Chuck Peddle - The man and the very brown computer

This video covers Chuck Peddle the designer of the 6502 processor, and the computer company he started after MOS, Sirius Systems Technology. We look at his career, and the first and only computer Sirius made, the Sirius 1, or the Victor 9000 as it was called in Europe.

[@RetroBytesUK]

Since finishing filming this video someone has kindly offered to make me a copy of the CP/M and MS Dos disks and post them to me, so hopefully I should be able to film a short section showing the machine off in a few weeks time.

[@franklincerpico7702]

We call it Gas because it's shorthand for Gasoline, which isn't a gas but a transparent, flammable liquid. Gasoline and Petrol are synonymous

[@justinhelget853]

update please?

[@RetroBytesUK]

@@justinhelget853 I picked up the disk last weekend, I need to go back to it. Since making the video a whole bunch of documentation has been discovered meaning servicing and repairing these machines is much more viable, so it's PSU will get a full overhaul before it gets powered up again.

[@philharper1717]

@@RetroBytesUK that's great news, would be a nice video to see :)

[@NuntiusLegis]

@@franklincerpico7702 Interesting, here in Germany the word "gasoline" is very uncommon, but a carburetor is called "Vergaser", because it produces, if not in the stirct physical sense a gas, but a gas-like mixture of air and fuel. I think because of that, in German the accelerator pedal is called "Gaspedal" and the act of accelerating "Gas geben" ("giving gas").

[@Jaschultze73]

My parents have 3 Victor 9000s in their basement. Ran an ice cream company in St. Louis, MO and a consulting company using them. It was the machine I learned MS-DOS and CPM/86, MultiPlan, dBase, wrote all of my school papers on and learned how to program on. So many fond memories!

[@slopesgameroom]

Awesome video! Great job. Plenty more of this please

[@RetroBytesUK]

That really nice of you to say, especially given how good your stuff is. I had best getting cracking on my next video.

[@RoseTintedSpectrum]

Snorkers sent me this way, and I have to say... I really enjoyed that. I say that in surprise because honestly - a lot of these hardware breakdowns are very dry to watch, and it's not an area of interest I've ever really found much entertainment in, but I love your delivery and visuals. You effectively turned something that's cold, hard and factual into something that had me hooked for 15 minutes and that aint an easy task! Really good stuff.

[@RetroBytesUK]

Really glad you liked it, I've been loving your watch along with Bad Influence (I've been watching it since Snorkes mentioned them in discord). You also summed up Rick Dangerous perfectly, I loved that game as a kid, and your spot on its a memory game. Sadly I don't remember it any more, so I constantly die until I can't be arse playing any more.

[@euromicelli5970]

2:00 that must be the most understated introduction of Claude Shannon I’ve ever seen.

[@MostlyPennyCat]

You should do a video on the Ti TMS 1000. If only as an excuse to buy yourself a Big Trak.

[@JJbm4233]

God bless, Chuck paddled, and everything he did, for, to work MOS technologies…… the entire competing world

[@DavidRavenMoon]

"Gasoline" is an English word that denotes fuel for automobiles. The term is thought to have been influenced by the trademark "Cazeline" or "Gazeline", named after the surname of British publisher, coffee merchant, and social campaigner John Cassell. Cassell discovered that a shopkeeper in Dublin named Samuel Boyd was selling counterfeit cazeline and wrote to him to ask him to stop. Boyd did not reply and changed every ‘C’ into a ‘G’, thus coining the word "gazeline". The Oxford English Dictionary dates its first recorded use to 1863 when it was spelled "gasolene". The term "gasoline" was first used in North America in 1864. British refiners originally used "motor spirit" as a generic name for the automotive fuel and "aviation spirit" for aviation gasoline. When Carless was denied a trademark on "petrol" in the 1930s, its competitors switched to the more popular name "petrol".

[@robertlock5501]

You stole my comment, but goodness, yours is way better. In short "gas" is just short for "gasoline"

[@shelterit]

Oh! Lovely! Victor 9000 was my very first computer as a 11 year old boy (my dad was a computer technician for a large company at the time) and there was some other unique features of it, including some very, very impressive (monochrome) graphics demos! It was the first computer I every heard speak, saying "I am the Sirius 1 / Victor 9000" or something like that. Truly a wonderous computer that sparked my whole damn software developer career, and here I am 50 years old, and still remember this big chunk of brown very, very fondly indeed.

[@RetroBytesUK]

It is a delightful lump of brown is'nt it. It sas just a bit a head of so many machines in every area. It really did deserve to sell in greater numbers than it did, but I guess not much could stand up to that IBM brand recognition.

