Chuck Peddle, unsung hero of the computer age, dies at 82
Intel shut his project down because they thought it would lower their profits, so he skipped town, taking seven engineers with him, and joined a small chip company in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where they completed the 6502 microprocessor, the chip that made computers like the Apple II and the Atari 800 possible, as well as the unfortunate Commodore PET. And the related, but lower-cost, less-featured 6507 microprocessor powered the Atari 2600 gaming console.
In those days, it only took 8 people to design a major computer chip, but today it surely takes hundreds, and maybe into the thousands. (For example, it is reported that Apple has 1000 to 1200 engineers working on a 5g modem chip. Also, I bet that all seven of the engineers that Chuck Peddle took with him were white men born in America.
The obit at the NY Times also contains the interesting tidbit that Jobs and the Woz wanted to sell Apple to Commodore, but Commodore wasn’t interested. How would technology have evolved differently if that sale happened? Would there be a Commodore smartphone? Or would we still be using Blackberries?
Note that the New York Times obituary is nine days late, Chuck died on December 15th.
Lion of the Blogosphere 
Computers are racist because William Shockley, inventor of the transistor, was an HBDer.
Hermes
December 25, 2019 at 8:55 AM
O/T: we are having a very traditional Christmas dinner today. We’re getting takeout Halal Thai.
Peter
ironrailsironweights
December 25, 2019 at 9:24 AM
Chuck Pedo peddles his computer while Incel balked of his chips. A few points that need to be dissected, had subsequent White men stuck with STEM and not turned into creative hipster losers and kept our technologies at bay, where China wasn’t gonna develop their own through pilfering, the world would be a different place now.
Ok, what, who's this again?
December 25, 2019 at 10:04 AM
And it would be nice if the majority of the tech industry weren’t concentrated in Silcon Valley. It would be a better world if there were still tech companies in Valley Forge, PA, Hauppague, NY, the belt outside Boston, Albuquerque NM, etc.
So much wealth and power concentrated in the Bay area is sickening for this country. What these California billionares do with their wealth is to try and destroy a decent life for the rest of us.
Before she kicks the bucket that old crone Zoe Lofgren – silicon valley/central valley’s bitch, literally – is trying to move another massive agricultural worker amnesty through Congress. All I can say is thank heavens Stephen Miller is on the job. You know, if Miller wasn’t on the job, no question the cucks would have pulled a fast one on Trump and would have already had an amnesty passed. Again, thank heavens for Stephen Miller.
Daniel Heneghan
December 25, 2019 at 5:34 PM
“What these California billionares do with their wealth is to try and destroy a decent life for the rest of us”
Give a million dollars to a beer chugging schlub and it doesn’t make him a better person.
The Midwest and South are generally poorer, because proles are just what they are, not because there is less wealth in these regions. In a similar vein that over-investment in NAM communities from a HBD perspective has proven correct that much of it was futile.
Ok, what, who's this again?
December 26, 2019 at 12:29 AM
Give a million dollars to a beer chugging schlub and it doesn’t make him a better person.
Not the point; point being that the schlub should have access to a decent life instead of that decent life being offshored or given to an immigrant/refugee in service to our overlords collecting a few more pieces of silver.
bomag
December 26, 2019 at 8:24 AM
According to Google search, this is the only case on the internet of someone using the term “beer-chugging schlub” (with or without the hyphen).
Lion of the Blogosphere
December 26, 2019 at 8:32 AM
“Not the point; point being that the schlub should have access to a decent life”
Proles would be better served mastering plumbing and HVAC and leave the tech jobs for the immigrants. Ever thought about that? They will be guaranteed a decent income this way. There will always be demand for this work and proles have proven they can excel in this area.
mpt
December 26, 2019 at 11:07 AM
So start a high tech company in your town.
gothamette
December 26, 2019 at 12:24 PM
>>So start a high tech company in your town.
That’s a real cuck retort.
Daniel Heneghan
December 26, 2019 at 2:53 PM
Proles would be better served mastering plumbing and HVAC
And roofing, taxi driving, etc. The point was not to give away the economic pie to various illegals and “migrants”.
bomag
December 26, 2019 at 3:18 PM
“That’s a real cuck retort.”
I think that was meant to be ironic. Gothamette does try to slip in a few sly ones on occasion.
