UNIFIED

ELECTRICAL
ENGINEERING
(ELE 151)

TERM PAPER

TOPIC:- ADVANCED MOS

TECHNOLOGY

SUBMITTED TO:-
SUBMITTED BY:-
Mr. JITENDRA S. SENGAR
VASU SHARMA
A1003
11000557
 INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I. INTRODUCTION

I express my deepest gratitude to our

teacher Mr. JATINDRA S. SENGAR for his II. MOTOROLA REFUSAL TO
invaluable guidance and blessings and for INNOVATE
being instrumental in the completion of our
term paper with his complete guidance.

I am very grateful to our Dean mam III. MOS 6500

for providing us with a environment to
complete our term paper successfully.
IV. MOTORALA’S ANGER : A
I would like to thank my brother for BLESSING IN DISGUISE
his unwavering support during the entire
course of this term paper work. I express my
sincere thanks to my friends for their
constant encouragement and support V. THE STAR IS BORN : THE 6502
throughout my course, especially for the
useful suggestions given during the course
of the term paper period.
VI. THE CALCULATOR WAR
Finally, I take this opportunity to
extend my deep appreciation to my family
and friends, for all that they meant to us VII. ENGINEER EXODUS AND THE
during the crucial times of the completion of RISE OF 16 BIT
our term paper.

