Chuck Peddle

Charles Ingerham Peddle (November 25, 1937 – December 15, 2019) was an American electrical engineer best known as the main designer of the MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, as well as the KIM-1 SBC (single-board computer) and its successor the Commodore PET PC (personal computer), both based on the 6502.

Biography
Peddle was born in Bangor, Maine, United States on November 25, 1937. He worked in a radio station while in high school.

In 1955, Peddle joined the Marine Corps. He attended the University of Maine where he earned a BSc degree in Engineering Physics. Afterwards, he went to work for General Electric working with time sharing systems.

In 1973, Peddle worked at Motorola on the development of the 6800 processor.

Peddle recognized a market for an ultra-low-price microprocessor and began to champion such a design to complement the $300 Motorola 6800. His efforts were frustrated by Motorola management and he was told to drop the project. He then left for MOS Technology, where he headed the design of the 650x family of processors; these were made as a $25 answer to the Motorola 6800. The most famous member of the 650x series was the 6502, developed in 1975, which was priced at 15% of the cost of an Intel 8080, and was subsequently used in many commercial products, including the Apple II, Commodore VIC-20, Nintendo Entertainment System, Atari 8-bit computers and arcade video games, Oric computers, and the BBC Micro from Acorn Computers.

The 6502 microprocessor design was also modified to support other computers while maintaining backward compatibility. The 6507 is the CPU of the Atari 2600, and of peripherals such as the Atari 850 Interface, and 810 and 1050 disk drives. Atari used a custom in-house derivative, the 6502C "Sally" in the XL/XE computers and 7800, which is based on the 6502B but with added logic to disable the clock signal, called HALT. Using DMA, this allows a second microprocessor "ANTIC" to shut off the CPU whenever it needed the data/address bus, allowing them to coexist. The 6510 is in the Commodore 64.

In 1980, Peddle left MOS Technology, together with Commodore Business Machines (CBM) financer Chris Fish, to found Sirius Systems Technology. There, Peddle designed the Victor 9000 personal computer.

Legacy
Peddle and Bill Mensch are regarded as personal computer pioneers, in that both the 6502 technology and business model were instrumental in helping launch the personal computer revolution. After his death, Mensch wrote in memoriam of Peddle.