[@richardhall206]

@@RetroBytesUK "No one ever got fired for buying IBM" as their ads said

[@RetroBytesUK]

@@richardhall206 That one phrase, maybe one of the best bits of marketing any computer company has come up with.

[@darkestlost]

Amazing documentary video about this genius Chuck paddle. I'm very impressed you actually have one model of sirius 1 and finally i could to know much more of him besides he did work for mos technologies and already designed kim 1, everyone around internet just told this part of his story and not how incredible was his career as engineering and how far he got. Anyway great video!

[@RetroBytesUK]

He's always been a facinating person to me, he had such a huge impact on modern computing and yet is somehow far less know than many others who did so much less.

[@allankcrain]

Oh! I actually know the reason we call it gas in the US! "Gas" is short for "Gasoline", which is a corruption of "Gazeline", which is a deliberate misspelling to get around the trademark "Cazeline" of John Cassell, who was one of the first people to sell petrol.

[@MostlyPennyCat]

A fucking _MEG?!??_ How the hell did it do that? Did it have an equivalent to ISA?

[@jayamalw]

I had a chance to work with him at Tandon . such a nice guy. He gave me a nick name haha "Prog" nice name thanks. regards, prog

[@RetroBytesUK]

It's good to hear first hand he's a nice as people said he was. Where you working on disk drive with him ?

[@thepoormechanic]

We call them gas station because its called gasoline here gas for short

[@KipIngram]

Because we call the liquid "gasoline." That in turn came from a pair of trademarks, Cazeline and Gazeline, which were based on the name John Cassel, an 18th century British businessman who sold fuel oil.

[@nicktucker3437]

This is mostly a rehash of everything Chuck told the Computer History Museum in his oral history.

[@richardhall206]

This is wonderful. The Sirius 1 was a great computer. I had been coding Forth on an AIM 65/40 before getting Fig-Forth for the Sirius 1. It was such a classy machine. We had one of those and a Victor 9000 variant as well, which no one liked using as it was a bit flaky. Even when we started buying generic PC's in the late 80's the Sirius always felt like a classier machine. CPM86 was a superior OS to MSDOS. PC's felt like a step back in tech rather than a step forward. Our SIrius was finally retired in 1995.

[@KipIngram]

Austin Texas was a GREAT place to live, especially back in those days. Those guys missed out - they would have been fine.

[@douro20]

It's possible he worked alongside Arnold Spielberg (yes, Steven Spielberg's father) while he was at GE.

[@ChrisPinCornwall]

I had a Sirius when it first came out, used it for software development, somewhat slow C compile times using floppies! The display was, for its day, amazing - 800x400? It wasn't hugely reliable, though. Thank you for an engaging video.

[@faenethlorhalien]

Yanks call them "gas" stations because, in that expression, "gas" is short for "gasoline"< which is the actual product being burned (it's not PETROL, petrol is what you extract from underground; it literally means PETRA - stone - OLEUM - oil). Petrol, or, the misnomer "oil" is then refined and turned into gasoline. And you know the profound distate that Anglo-saxons, specially Americans, have of words that are longer than 1 syllable (2 tops), hence "guacamole" becomes "guac", "mayonnaise" becomes "mayo" and "gasoline" becomes "gas". Do your research before you mock other people's way of speaking, MATE.

[@Santor-]

Hey, Bergerac was the shitz! Gas/petrol, ok, but you got it all wrong with other parts mate, such as fender/wing, trunk/boot, pickup truck/lifting lorry.

[@CaptainDangeax]

Actually Chuck Peddle borrowed this idea about floppy from the Commodore disk drives. The mechanical rotation speed did not change, but the number of sectors on each track was decreasing with the diameter, implying a different timing for each track. That's why it's not possible to read a Commodore or a Victor9000 floppy on a PC

[@molochi]

Doesn't understand why gasoline is called gas... smh.

[@videooblivion]

For those of you interested in learning more about Chuck, I recommend the three volume (yes, three volume) book series about the rise and fall of Commodore by Brian Bagnal. They are worth the money and very illuminating. There is also a multi-hour oral history interview with Chuck recorded by the California's computer history museum. Watch it and learn about this unsung master of the personal computing revolution.

[@spearPYN]

Great new retro channel... I love computers from the 80s and 90s!

[@RetroBytesUK]

Thanks, I'm a bit of a fan of computers from that period as well, as you can probably tell.

