Chuck Peddle

In 1973, Chuck Peddle went to Motorola to work on the 6800 microprocessor project. But the 6800, one of the first microprocessors available, was too expensive to gain any market share. Peddle recognized this, left Motorola, and started his own chip company, MOS Technology.

There he developed the 6502 CPU, which soon became one of the most important microprocessors of the early homecomputer age, powering such machines as the Apple II, the Atari 800, the Commodore PET, and (slightly modified) the VIC-20, the Commodore 64, and various others.
(Although the 6502 was not software compatible with the 6800, it was infact pin-compatible, so it could be used as a drop-in replacement for 6800-based mainboards, a very clever idea by Peddle!)

Jack Tramiel, at that time president of Commodore, understood the importance of Peddle's development, bought MOS Technology and used the know how of the company to produce all kinds of chips for Commodore computers,such as the MOS 6581 (aka SID, the soundchip of the C64), and the versatile IO chips 6522 and 6526.

Chuck Peddle was one of the first persons, who came up with the idea for a personal computer, approximately at the same time when Stephen Wozniak and Steve Jobs were building the Apple I. Peddle was so sure of his idea that he allied with Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, to buy up Apple. This took place almost at the same time when Commodore bought MOS Technology. Wozniak and Jobs back then wanted 150,000 dollars for Apple, but Peddle and Gates could only raise two thirds of the required funds.

Later Chuck Peddle, together with Chris Fish, a former financer of Commodore, founded Sirius Systems Technology. Some weeks before IBM released the IBM PC, Sirius brought the Sirius I to the market. The Sirius I was the first inexpensive microcomputer of the 16-bit generation that was produced in big quantities and was widely noticed.

Partially taken from an uncredited article found on ibiblio.org