On Nov 29, 2014, at 2:01 PM, Jim Brain <brain@jbrain.com> wrote: > On 11/29/2014 2:44 PM, Nate Lawson wrote: >> By the CMOS days, I assume Rockwell or Commodore copied the original design into CAD, which made it easier to fix bugs and add features. They’d have to redraw it from scratch anyway since the gates would all be from a different process. >> > I heard that redoing the NMOS designs into CMOS was the sole reason CBM helped Bill Mensch set up WDC. Bill mentioned it to me in the mid-90's when I interviewed him for Commodore World magazine. I remember it because Bill chuckled on the phone and noted that he was one of the few people get money from Jack (so it must have happened prior to Jack leaving for Atari). I asked for details, and he noted that CBM set him up (probably gave him seed money in exchange for CMOS design help or stock in the firm, not sure about that part). Sure, but Tramiel was also squeezing him constantly as was his pattern (info on this is from the Bagnall book, 2nd ed.). It seemed like C= was smart enough to keep Mensch on the payroll after he left (though all the other 6502 team drifted away), and they used him to clone TI parts and other misc. semiconductor work. WDC was always an odd duck. They kept surviving on the 6502 and an archaic layout process by targeting embedded products. -Nate Message was sent through the cbm-hackers mailing listReceived on 2014-12-02 21:00:41
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