[@eddielegs344]

There is another thing Chuck is known for he also invented the best data tape drive. At the time other brands didn't work well or not reliably. He spent 3 months on it he didn't remember how he did it but worked very well as the only one. But I think you knew that information. Chuck later in life always wearing a too small hat 😂 what a figure pity he is no more R.I.P Chuck was a Legend....

[@KipIngram]

Wow - to have Claude Shannon as a professor? That's COOL!

[@larrymelman]

Early in my own career, I worked with an engineer that was on the 6800/6502 team with Peddle and Mensch (although curiously, he never mentioned anything about those years). So I've spent a lot of time lately reading about these early microprocessor engineers. This video appears to repeat and paraphrase Peddle's interviews, and I'm just not convinced they are 100% accurate. I don't think Peddle really ever "designed" anything. He spent the first 10+ years of his career running time-share computing centers for GE before they got out of the computer biz. Motorola hired him in at the very end of the 6800 project (I'm really not sure why, since he disparaged them over and over as mere "calculator guys"), and he was there only about a year before getting the key members of the chip design team to jump ship to MOS Technology with him. Yes it's true that Motorola didn't want to pursue the "low cost 6800" option, and they failed to sue Peddle out of existence when they could have very easily. Other key 6800 engineers became middle managers at Motorola (I knew many of them) and disappeared into anonymity. But it's also true that Motorola was forcing them to move to Austin during the 74/75 chip crash (at which time Austin had no high-tech at all) so the defectors to MOS Technology were clearly rebelling against that too. I think Peddle was what we would now call a "systems guy" or an "architect", not a designer since I see no evidence that he went anywhere near the chips,. And I think he took credit for a lot of other people's work and ideas. No credit to the team, always "I did this" and "I was the first to do that". Hundreds of other people had the exact same ideas as Peddle did, at the same time that Peddle had them. Mensch has also given extensive interviews, and it's curious to me that he says almost nothing about Peddle and was only diplomatic and polite when Peddle died awhile back. I think the credit for the 6502 should be much more broadly distributed than Peddle ever did. Everyone involved in the original 6800 development at Motorola deserves to be recognized. That Apple and the others went with the 6502 instead is more a matter of dumb luck, and Motorola's stupid decisions (which they made a lot of over the years, leading to their semiconductor division eventually falling apart).

[@rivaterrier]

The Sirius was not pronounced the way you say it. We had one at Plessey in Liverpool and we called it Shirley in tribute to the famous line from Airplane “Shirley, you can’t be Sirius?”

[@Thorsbabelis]

Depending on the year, but it's about 2000,00 USD today. You're welcome.

[@jimadams7765]

Ahhh. The birth of Apricot computers. Always better than the IBM PC.

[@3rdalbum]

Why is there a 6502 in flash memory controllers though? Do they need a CPU and even an extremely basic (by today's standards) one will work?

[@jj_1edzep]

12:08 That AMD chip though :D

[@SnipE_mS]

We call them gas station because some brilliant marketing people somewhere decided they would call it gasoline which I didn’t find out till later in life doesn’t really mean anything. It was a brand name like Kleenex or Jell-o.

[@Satscape]

I watched this to the end too! (see other comments first). The 6502 was so simple, I could learn machine code, that I had failed to do with the Z80.

[@dbingamon]

When I worked a Wards Computers in Cincinnati we were introduced to his machine as the Victor 9000.

[@broggsey]

Any connection to the Sirius cybernetics corporation?

[@MostlyPennyCat]

Maybe you could make a commodore disk write it. It's a full computer, it loads disk software, you'd just need to write a custom one.

[@ntd0]

Good content, waiting for more!

[@svensimon]

Please do give us an update if you ever get some disks for the Victor9000! Would love to see it booted up

[@clementpoon120]

The future of youtube retro channels is in your hands,RetroBytes.

[@RetroBytesUK]

I am not sure that bodes well for the future of retro 🤣. I will give it a good try however.

[@johnperekopsky3271]

In the US, "petrol" is known as "gasoline" - or "gas" for short.

[@skfalpink123]

In the Channel 4 Soap "Brookside", the character Alan Partidge (a contract programmer played by Dicken Ashworth) was often seen using his ACT Sirius and would often discuss computer concepts and software with other characters. In fact, one of the main story lines consisted of him working with his neighbour (Gordon Collins) to produce a piece of software for one of his contracts. As I remember, Alan was a character between 1983 and 1984. Here's one of the episode scenes: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bKWon3WYrr-cd7c

[@RetroBytesUK]

That was a bit of Brookside I had not remembered. All ways entertaining to see computers pop up in old TV episodes.