VIII. THE SLOW DECAY OF 80’S

IX. BIOHAZARD

X. THE UNCEREMONIOUS END

XI. REFERENCES
INTRODUCTION

At the heart of what people think of as
Commodore, was a company called MOS
Technology. MOS' claim to fame was their
development and manufacturing of the
wildly successful 6500 line of
microprocessors which in addition to being
used in nearly all Commodore computers
and floppy drives, was also the driving force
of all pre-1984 Apples. However, MOS was
not started by Commodore or even by the
Engineers who made it famous, like Chuck
Peddle and Bill Mensch .Allen bradley
started MOS as a second source for Texas
Instruments (TI) chips and even produced
the famous Atari PONG chip for limited
time. A major player in the calculator
business called Commodore Business
Machines quickly became MOS' number
one customer in the early 1970's.
During January 2006 interview
with Chuck Peddle, they were informed
commodore.ca that MOS was always
pronounced M.O.S. so as not to confuse it
with the MOSTek which was a competing
company that was also established in 1969.
MOTOROLA REFUSAL TO
INNOVATE
As one of the lead Motorola 6800
engineers at a time in before most people
had even heard the term "CPU", Chuck
Peddle was often tasked with explaining the
capabilities of a microprocessor to large
industrial manufactures, like Ford. After an
education cycle, the Engineers were usually
highly impressed with the potential for such
a device but at US$300 ($1200 in 2005
dollars!) would inevitably say it was far to
expensive to use. Chuck asked Motorola's
customers the price they thought it would be
possible to put CPU's into their mass market
products. $25 came up as the magic
number.
As one might guess, Engineers
discussing a $25 version of a successful
$300 product, did not impress Motorola
management. Conversely, Management's
failure to pursue obvious improvements to
their chip did not impress Motorola's
engineers. When Chuck received a formal
letter from management telling him to stop
working on a cost reduced version 6800, he
saw an opportunity.
Chuck Peddle and Bill Mensch took six
other key Motorola 6800 engineers to work
for an old General Electric colleague who
ran a small "fab" called MOS Technologies.
Bill Mensch explained that Chuck handled
most of the negotiation with MOS and that
part of the deal was that each of the eight
were to receive "a fraction of the profits."
The key word here is 'profits'. At this time,
not many companies actually made money
from chips and as your might expect, Bill
explained that when the group found out
about the deal months later "they were all
pissed!" To the right is a fantastic 1975
picture and article, taken from Bill Mensch's
personal collection of the design team.
 As might happen today in your work
environment, it irked the existing MOS staff
to have an entire team of highly qualified
and recognized people parachuted into the
organization. Bill says that "it was painful, I
had two flat tires in my first week at MOS."
An MOS staffer of Italian decent told him
"you don't mess with the Godfather",
referring to one of the MOS Vice Presidents
who was unhappy with the recent
conversion of Motorola staff. The existing
staff wanted to work on development of a
microprocessor and correctly felt they would
be largely left out of the process.
Chuck said he gave the engineers a
"..tight list..." of features to build into the
chip along with a fixed die size. To get to
the $25 price they need to produce only the
instructions that its customers would
required, nothing extra.
MOS 6500
Within a year the team developed the
CPUs line that would change the world; The
MOS 6500 series. There are many
interesting stories surrounding the 6501 but
the most amazing is that Bill Mensch was
able to take the 6501 schematics, create a
layout completely by hand (remember no-
one had computers back then) and produce a
working CPU on the very first attempt. This
was unheard of. Several engineers we
talked with have said that they had never
seen anyone manually produce a successful
chip on the first pass. It often takes 10 or
more tries to get it right. In a January 2006
interview with www.commodore.ca , Chuck
said "Bill ...was like a layout savant... he can
just picture an entire layout in his head."
Note that the MOS 6501 shown to the
right is extremely rare and was purchased
directly from the Norristown, PA factory for
the princely sum of $20. When we asked
Chuck about it in March 2007, he said "...we
stopped producing the 6501 so none really
made it to market in any numbers. We
never intended anyone to buy it anyhow. It
was an in your face to Motorola... It is
indeed rare."
The 6501 and 6502 where nearly
identical. The primary difference was the
pin arrangement; a 6501 is pin compatible
with the Motorola 6800 and 6502 is not.
The group was not without humour. One
of the important designers on this chip was
Rod Orgill (who can be seen
in this picture). Bill said that one of the
6502 pins is officially named SO (Set
Overflow). "Chuck, Rod, and I know that
it's real name is Sam Orgill... Rods dog".
In the 1970's, 70% of the
industries chip production were
defective and therefore
garbage. This substantially
increased the cost of each
viable chip. When a chip is
being laid out for etching on a
silicon wafer, it drawn at a large scale and
then photo reduced over an over again (just
like a photocopy reduction) until its
microscopic size will fit on the required die.
Each reduction layer is called a Mask. MOS
figured out a process to repair Masks as they
are reduced. The end result was that they
had a 70% success rate. This obviously
reduced the per chip cost of manufacturing
and made the $25 processor a possibility.
Chuck explained that selling a dramatically
less expensive CPU was not as easy as it
sounded. A few years earlier there had been
a high profile scam involving a company
that claimed it could produce mainframe
terminals it would lease for just $10 per
month. The company went bankrupt in a
cloud of scandal after taking millions of
dollars from investors, and blamed the
failure on industries inability to produce
cheap chips.
In an effort to drum up interest in the
chip they ran an advertisement stating that
anyone could see and buy the amazing $25
microprocessor at WestCon (Western
Electronics Show and Convention) in 1975.
Unfortunately, when MOS arrived at the
show they were told that, in an effort the
keep the show 'high brow', exhibitors were
not allowed to sell product at their booths.
Chuck quickly rented a nearby hotel room
and had is very attractive wife, sit at a table
with two full glass jars of 6501's and
6502's. Little did most people know that all
of the chips in the bottom of those jars were
defective. Image is everything.
MOTOROLA’S ANGER: A
BLESSING IN DISGUISE
In June of 1975, soon after the show,
Motorola realized they had turned their
engineers into their competition. Motorola
got mad and sued MOS for infringement of
6800 patents. Chuck said "...there was no
substance to their claims..." but it scared the
old line industry management at Allen-
Bradley. "As soon as lawyers got involved,
they wanted out." said Chuck. As a shock to
everyone, Allen-Bradley walked away from
MOS and basically gave it to the existing
MOS management team.
It is interesting to note that Bill Mensch tells
a more complete version of this important
part of the story. "It was not about patent
infringement; it was about intellectual
property." Those eight engineers knew an
awful lot of unpatented concepts developed
at Motorola and that is what Motorola was
trying to protect. "We knew we were
(infringing). The (MOS) 6520 was a direct
copy of the (Motorola) 6820." MOS had
agreements in place with Motorola and
"...We paid Motorola all along."
THE STAR IS BORN :
THE 6502
MOS designed and manufactured two 6502
trainers call the TIM1 (Terminal Input
Monitor) and KIM-1 (Keyboard Input
Monitor). They are often incorrectly
referred to as kit computers, like the Altair.
The TIM and the KIM came fully assembled
and were the world's first single board
computers.
Like many great products, the 6502 had a
humble beginning. Bill told us that he and a
few others wrote a nearly complete
specification for the 6500 line "...on the
back of an Arby's napkin!" When it was
completed in the Spring of 1975, the MOS
6502 initially ran at about 1Mhz, the same
as the Motorola 6800. However, 6500's
performed about 4 times the number of
calculations a 6800 could.
In a 2005 book about Commodore, Bill
Mensch is quoted as saying he had the 6502
running at about 12Mhz. Remember that it
wasn't until 1983 that Motorola released the
68010 and Intel took until 1984 to release a
10Mhz 80286 chip. This was WAY ahead
of its time. In our discussions, Bill clarified
this amazing story, by explaining that the
chips he had running over 10Mhz were
actually early manufacturing errors to be
discarded as trash. For the fun of it, he
played with these flawed units just to see if
he could get them to work. When I asked
him why he did not present these as notable
engineering successes to industry or to the