Mike Street Station
December 28, 2019 at 8:26 AM
Lion,
Sorry to be a nag, but a comment making a nasty joke about a guy’s name (Chuck Pedo) is inappropriate. Don’t you uderstand anything about association? And obviously he’s a sock puppet, as “Yakov” was. This is becoming an embarrassment.
gothamette
December 25, 2019 at 12:37 PM
Yeah that’s extremely disrespectful, but the rest of the comment is one of his rare on topic ones.
Lion of the Blogosphere
December 25, 2019 at 1:31 PM
The desktop computer Commodore “PET” with its humanoid appearance in the above picture looks creepy enough.
Ok, what, who's this again?
December 25, 2019 at 9:40 PM
Yeah, Yakov is totally a sock puppet.
Whenever I do a sock puppet, I put the extra effort into my trolling by becoming fluent in Hebrew and regularly posting on a half dozen other Jewish blogs (so long as the sock puppet is supposed to be Jewish). Also I get professional licensing in whatever trade my sock puppet account claims to work in, and of course a landline business phone number to go with that, and an address in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn (rent is cheap so why not), which I use to get a peoplefinders page for my sock puppet, which needs to have the correct age.
The facebook and linkedin pages are really easy. It’s the peoplefinders and mylife, and instantcheckmate, and smartbackgroundchecks, and spokeo pages that are the real problem. The street address and landline number make it easy to get an entry on those pages, but if you want to make your sock puppet convincing you’ve got to go a little bit further, and I’m not just talking about registering the sock puppet to vote. I like to find someone with the same last name as my sock puppet, and offer them free rent if they’ll live at the same address as my sock puppet.
Since my sock puppet doesn’t really exist, it’s pretty easy to get someone to move into the apartment. I also try to add at least one previous address just to make it more convincing. That really helps make the peoplefinders page look realistic.
Yakov isn’t one of my sock puppets, but whichever one of you is using him, I must say, you’ve certainly earned my respect. Excellent troll.
MoreSigmasThanYou
December 25, 2019 at 11:46 PM
Thanks, Yakov.
gothamette
December 26, 2019 at 12:22 PM
‘And obviously he’s a sock puppet, as “Yakov” was.’
I’m still in the present tense and engage in substantive discussions, which seem to take you beyond your genetic comprehension threshold. You may find it more beneficial to pass by in silence the things that don’t lend themselves to your immediate understanding.
Kind Regards.
Yakov
December 26, 2019 at 2:47 PM
What happened to the comic Russian accent? You now sound an awful lot like that pompus TuJ.
gothamette
December 26, 2019 at 6:58 PM
Yakov has probably been killed by this lame impostor. His body must be stuck frozen inside an abandoned industrial size A/C unit sitting somewhere in the woods.
My 2¢
December 27, 2019 at 1:29 AM
I’d reached puberty at 11 and having come to this country at 16 am destined, by the biological forces beyond my control, to have a slight foreign accent. My younger cousin has a perfect accent having reached these shores prior to her menarche.
I commend you on your being indefatigable, but it makes me wonder if there isn’t a better object upon which you may try to concentrate? Maybe our resident French gentleman has a thought on this matter?
Kind Regards as always,
Yakov.
Yakov
December 27, 2019 at 5:41 AM
I suspect gothamette means “troll” and doesn’t understand the difference between a sock puppet and a troll in internet lingo. A troll is a person who posts in an insincere manner intentionally to get a rise out of people. A sock puppet is a secondary (or tertiary, etc.) account created by a poster unconnected with their primary identity in order to manipulate the discussion, e.g., to drum up support for the person’s point of view by posing as another poster who agrees with them.
Hermes
December 26, 2019 at 6:44 PM
I think she understands the difference.
Lion of the Blogosphere
December 26, 2019 at 11:18 PM
No, I mean sock puppet.
I suspect Yakov and TuJ had sum ting to do w/one another.
gothamette
December 26, 2019 at 11:27 PM
Look at how Yakov got annoyed at me down blog and reverted to perfect English, while in the past you could hear the Yakov Smirnov accent.
gothamette
December 26, 2019 at 11:28 PM
Then who does she think Yakov and “Ok, what, who’s this again?” are sock puppets of? The latter used to be JS, but he changed his moniker, he doesn’t comment as two different personas. (“Ok, what, who’s this again?” comments are identical to, and every bit as annoying as, those of JS.)