[@TNX255]

Nice and interesting, good job. Although that 1920's elevator music in the background is, uhh, a bit out of place.

[@3rdalbum]

I think it adds charm and distinctiveness to the videos. If you hear New Orleans jazz in a video about computing history, it's RetroBytes.

[@MarcelHuguenin]

Hello whoever you are. Don't know if you've been able to get out of the house and finally got your floppies with a system on it ;-) Just wanted to say I loved this overview of nostalgia. I am from The Netherlands and have worked with, programmed and sold these computers so long as they were available in my country. At the time I got very frustrated with the fact the IBM and it's clones were coming up and they all looked inferior to me compared to this beautiful piece of design, both inside and out. Anyway, I just stumbled on this video and it brought back many memories...

[@MarcelHuguenin]

I started off with CBM3016, CBM3032 and CBM8032 and did a whole lot of business programming for these before switching to Sirius 1 / Victor 9000.

[@RobSchofield]

Would love to see a follow-up to this, especially running CP/M. Great video!

[@RobSchofield]

Or even a complete vid about CP/M, MP/M, and Concurrent DOS/DRDos?

[@RetroBytesUK]

I'm really looking forwards to getting some disks for it.

[@SevenDeMagnus]

Thanks sir Peddle. God bless.

[@i-use-4rch-btw]

2:47 “Gas” short for “Gasoline”

[@BrightSpark]

Oh goodness, Jack considered buying Apple back then? Man, how different computing history would've been if he actually did that... would the Amiga even have existed as we know it today? Would Commodore have produced the Macintosh? What about the iPod? The iPhone?

[@RetroBytesUK]

The world would certianly be very different if Commodore had bought Apple.

[@TheSulross]

The universe has not been kind to brown colored computing devices - consider the fate of Microsoft's Zune. Looks like the Victor 9000 was like the Tandy 2000 - great hardware but MS-DOS alone not sufficient compatibility as in those days coding to the hardware was the rule of the day for software developers.

[@RetroBytesUK]

Its a shame it not do well in the end. The PC just swept everything else away more or less. The victor9000 was just not that PC compatible.

[@heidirichter]

The infamous KZbin algorithm suggested one of your videos to me the other day. I'm sorry, I don't recall off the top of my rapidly balding head which one it was, but I'd already hit the subscribe button before finishing watching that one. And now I think I've seen all your videos so far, and I have to say, I now look forward to a new video of yours more than I do from some of the more well-known KZbinrs - LGR, The 8-bit guy, RMC and many others. I really appreciate how much time and effort has gone into this, as well as the little bits of humour. As an Australian, I had a good chuckle at the "Gas station" bit, because I had always thought the same thing. But I know know why, although it still seems odd to me that they call petrol "gasoline". But hey, they also insist on spelling colour incorrectly, and dropping the H when saying "herbs", not to mention still using imperial measures when almost the entire rest of the world has gone metric, so it seems to me they just want to be different to everyone else... Anyway, fantastic work my good man, I look forward to watching the next one when it comes out!

[@RetroBytesUK]

That's really nice of you to say Troy. As a small channel you dont know if you're connecting with plan audience or not, so it really makes a difference to know poeple are looking forwards to the next video.

[@stannovacki2406]

Thank you for this informative and entertaining walk down memory lane! my first experience with microprocessors was as an udergrad in the late 70s. I was using a JOLT SBC, cousin to the KIM-1, so I have quite a bit of affection for the 6502 and the amazing variety of systems that were designed around it. Of course, that $5 price point is arguiably what kicked the uC revolution into high gear, as Motorola, Zilog, and Intel were forced to dramatically rethink their own marketing strategies. Competition is a good thing, at least until market position is abused (looking at you Microsoft) I have to say one thing that confuses me still is how smart floppy disk subsytems like the one on the Sirius/Victor, the Commodore 1541, etc were so deficient in their ability to support other 5.25" formats. considering that there was a considerable amount of processing power driving them, would it have been such a challenge to add a NEC765 or WD1795 (I think) "emulation mode" whereby soft-sectored, fixed-track length formats couild be read and written? I believe the 1571 floppy drive unit that debuted with the C128 could read DOS and some of the more common CP/M floppy disks. Seems to me a disk-transfer utility program would have been a straightforward (and higly valued) tool for moving data between different kinds of uC systems. Additionally, it could provide a kind of rosetta stone of archive media: a simple 360k or 400k DSDD disk could have provided a convenient (if not particularly dense) way to save information in a common format that would be accessible by a wide variety of computers, regardless of whether that 360/400k format was native to the target system. while not as convenient as directly using non-native format disks, it would provide a mechanism for getting data off the archive media onto the better-performing native media. one (very low density) example could be CP/M's choice of the IBM 3740 8" diskette format as its only media standard, and it wasn't particularly difficult to add an 8" drive to an IBM/clone PC. Anyway, liked and subscribed. as a latecomter to RetroByes I have LOTS of new-to-me content to view and new-to-everyone videos to look forward to. Much appreciated!