Guinness Book of Records, he said "I was
worried about eating... not making records."
Motorola may or may not have had a solid
legal case but they definitely had something
that MOS did not, money. It did not take
long for MOS to kill the 6501. The suite
dragged on a for a few years and MOS
eventually settled the claims with a
$200,000 payment to Motorola.
THE CALCULATOR WAR
In 1975, Commodore had a huge
inventory of Texas Instruments based
calculators when the market began to
collapse. Because Commodore sourced
their TI chips from MOS, MOS was in
financial trouble. Then the unthinkable
happened. Texas Instruments started
retailing their own brand of calculators at a
prices less than Commodore manufacturing
cost. The November 1975 New Scientist
magazine reported "Commodore is
struggling to survive. Two weeks ago the
firm reported its end of year results, which
showed a $4.3 million loss on sales which
were up 12 per cent over the year to $55.9
million."
Commodore's founder and CEO, Jack
Tramiel, convinced Commodore's Canadian
financier, Irving Gould, that vertical
integration (owning all of the parts of
production) was the only way Commodore
could survive. Soon after, the September
1976 edition of New Scientist noted
"Commodore, quoted at $60 million on the
New York Stock Exchange, has acquired
100 per cent of the equity of MOS
Technology Inc of Pennsylvania in
exchange for a 9-4 per cent equity stake in
Commodore. MOS Technology is privately
owned and valued at around $12 million."
Commodore continued the KIM-1
and Jack Tramiel personally approved the
development and production of Chuck
Peddles unified computer, the PET.
In an effort to start sales of the 6502,
MOS staff ran a quick tour of the US,
dropping into see major manufacturing
companies like Ford. On the trip Chuck was
told that two young guys working in their
garage wanted some help using the 6502.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were
working on the first Apple and Chuck was
happy to lend a hand even though he did not
design the 6500 line for computer use.
"...Not in a million years... it was supposed
to go into industrial and consumer
products." Little did Chuck know that the
computer business would quickly become
the mass market consumer product he was
targeting.
Over the previous few years Chuck had met
with hundreds of computer enthusiasts,
educational institutions and main frame
corporate users. He learned that "...what
people wanted was a computer that looked
like a terminal." He bought a little book on
how to build your own television, written by
the legendary Adam Osborne and contracted
out the construction of a wood case to house
the computer. Using a motherboard based on
the 6502 processor Chuck designed and built
the worlds first computer which would later
be named the Commodore PET. Explaining
how experimental this was, Chuck said "The
first time we turned it on, the image was
upside down... we got Adam's book out to
figure out how to turn it..."
In a January 2006 interview, Chuck told
a great story about trying to sell the CPU's to
Atari. Atari was so worried about industrial
espionage that they sequestered their top
engineers in a remote facility on a dirt road,
several hours from Los Angeles. Chuck
packed he and his wife for brief holiday and
made plans to stop in to see this top secret
Atari think tank on the way. Atari was
working on three new options for their new
machine one of which called for a 6502, an
IO chip and a custom chip. Atari wanted
him to produce the 6502 and the IO chip for
just $12! By this time, Chuck estimated that
MOS' production cost on two of those chips
was just $4 and so it was easy to agree; the
Atari 400 and 800 were announced in
December of 1978.
ENGINEER EXODUS AND
THE RISE OF 16 BIT
Shortly before the Commodore take over,
frustrated 6502 co-designer Bill Mensch left
the company. It had been made clear that
"Commodore was going into Game
Systems... stopping microprocessor
development" I was the head of
Microprocessor development... (and) I saw
the writing on the wall".
There was a desire among MOS
engineers to design a 16 bit version of the
6502 but Commodore's management was
apathetic and would not fund the term
paper. In the end Commodore never
produced a 16 bit 6500 but Bill Mensch who
still retains ownership of the WDC, did.
The 65C816 is now in over 5 Billion (yes,
that's Billion with a "B") devices. That chip
can run in both 8 and 16 bit modes (hence
the 816 designation). From pacemakers in
your chest, to dashboard controllers in your
car, to the famous Super-Nintendo, Bill's
low voltage, highly tested 6500 version is
ubiquitous.
The original 8 bit 6502 and many MOS
derivatives are legendary. It was put into
everything from the Apple I and II, to the
VIC and C64, to the original Nintendo
Game System. The 6502 was also used in
many of the original arcade video games
like Defender, Battlezone, andAsteroids.
Bill Mensch's Western Design Center holds
most of the 6500 related patents and still are
responsible for their production.
Commodore's CEO, Jack Tramiel started
to "play" with the lives of some of the MOS
key staff shortly after the takeover and many
