No matter how many times I hear the stories, I never get tired of listening to Bil. 8)

I worked a year as a software engineer for Commodore.. in Hull (UK), the R&D HQ in England. We were a glorious team of three (3) engineers working on a clean room implementation of Postscript for the Amiga. Probably close to zero US R&D have ever heard of that team. The way if was run and funded already hinted strongly at what was to come soon after: Commodore going bust. Our Postscript was of really high quality, but it never saw the light of day as an Amiga library, device driver, or any other shape or form. Working for Commodore was not cool.. right after reaching our first major milestone (Level 1 implementation stable) ahead of schedule, they fired us like we were secondhand furniture. They fired us because US marketing did a 180 on the perceived need for a clean room Postscript for the Amiga. Marketing people can be such a bunch of *holes.

As I recall, I bought my very first computer, a C64, along with the Commodore dot matrix printer & floppy disk drive + a 13" color TV to use as a monitor. I took out a $2000 ($6500 in 2021 dollars) loan to accomplish this. I got it home, the local computer shop where I bought it had no software available and none would be available in the near future. My remedy turned out being a subscription to the C64 magazine, which had several pages of basic code to produce your own software programs.

My first computer was a VIC20. I loved that thing. Went through the commodores as money allowed. C64, Amiga 512, Amiga 1500 etc. Had a spectrum somewhere in there but I hated the keyboard and it got frisbied out the window literally in frustration. I was so sad when Commodore died, it was the company who set me on course to where I am today. Aged 50 I still have such a soft spot for everything Commodore. Loved the stories from Bil Herd. Thank you for sharing.

one of the sadest days of my life was when my vic20 was destroyed in a fire. But then a year later I was rewarded with a used C64 with a disk drive.. no more tapes!!! now I could create save and load quicker!... lol also the c64 was the first time I ever went to a bbs. With my great 2400bps modem that I ordered from Computer Shopper!! yep those were the days.

i have the Commodore 64 Logo tattooed on my left arm. i got my 1st Commodore 64 in 1983. i was in the 11th grade at the time. That computer changed my whole life!!!

Best ̶T̶e̶d̶ ̶T̶a̶l̶k̶ Herd Talk ever. Thanks to the facilitators for this. This was my ultimate Christmas TV. Loved every minute!

Never had a Commodore, never seen a Commodore, and yet I'm loving every second of this lecture.

I learned to speak to my C64 before I learned to speak effectively to other people. 6510 made so much sense to me, it helped the world make sense.

Bil is so brilliant to listen to, and brilliant at engineering too

Not only do I remember Commodore, I still cherish my fully operational C64 with tape drive

I am one of the European guys who learned programming on a commodore Plus/4! My first Computer! Great video and great talk!

We need a 12 hour Bill Herd video :) I think he was just getting warmed up :)

Thanks for sharing. I grew up with commodore computers and these stories give a lot of color to already great memories....

So cool!!!! Every time Bil has one of these talks, he adds a couple more stories

I started with vic20 and it was my first computer I ever own. C64 is my fav

Bill Herd is looking pretty good in this talk. He looks like 10 years younger than he did in some of his other talks.

I'm very happily working on a C64 board repair as I listen to this talk. Yay for Commodore!

Still my favorite computer I had as a teenager. I hope one day I actually get a cp/m program running on it.

Bill is such a talent. I can't get enough of his stories. And his presentation manners and jokes are so perfectly timed & executed that it's a pure joy to watch & listen! But yeah, the way he's treating those unique items really grinds my gears! :D

I was born in '85, didn't have a PC until I was 14, have no technical literacy with hardware or software, but I am in awe of these pioneers. To say we have a debt is not enough. They gave life to our computing world.

I had a Commodore 64 and an amiga. I loved those things.

This calls up memories... my first computer was a C64 and I still remember how long it took me to persuade my parents to buy me one, since the didn't understand what that should be good for. I started to learn programming on it and later I got an Amiga 1000, which was sort of the pinnacle of home computers back then. This machines strongly influenced my decision to study computer engineering.

I grew up in Turkey, and back in the early 1980s, Commodore was huge there, whereas Apple was unknown. All the kids had either a Commodore 64 or a ZX Spectrum, nobody I knew had an Apple computer of any flavour. In the late 1980s, I moved to the UK as a teenager, and again, all the kids had Amigas, Atari STs, ZX Spectrums or BBC Micros. I didn't see an Apple computer until I started university. Interesting how different brands gain popularity in different regions.

