Abandoned Chip Fab: Bil Herd's MOS Technologies Factory Walk-Through 35 Years Later

[@leonardtramiel8704]

The first time I was in that building was in 1977. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

[@KarlHamilton]

Thankyou for everything you and your father did. I wouldn't be the person I am today otherwise.

[@breadbaker]

Wow. Well, thank you, Leonard. Hard to not repeat Karl Hamilton's words, but they are true.

[@cairsahrstjoseph996]

Well, you gave us all something to remember. And to preserve, come what may

[@PieFights]

My family's first family's computer was a Commodore 64 c back in 1995

[@Mr_ToR]

If I'm not mistaken, you've played a role in convincing your father to not only use the MOS group for calculators (competing against TI, etc) and that commodore should also do something with computers. I guess the KIM came into a reality after that right?

[@winstonsmith478]

I hope the Commodore Pets were rescued, regardless of their bad condition.

[@padc64]

Pretty amazing that there were still Commodore stuff in that building all these years later.

[@FullMetalFab]

Great to see the inside, sad to see those smashed up PETs

[@RicardoBanffy]

Someone should save them

[@NuntiusLegis]

But in a way it was a relief. The other areas with nothing at all reminding of MOS / Commodore was even sadder.

[@odisseaskipriotis]

Sad... what a waste... a brand that refuses to die. The amiga and the c64s have a huge crowd still! Thanks for the video!

[@cschmidt2003]

Like more of this history stuff. I hope these PETs were rescued.

[@cheetahspot]

Please tell me you salvaged the leftover tapes and documents. They could be of historic importance.

[@colingale]

totally agree, at this point they should be of public record & history , did you find any data on the sid chip ?

[@jefbed212]

@@colingale I was thinking the tapes they saw could be that.

[@LordHorst]

They couldn't. It belongs to the new owners who propably are going to sell it: ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5256

[@videooblivion]

Herd. Hero. Same thing, dude.

[@ESquared42]

Makes me sad to see, i used to dream of visiting that place as a kid. Love your stories Bill, thanks.

[@AntiqueChris]

Need a longer version

[@GerbenWijnja]

Here you go, a 30 minute raw footage version: kzbin.info/www/bejne/aqHSpHWqgdikaq8

[@christopherjackson2157]

Atmospheric audio. Genius sound engineering.

[@danjo1967]

yeah the chainsaw was IMPRESSIVE wasnt it! >:/

[@tekvax01]

Bil! Please post all of the shoot day footage... Please... I love to see more...

[@robwebnoid5763]

Here in 2022. It's hard to believe no one cleaned up that place for the last 35 years. I like the background creepy electronic music. I used to work at an Intel motherboard-making factory, from the mid 1990's to mid 2000's & this reminds me of it. At the end of 2020, me & family finally sold & vacated my dad's medical clinic building after he passed away & I knew I was going to miss that building as we had it for also 35 years. I also worked there. I took as many photos & videos of it. It now belongs to someone else (a lumber company), they had painted it a different color & I pass that building every now & then going to the store, thinking of happy, comfy, busy times of the past. Somewhat bittersweet too. Anyway I had already seen this video of the C= chip fab before back when it got uploaded but it was in my youtube feed today so I had to take a look again.

[@jobsgarage]

I can NOT believe the PET at 6:20!!!!! Please tell me you've saved it!

[@kneel1]

I worked here in this exact building in the 90s! In the clean rooms manufacturing silicon wafers. Grew up nearby. Love seeing the video. It was super clean and high tech before it got abandoned! they had some SERIOUSLY expensive silicon wafer manufacturing equipment there it was a 50 to 100 step process of chemical baths and other processes to create the silicon wafers full of chips (at the time they were making them for Motorola)

[@CAPTAINCAPSLOCK111]

So you were the one that was responsible for my suddenly faulty chip in my commodore computer! I had to save up lots of pocket money to get it going again... no seriously, thanks for fuelling my childhood with such cool images and sounds. If you only knew what you are *really* manufacturing there. Not just plain silicon chips - I eventually became an engineer myself and worked in fabs!

[@estebanquito545]

infinite thank you's for the commodore 128 and for your work at commodore Bil! from Buenos Aires, Argentina!!

[@electronicsworkbench]

Wow! Full user backup on 9-track tapes! Valuable history in those! Too bad chip designs were lost. Can't imagine how the SID or VIC-II would be designed today but the SID, man those were the chips!

[@ChrisFaulkner]

Bil, we need 6581 and 6502/6510 production again..

