IN JANUARY 1981, a handful of semiconductor engineers at MOS Technology in West Chester, Pa., a subsidiary of Commodore International Ltd., began designing a graphics chip and a sound chip to sell to whoever wanted to make “the world’s best video game.”
Instead, he decided, the chips would go into a 64-kilobyte home computer to be introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas the second week of January 1982. The computer had yet to be designed, but that was easily remedied.
The MOS designers freely borrowed ideas that they liked—sprites from the TI machine, collision-detection techniques and character-mapped graphics from the Intellivision, and a bit map from their own VIC-20. They then packed as many of those ideas as they could into a predefined area of silicon.
In November 1981, the chips were complete. The original intent had been a game machine, but at this point the personal-computer market was beginning to look promising.
CREATING THE COMMODORE 64: THE ENGINEERS’ STORY
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Tramiel, Jack
MOS Technology
“We looked heavily into the Mattel Intellivision,” recalls Winterble.
Intellivision The Intellivision is a home video game console test marketed by Mattel Electronics in 1979, and officially released in 1980. The name is a portmanteau of 'intelligent television'. Development began in 1977, the same year as the launch of its
Intellivsion
The MOS designers freely borrowed ideas that they liked—sprites from the TI machine, collision-detection techniques and character-mapped graphics from the Intellivision, and a bit map from their own VIC-20. They then packed as many of those ideas as the
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aquarius intellivision (computer by intellivsion)
Spectravideo
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