[@mikecooper1234]

Excellent video. As I remember the Sirius, the variable speed floppy drive made different sounds at different speeds. I vaguely remember someone being able to play a tune with the disc drive! Or perhaps that was just wishful thinking, hard to remember details from that long ago.

[@binarydinosaurs]

I'm spending a while catching up on videos I've not watched despite knowing of them for years. I can't remember if we mentioned this over the last cuppa we had, but the Fluxengine/Greaseweazle fully support the V9K disk format now, and I've got all my Siriiiii running :D Plenty of disk images available online these days. Yay! The Sirius is one of my favourite machines of all time.

[@RetroBytesUK]

I did not know they have managed to get it to support the v9ks disk format now. When I made the video saddly it did not, that will hopefully open up a lot more software to me now. I've only got a couple of disks for it, that Dave ran off for me at the last even where both you and him brought one.

[@binarydinosaurs]

Fluxengine has supported them for yonks but not many folk built one for this purpose because not many folk had working V9Ks. Once the full schematics arrived online back in 2021 I was off though, fixed all of mine and several of the Museum's too. Add in Fluxengine client with weazle hardware and images were very much a thing. Loads on the Internet Archive.

[@christianmeinert8806]

I really like your content and especially your kind of storytelling! You channel needs more attention. I heard writing comment can help too. 👍👍👍👍 Just wondering when younger people will scratch their heads hearing about you don’t be able to pick up some disks - or will they simply smile and remember another forgotten period of their life - as I did remember how desperate I was getting my hand on a victor these days.

[@American-Motors-Corporation]

Just subscribed! Love the content!

[@RetroBytesUK]

Thanks, that's very much appreciated.

[@ankitgupta5039]

Interesting...

[@MegaFirewalk]

I didn't know the 6502 was so widely used.

[@kevinbarry71]

Gas is short for gasoline

[@AdityapratapBiswas]

2:45 gasoline in short is called gas and then there's station. So basically it's gasoline station shortened to gas station 😅

[@Whatisrealwillprosper]

This is my great grandfather

[@RetroBytesUK]

That's one great, great grandfather to have.

[@mark12358]

I knew the story but never seen one so closely. Really looking forward for the next Sirius Victor 9000 video! Cheers, M

[@RetroBytesUK]

I'm really looking forward to being able to do it, my first source of disks fell through. I have another source but the pandemic means I've not been able to go visit him.

[@supergrover1827]

This was one of my first real computers; a pair of Victor 9000s with a 10mb Winchester. Retired out of my dad's accounting office in the mid 80s, when it was replaced with a Corona PC clone (also a rare relic now). Sadly they were all donated, along with all their software. Wish I still had one of them. If you can find it, look for the talking star-trek game.

[@RetroBytesUK]

I would quite like to get the harddrive unit for mine. It would be handy as the hd has a regular filing system so would make getting files from modern machines to the Victor alot easier. I will keep an eye out for that Star Trek game.

[@PondersRetroGoodness]

Another fascinating historical video, and happy to see you're getting the disks necessary to get the machine booted up :)

[@RetroBytesUK]

I can't wait to get the disks so I can use the thing.

[@SnabbKassa]

Not only were we allowed to leave our homes, we were allowed to have opinions that we came up with ourselves.

[@WhatHoSnorkers]

Fascinating stuff. Now I know why it's 650 TWO after all!

[@RetroBytesUK]

I always wondered about that as a kid too.

[@WhatHoSnorkers]

@@RetroBytesUK Same with ZX. I thought they were just cool letters. Z was for Zilog, and X was just a cool letter....

[@kevinbarry71]

The 6502 is not in the Atari 2600. It is in the Atari 400/800/5200 machines

[@RetroBytesUK]

Well its a 6507 which was a specially packaged verison of the 6502 in a 28 pin dip. So it lost a few address lines to get the pin count down, as a result it could access less memory, but apart from that restriction its a 6502.

[@CommodoreGreg]

By that same reasoning you'd have to say the C64 and the NES didn't have a 6502 either, but the reality is they all used the 6502 core.

[@pauliedweasel]

This video was another victim of the COVID 19 propaganda scam.