[@SwedishEmpire1700]

Get in there and empty it out and rescue like EVERYTHING ok

[@00Skyfox]

You can almost hear the ghost of Jack Tramiel roaming the halls of the place and speaking in an otherworldly tone...."Computers for the masses, not the classes!"

[@NuntiusLegis]

With Commodore still in business, perhaps we would already have quantum computers for the masses and not just the classes.

[@CamiloSantana]

Means a lot to me but the shaky camera and silly effects and sound means I can't share it with business associates.

[@peterjensen3162]

Camilo Santana and they would get seasick 🤢🤮

[@Ki-Lessons]

Perhaps you work with the wrong type of people now :) I plan to share this with all my peers I worked with at C=

[@NuntiusLegis]

Reminds me that I was considered too sensitive when I complained about not being able to share the Facebook group about my then favorite MMO containing pictures of (realistic) plastic turds.

[@oldestnerd]

My first microprocessor purchase was a chip set the probably shipped from that building back in the 70's. White ceramic with gold leads. I never built it into a system. I understand some of the first chips that had a faulty ROR instruction are worth some money now. I should did around until I find it. I enjoyed watching Bill Herd and the others at the 2022 VCF video by Fran Blanche and came over here. Thank you for the trip down random memory lane - not that shift register stuff.

[@laraza4trump130]

Hits me right in the feels. Cool tour.

[@RetroAnachronist]

I’d love to see what’s on those backup tapes!

[@itsevilbert]

After about 35 years it would be difficult find a working tape drive, for most backup system.

[@5mf1nc]

@@itsevilbert Just send to @CuriousMarc and he and his fiends would work out something to recover what is possible

[@rgarito]

@@itsevilbert Even I have a drive that will read those. There are a lot of old 9-track drives laying around. And some even not that old. I had a client only about 15 ago that spent a lot of money for a NEW 9 track complete with a PC interface, to read some telco data.

[@KarpowSCX]

Such a shame that the factory is just a empty shell with very little left. I was looking forward to see some office rooms, tech labs and maybe even some old equipment and furniture. But the video was still fantastic watch. I hope more filmed material gets released!

[@KarlHamilton]

I need to see more. Would you consider uploading the entire footage?

[@DejaWiz]

Our first computer was a C128 - still some of my fondest gaming memories of my life.

[@greggv8]

I would've asked the (demolition?) crew on site if they wouldn't mind if I carted off all the "e-waste" so they wouldn't have to, then loaded up the computers, those backup tapes and other bits and bobs to salvage. Never know what interesting info could be on those tapes. Design data for the SID chips?

[@a120068020]

I had a PET 8032 - shouldn't have sold it, especially as it was destroyed in transit (my fault for not bomb proofing it - but it was 20 years ago). Keep seeing them for sale online but not sure I should start another collection - I already have 6 Amigas. Wonderful look at the past - Thanks Bil.

[@olegpereverzev5015]

Just tell me you've saved the data

[@djesky1]

amazing digital archeology, were you able to preserve anything that was uncovered and discovered?

[@st3ddyman]

What’s with the subliminal message at 1:00?

[@MarkStine]

Still have my dad's low and high end commodore calculator from the 70's. The high end one does square root!

[@ArcheologiaInformatica]

Awesome video Bil! Many thanks for sharing this and best regards from Computer Archeology channel!

[@MD_il_microcanale]

Hi Bil, did you recover anything? Even if I see this video late (youtube has reported it to me now) I feel a sense of regret to see that they are demolishing an industrial archeology site, very important in my opinion!

[@MartinGalway]

Nowhere does it say when the walkthrough occurred. Not in the video, not in the article, not in the description. Was it this year? (2020) If so, pretty amazing that the building hasn't changed significantly since the gutting. Was that the building where Bob Yannes worked on the SID and the C64? Woooooo.....

[@breakallthethings]

Our only clue is that he said he started in "83 or 84, something like 32 years ago," which would put this at 2015 or 2016.

[@MartinGalway]

@@breakallthethings well it's definitely a hi-def recording... not some old VHS tape that was uploaded. So there's that.

[@Jojoxxr]

Cool vid, fascinating stuff 👍

[@myconscience5885]

JESUS CHRIST HOLD THE CAMERA STILL!

[@dmassive]

Great! ¿Any videos or photos of what that place was like back then?

[@NuntiusLegis]

Here on KZbin: "How Computer Chips are made - Commodore Computer Factory Tour"

[@TMS5100]

@7:18 Hopefully someone grabbed those 9track tapes, could be interesting historical data on them.

