and style of the presenter. It's about the little asides and jokes that get thrown in, the questions people ask. Personality, atmosphere. It's great when an engaging presenter rolls out ideas at your level and at your pace.
A classic example for me this from Mathologer:
Or any lecture you can find by Richard Fynman. Or the "Mother of all Demos":
Anyway. I sort of remember the c128 passing by back in the day. I just thought that welding a Z80 onto a c64 so as to be able to run CP/M was a horrible clunky idea.
I never had a C=128, but I used a Basis-108 which was an Apple II clone with a z80 and 128K RAM. It was nice, I liked it. But it was like having two computers, you would run one or the other. But you could write UCSD Pascal programs for the 6502 (p-code, of course), and easily port it to run under CP/M Plus for the z80, with Turbo Pascal. Very versatile machine.
Yes that was funny. I'm amazed that he's able to recall all of these events with such detail some 30 years later.
Reminds me of my building a TTL digital clock as a kid in the early 1970's. Of course after I got it all connected it did not work. What with having no oscilloscope and zero experience of such circuits I was stumped. Did not know where to start. My old dad, who had never used any digital logic either, said "Why don't you use this crystal ear phone and listen to what your circuit is doing". BINGO, soon it was up and running.
Sometimes a sideways approach to a problem works wonders.
Wow! I would have never thought to use a crystal ear phone to debug a circuit like that, but it makes perfect sense. It's almost like a stethoscope for an electronics circuit.
re: Is what he said about the Commodore 64 being so unreliable that it basically reboots every 20 minutes the general consensus?
I never found my C64 to be so unreliable. I blew it up a few times , like the first week after my initial purchase from Canadian Tire LOL I had built a home-brew circuit board for Ham Radio - Morse code TX and RX and the first time I plugged the board into the C64 , it quit. It was of course still under warranty but I was so curious to know what was inside it I was having trouble sleeping and debating what I should do. Finally I decided I had to know and took it apart. After poking around it for awhile I noticed an internal fuse. I replace the fuse and was so excited when it fired up again. Then I found the problem on my PC board , modified it and got it all working.