Hermes
December 27, 2019 at 12:24 AM
Mates, I dont know about you, but I think this is a total riot! This is silly and catty female nature in action! I mean, who on this blog cares to endlessly comment about Yakov being this and being that…. HBD in action and we gotta love it! Women like this can make a vulnerable and sensitive man gay too and that is no laughing matter though.
JS, please take control if this situation. Thanks.
Yakov
December 27, 2019 at 12:20 PM
In woke globalist America, Internet trolls you.
MoreSigmasThanYou
December 27, 2019 at 1:24 PM
Gothamcat thinks the City of Beacon in the Hudson Valley is prole (which it is, since all American towns and cities are prole if you compare to them to French Canadian and Western Non-Anglo Euro cities), yet the likelihood of her of traveling beyond the confines of NYC to make this statement is nil.
Googling a place and looking at the images doesn’t make one an expert traveler.
Ok, what, who's this again?
December 27, 2019 at 5:06 PM
“Intel shut his project down because they thought it would lower their profits”
I find these kinds of stories fascinating. I’m not sure what constitutes the best business description for a decision to avoid readily identifiable and economical product improvements. It isn’t planned obsolescence but it feels like a similar concept.
Curle
December 25, 2019 at 4:59 PM
I’m not sure what constitutes the best business description for a decision to avoid readily identifiable and economical product improvements.
Institutional sclerosis?
I’m not sure of the full backstory here. If the $25 chip was equal in performance to the $300 chip, it seems Motorola should have instantly closed with the $25 chip and sold it for $300, or whatever was the income maximizing price level. There may have been some performance/maintenance differences.
bomag
December 26, 2019 at 8:42 AM
I remember going to a computer store (those were the days) in the Jefferson Park neighborhood of Chicago to salivate over a Commodore 64. I eventually got a Kaypro II instead (quite a different sort of machine).
Anthony
December 25, 2019 at 7:03 PM
The C64 had a 6510 chip, a slightly improved version of the 6502 which enabled the C64 to access more memory.
Lion of the Blogosphere
December 25, 2019 at 11:18 PM
My first PC was a Korean made IBM clone named Leadeing Edge. The text glowed up in amber, which was really cool.
At the time it wasn’t yet established in the popular mind that MS-DOS was the exact same OS as PC-DOS (IBM) so I was concerned that the Leading Edge might not run the availible DOS software. There was no reason to worry, ran all the software without a hitch.
I had LOTUS 1-2-3, Wordperfect and Microsoft Flight Simulator (which was a joke) installed on my PC,. LOTUS and Wordperfect were excellent pieces of software that have yet to be equaled, let alone surpassed.
Daniel Heneghan
December 26, 2019 at 3:00 PM
I remember both of those programs in the 1980s. They got the job done.
Lion of the Blogosphere
December 26, 2019 at 4:08 PM
I guess I’m the only one here willing to admit I had nothing to do with early computers. What did you guys do with those C64’s and kaypros anyway?
Vipltd
December 26, 2019 at 9:47 AM
Ot/- I don’t recall you mentioning actress Lucy Lou going to Stuyvesant when you were there? Apparently she’s 51.
Curle
December 26, 2019 at 1:22 PM
Liu.
Curle
December 26, 2019 at 1:22 PM
It has been mentioned before, but not frequently.
Lion of the Blogosphere
December 26, 2019 at 2:10 PM
Frankly, I do not see how the world became a better place due to computers. We just sped up to the inevitable like moths drawn to flames.
My 2¢
December 26, 2019 at 9:53 PM
Computers are great except that they have accelerated third world migration into the West, which will be the end of it. They have also enabled China and India to grow economically at breakneck pace, polluting their rivers and ocean, and exhausting the fisheries of the Pacific.
The history of the last few hundred years was that white people developed high technology, which over the last several decades they gave to non-whites. The non-whites are socially and morally unfit to possess this technology, and the white race and all the animals will suffer for it. The white race is Prometheus chained to the rock, getting eaten by a vulture.
Lowe
December 27, 2019 at 10:21 AM
I have a friend from my high school, whose parents bought him a PC sometime in late 1980s in exchange for him dumping his girlfriend, a twenty year old divorced mother.
My 2¢
December 27, 2019 at 1:22 AM
Nintendo also liked the 6502. The NES and SNES both used 6502 based chips. Late in the lifecycle some SNES carts included a second much faster clocked 6502 variant.
Thagomizer
January 7, 2020 at 11:42 AM