[@TheRetroShed]

Great times. I do hope those machines were rescued and given loving homes! ;)

[@MD0MDI]

I have a load of boxes of papers from this place with what looks like design notes and chip based stuff in them, keep thinking I will look through them one day.

[@NuntiusLegis]

Perhaps someone like Bil Herd or Jeri Ellsworth would be interested for an in-depth analysis and have means or contacts for preservation ...

[@mikepdx7255]

Looked like a 150mm cassette. Was this place originally or retrofitted to 150mm? I’m assuming the photolithography line used something like open SVG coat/develop tool sets? Interested to know what steppers were used there. 4x or 5x reduction reticles.. Assuming too early for something like the ASML 5500 series???

[@StarSetByte]

Yeah seriously gonna agree with a few other commenters. I love Bill Herd, but this place isn't as spooky as it is impressive and historically important

[@leon111333]

Great inside video of the former fab! Thx! Has anyone Google maps coordinates to this building? Thx

[@gliderspace]

I would totally take each one of those commodore hardware, no matter the working condition, to breath new life in then , either by putting new components, or by mix matching them with new pieces and raspberry pi's It hurt me that I'm not able to just take those and go.

[@SianaGearz]

Do you think you can find machinery and material there to donate to Sam Zeloof? He's trying to make ICs at home.

[@saami208blue]

I have great memories with 64 machine had it once.. i ordered its Casste player white new still with me it was thencin 90s ended all...😢😢😢

[@WinrichNaujoks]

This could have been so much fun, but did you DELIBERATELY shake the camera around like that?

[@zenmaster24]

that building wasnt used again or cleaned out in 30 years???

[@stennisrl]

Any chance you guys could put up an unedited version of this? To mirror other comments, not a huge fan of the video/audio effects added to try and make it seem creepy.

[@RaymondDay]

Wow so neat to see. You need a 60 FPS camera moving left or right it blur's any way I thought QVC bought the old commodore building? Is this not the same building or QVC moved out too. Neat to see some old commodore stuff still there.

[@NULUSIOS]

Did you pick up what you could?

[@zot6694]

Very sad to see those abandoned marvels of technology...

[@ikeyasector]

This is really sad for me. This was the building that made my dreams happen and gave me a future to look forward to as a kid. I still say that if Jack didn't freak out that Commodore became a billion dollar company, and just didn't focused on the numbers so much, Commodore would have defeated the PC (if he stayed with Commodore and gave a better deal to Amiga).

[@saganandroid4175]

IIRC the reason Jack left was because Irving Gould was draining Commodore of cash. Later Mehdi Ali came in with really stupid ideas.

[@CAPTAINCAPSLOCK111]

@@saganandroid4175 And because he used CBM´s jet (which was on fire one time) as his own. I think that was the final nail in the coffin. But why don´t we ask Jack´s son Leonard Tramiel, he just commented here under this very video recently ;-) small world

[@johnathanstevens8436]

I looked at the building from Google Street view, glad I could finally see inside. Were those scrappers running saws? Wasn't there a bar you guys used to hang out at, probably closed now as well?

[@choppergirlfpv]

I have that CBM 8032, albeit with an intact screen. Sad to see what happened to the Commodore offices. Everyone can identify a VT-100 from the back ;-)

[@johnw2026]

I'd love to know what's on those old computer disks at the end, just for the sake of curiosity. But not just to know, to actually have a machine old enough to boot them up that still works.

[@dav1dbone]

I heard the first day of the demo works, a guy went to order pizza, he picked up a phone handset and there was a guy called Kim Eckert on the other end.

[@craftsman123456]

Save the PETs

[@Ninjaznexx]

Protip for viewers: you can use , and . to step frame-by-frame when the video is paused

[@NuntiusLegis]

Great! Do you know if there is a way to get rid of the interface when paused in full screen mode?

[@edoardobarolo4680]

There are cool things in there.. That's archeology. For me is like entering Kufu tomb !!

[@BurstupTV]

Awesome video. Poor PETs :(

[@TechJump]

Great!!! Did you catch any fish in there?

[@mheermance]

The standing water inside the building says it needs a new roof.

[@younessamr6802]

that clicking noise makes it feels like a radioactivity meter

[@deponia]

oh man, wish I could get my hands on that PET need to replace the case on mine. My PET came from a high school so it's all engraved and ugly. Very cool video.

[@darenager]

What a shame if all that historic equipment just got trashed, stuff of such importance should be preserved. It seems from the video that not much care is being taken with it.

