On Sat, 14 Feb 1998, Larry Anderson & Diane Hare wrote:

> Remember if you find a hint of something you are collecting at a thrift, > look around for other components (i.e. if you find a Commodore IEEE-488 > cable start looking for PET/B-128 drives, printers, computers, tapes, > disks, manuals, etc.)

Which reminds me: why didn't IEEE-488 ever become a big hit in the computer biz? It's been around since the 60's, is standard, has good performance, has IC support, can handle a bunch of devices, etc., but it became relagated to a niche of scientific instrument control for some reason.

Yes, it's true. Although I didn't get official confirmation of this long after, when a Spectrum article quoted the designers. As you know, the first Commodore computers used the IEEE bus to connect to peripherals such as disk and printer. I understand that these were available only from one source: Belden cables. A couple of years into Commodore's computer career, Belden went out of stock on such cables (military contract? who knows?). In any case, Commodore were in quite a fix: they made computers and disk drives, but couldn't hook 'em together! So Tramiel issued the order: "On our next computer, get off that bus. Make it a cable anyone can manufacture". And so, starting with the VIC-20 the serial bus was born. It was intended to be just as fast as the IEEE-488 it replaced. Technically, the idea was sound: the 6522 VIA chip has a "shift register" circuit that, if tickled with the right signals (data and clock) will cheerfully collect 8 bits of data without any help from the CPU. At that time, it would signal that it had a byte to be collected, and the processor would do so, using an automatic handshake built into the 6522 to trigger the next incoming byte. Things worked in a similar way outgoing from the computer, too. We early PET/CBM freaks knew, from playing music, that there was something wrong with the 6522's shift register: it interfered with other functions. The rule was: turn off the music before you start the tape! (The shift register was a popular sound generator). But the Commodore engineers, who only made the chip, didn't know this. Until they got into final checkout of the VIC-20. By this time, the VIC-20 board was in manufacture. A new chip could be designed in a few months (yes, the silicon guys had application notes about the problem, long since), but it was TOO LATE! A major software rewrite had to take place that changed the VIC-20 into a "bit-catcher" rather than a "character-catcher". It called for eight times as much work on the part of the CPU; and unlike the shift register plan, there was no timing/handshake slack time. The whole thing slowed down by a factor of approximately 5 to 6. There's more (the follow-on C64 catastrophe), but that's where it happened.

When the 64 came out, the problem VIA 6522 chip had been replaced by the CIA 6526. This did not have the shift register problem which had caused trouble on the VIC-20, and at that time it would have been possible to restore plan 1, a fast serial bus. Note that this would have called for a redesign of the 1540 disk drive, which also used a VIA. As best I can estimate - and an article in the IEEE Spectrum magazine supports this - the matter was discussed within Commodore, and it was decided that VIC-20 compatibility was more important than disk speed. Perhaps the prospect of a 1541 redesign was an important part of the decision, since current inventories needed to be taken into account. But to keep the Commodore 64 as a "bit-banger", a new problem arose. The higher-resolution screen of the 64 (as compared to the VIC-20) could not be supported without stopping the CPU every once in a while. To be exact: Every 8 screen raster lines (each line of text), the CPU had to be put into a WAIT condition for 42 microseconds, so as to allow the next line of screen text and color nybbles to be swept into the chip. (More time would be needed if sprites were being used). But the bits were coming in on the serial bus faster than that: aD a bit would come in about every 20 microseconds! So the poor CPU, frozen for longer than that, would miss some serial bits completely! Commodore's solution was to slow down the serial bus even more. That's why the VIC-20 has a faster serial bus than the 64, even though the 64 was capable, technically, of running many times faster. Fast disk finally came into its own with the Commodore 128.