of the key players left the company. Most
notably, Chuck Peddle left and took the
equivalent to the Chief Technology Officer
position with Apple, before returning to
MOS a few months later.
Commodore set up the Moore Park
Research Center in California for Chuck and
other important West Coast based
engineers. Just a few years later, in a
moment of anger, Jack ordered it closed.
Most of the MOS Engineers, including
Chuck Peddle, refused to move to
Commodore's Pennsylvania headquarters.
By the mid 1980's Commodore had only
about a dozen certified Engineers working
for them worldwide, most of them at MOS.
THE SLOW DECAY OF 80’s
Even though it had renamed the
company "Commodore Semiconductor
Group" (CSG) shortly after the acquisition,
all MOS production used the old MOS logo
until 1989.
 Using MOS' Engineers and facilities,
Commodore was able to produce prototype
chips in days rather than months and at
practically no cost. Other companies, like
Atari, Apple, and Osborne would have to
spend tens of thousands of dollars and wait
weeks or months for new chips. MOS was
critical to Commodore's fast paced style of
business in the 1970's and early 80's.
Commodore Engineers could get a chip
produced without so much as formal
paperwork. When Bill Herd
(the Plus/4 and C128 Engineer) quit and
went to work for a chip small design shop,
he was shocked that he could not simply
order up new prototype chips.
In addition to providing millions of
chips to the electronics industry and
computer manufacturers, MOS / CSG
produced nearly all of the chips used in
Commodore computers and floppy drives.
The notable exceptions to that statement
were the Motorola 68000 used in the Amiga
line and all memory. Chuck explained that
"...MOS tried to produce memory but just
weren't any good at it".
In the early 1980's Commodore hired
dozens of notable engineers including Dave
Haynie and Bill Herd to work in their in
house "fab" but Commodore still refused to
make significant investments in research and
development. Other similar sized
companies would have hundreds of
Engineers.
Under Jack Tramiel R&D was a
secondary concern. After Jack left in 1984
Commodore's money man, Irving Gould,
dramatically reduced they already spartan
R&D budgets, in an effort to increase short
term profits. Commodore could have easily
licenced Bill Mensch's 16bit version 6502
and they did consider it for the Amiga but in
the end, managements desire to squeeze ever
more profit out of existing technology, left
MOS / CSG to languish with old
technology.
By the mid 1980's MOS' best days were
history and they were fully integrated into
the Commodore structure. With a few very
important exceptions, MOS staff seemed
content to manufacture what they had
always manufactured. By 1985 they were
definitely looking to the past and had
forgotten that theirs was a fast paced,
dynamic industry.
Even when Commodore began its
struggle for survival, Management just did
not see that they were living in an R&D
business. In 1990 Commodore started work
on a secret term paper called the
Commodore 65 and had MOS / CSG
develop a new chip called the CSG 4510
which was little more than a slightly
enhanced 8bit 6502 with two integrated
6526 I/O adapters.
BIOHAZARD
During the 1970's Allen-Bradley's MOS
had installed a large underground cement
tank to store the extremely hazardous waste
chemicals produced during the chip
manufacturing process. By the early 1980's
this tank had cracked and leached chemicals
into the ground water. Most of the
surrounding residential neighborhood used
piped city water but several used well
water.
The problem was initially 'hushed up'
and only a small number of CSG managers
were aware of the problem. In 1981
Commodore excavated some of the
contaminated soil and in 1984 "household
carbon units were installed at residences
where at least 1 part per billion of VOC was
detected". By 1989 the US Environmental
Protection Agency has started a serious
investigation into the the problem.

AN UNCEREMONIOUS END
Commodore produced hundreds of millions
of chips in the MOS Norristown fab. But in
1992 facing serious financial problems
Commodore put the troubled facility into
Bankruptcy protection. Oddly, even though
CSG was bankrupt, Commodore maintained
the equipment in an effort to keep it
functional.

Immediately after the 1994 bankruptcy

of Commodore International, the plant was
sold to a group of its former managers for
$5.3 million which included $1 million in
expenses for things like EPA liens. It was
renamed GMT Microelectronics and at the
height of that organizations success in 1999
its 180 employees produced and sold $21
million in product. Two years later the EPA
would force the famous Norristown fab to
close and GMT's assets were liquidated.

In November of 2005 an EPA

study shows the site had been clean for five
years and as you can see from the satellite
shot, Google Earth shows that the building
still exists today.

In the simplest of terms, MOS was

Commodore and Commodore was MOS.
MOS was a precursor to Commodore. It
was a bell-weather foretelling Commodores
future. Together they soared and together
they crashed.

REFERENCES

1. www.physicsedu.net
2. www.howstuffworks.com