[@TastyBusiness]

Are you keeping up?

[@KayvonJavid]

What a shame now many new computers cannot live up to the commodore 64.

[@scality4309]

Wow, why is this building not rented out?

[@JMDAmigaMusic]

Need to be probably tear down, all the ubnderling toxic waste cleaned and then rebuilt, as far as i know

[@oldtwinsna8347]

Doing any renovation or tear down would require a very expensive clean up plan. Any sane company looking for space would just look elsewhere.

[@theretrogeek789]

You should go back again and save that pet and Restore it

[@bluespartan076]

the music is giving me a sort of Halo CE Library Suite vibe... Spooky!

[@DannyFreiburg]

Everything has a beginning and an end. So this is how the end looks like. How sad.

[@Choober65]

Sometimes Trespass is NOT a crime.

[@neogen23]

I have to admit, the footwear choice puzzled me at first. Then I watched the whole video...

[@fiverZ]

As others have asked. did you save anything from here?

[@ingusmant]

Where is this? Texas?

[@Wok_Agenda]

Save everything

[@jessestevens2927]

Nice bit of subliminal advertising at 59 seconds :)

[@saganandroid4175]

This is so sad. I hope Bill Herd adopted those PETs out to get some TLC.

[@RetrospektiveAudio]

Should have taken the backups and publish the ASIC files ;)

[@CatWeazle21]

somebody needs to get over there with a pickup & save all that stuff before it gets dumped.

[@gregorymalchuk272]

Rescue the PETs!

[@finnw1]

I wonder why the land went unused for all that time

[@itsevilbert]

There was mention of the EPA at the start of the video. So a quick search for "MOS Technologies Factory EPA" gives: "The plant had been on the EPA's National Priorities List of hazardous waste sites since October 4, 1989. This was due to a 1974 leak of TCE from an underground 250-gallon concrete storage tank used by Commodore Business Machines in the semiconductor cleaning process. Leaks from tank had caused the local groundwater to become contaminated with trichloroethylene (TCE) and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in 1978."

[@gonedoneggonedoneg9863]

Hope u saved thebold PC and monitors

[@erickvond6825]

I wish I could've seen it back in it's heyday, all done up like it was. Such a shame to see it now. What a waste. I wonder, do you reckon there's any chance of the old ROM files still existing in their original form? I'd imagine it would be super dodgy to try and pull data from those old tapes but that is something I'd rather like to see. The curiosity is real mate though you might be hard pressed to find a compatible drive that still works reasonably well. I'll bet David "The 8 Bit Guy" and Adrian (in his "digital basement") are super jealous. Makes me miss my Amiga 4000-060 again. I used commodore machines for a long time. I still have my C128 though it doesn't really work anymore. Someday I'll have a go at fixing it but for now it's just happy memories in the original box which I kept. I remember playing Elvira's Mysteries of the Dark quite a lot, (I had a sort of thing for her back then, Cassandra Peterson) though I'm unsure of the exact name. I think I've gotten it right but it's been so long since last I played it that I can't quite remember. You can still get it from the internet archive or play in the browser on emulation. It's a brilliant bit of cheeky fun to say the least.

[@vhfgamer]

And in the back of that fallout 3 style basement, past the feral ghouls and radroaches.... is a holotape with all the design data for the SID and VIC II.

[@SnipE_mS]

Omg please tell me you took that poor PET

[@HyRax_Aus]

It's like a modern day version of the Blair Witch Project...! A gimbal would have made such a difference!

[@ismail.gurler]

Wow. Looks like the RobCo facility in Fallout 3.

[@joshuamacdonald4913]

All those odds and ends would sell well on eBay.

[@steveo4233]

@1:54. "... would have been the ground floor"? I'm guessing it still is the ground floor. The ground most likely didn't move. @2:41, no, that's the inside looking out. Sorry for the criticism but interesting walk through time.

[@finaltransconfigurat]

You don't understand conversational english do you?

[@roystout9751]

I have an 8023P printer.. heh hehhh.. And a CBM 8032, PET 4016, and PET 2001 (full keyboard)..

[@jefbed212]

I almost thought it said HERD too. This shows how disposable everything is under capitalism.

[@scality4309]

Salvage the tapes!!!

[@vulcancolossus346]

watched a minute of it and I got dizziness by the poor filming and camera shaking

[@JeremyLevi]

Same. Made it about half way through before I had to stop watching and just listen.

[@pacifiky]

these backrooms videos are getting out of hand

[@RBLevin]

Buy a gimbal.

[@fiverZ]

Wtf at 0:59