I also worked at MOS. I was a business systems programmer on the Data General and then on the VAX. I started just after you guys moved to West Chester. Wild times.

Could listen fo Bil talk all day.

1:00 He's right lol 😆 I've seen loads of shows that talk about tech from the 80s & show apple II or the original Mac but no commodore 64 🥴

I have just completed the re capping and restoration of my Vic20 and all the online searches that were Vic releated must have fired up the algorithm to recommend this video and Im so glad it did as this was extremly entertaining, thanks for posting!

My favorite Commodore presentations are done by Bil Herd. I had a C64 in 1985 but I know very little about programming and what was inside the breadbox. This is fascinating as is all Bil's other presentations that have been uploaded onto KZfaq.

This guy is a gem of an engineer! Awesome teamwork and leadership!

I really hope Bil does an audio version of his book. Half the entertainment is his delivery

so cool, i had a commodore 16 plus 4 briefly, i remember it fondly, tape drive crunching squeaking noises as it loaded, flashing coloured lines as it loaded games from tape, the chunky joysticks, picking out games on tape from a local software gaming store.

Excellent video! Brings back memories to be sure!!

The missing reset button on the C64 is really weird. Everyone I knew that had a C64 had one. Either on a fast load cartridge or a custom built switch on the user port. It was a super simple circuit. The fact that everyone I knew had one shows how much it was needed. Loved programming on the C64. It was so much fun figuring out all the tricks you could do like extend sprites vertically as much as you wanted or reuse them (Commando used this technique), change the character bank mid screen to create a character editor, change the background colour on a particular scanline to get more colours (and on anything else that could change colours), etc. 6502 assembly was my second language after C64 Basic. I still remember saying "This is so much easier and faster than Basic. Why would anyone not use assembly for everything!" I still stand by that statement. :)

Despite being raised on different machines, and in completely different world behind the Iron Curtain, these stories about 6502/Z80/tinkering with computer electronics made me feel like I'm at home. (Maybe because as I kid I did lots of 6502 assemlby at home, and 8080/electronics at school). Really cool video, also because of interesting hints about Tramiel.

It would be nice if Bil could do a presentation on the particulars his "education". What prepared him so spectacularly for his breakthrough and rise at MOS? His story at MOS is the tale of Intern to Manager Overnight. How much was genuine luck as he claims and how much was genuine skill as he downplays?

My first computer was a Vic 20, nearly every kid I knew ended up getting one. I'm sure the Vic 20 is single handedly responsible for causing the "video game" crash of 83. It was really just the Atari crash. I wanted a C64 so bad for years. Then one day my mom told me she ordered a 'Plus 4'. "It's like a C64 only better", she said. Ugghhhh my dead soul.... My soul died that day!!

Bill Herd, Dave Haynie and all the Commodore engineers are great to listen to as 30+ years latter they still convey the passion they had for Commodore and the wonderful machines that they produced, pity the management wasn't the same.

This is pure gold

I would never say this to a veteran, but I would say this as an 8 bit C-64 kid hacker from the 80's that lived and breathed these machines... Thank yo for your Service. I never hacked on Herd's machines, but I've got a few 128's and a SuperPet now moldering away. For me it was Vic-20 bought with my own money to C-64 gifted out of the blue by my grandparents Nirvana land. Having I didn't buy software, I wrote it. That blinking cursor on a command line with Bill Gates full screen editor... was power and too tantalizing to leave still. Somewhere is my Programmers Reference Guide and red Machine language programming book. which were like the Old and New Testament lol.

I don't recall the TED version of Commodore computers, but I was quite involved in writing programs in 6502 assembly for the Pet 2001, 4032, 8032, VIC and C64. Back then I could recall all the opcodes and timing cycles for the 6502 ... still can for quite a few, its burned in my memory :-)

I got a 128D Herd version in my living room.

Sharing the bus between cpu and display controller worked really well with the 6502. The BBC micro also used the same technique.

Really wanted to make it to the lecture this year and bring my C-128D for him to sign (even if it's the metal version he didn't have anything to do with, it wouldn't have existed without him regardless!) That machine is my pride and joy and sits next to my A500 and A2000.

My silver label C64 sparkles! Super cool to hear about that from Bil.

So good to attend to your speeches Bil, inspiring and interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Tremendous!!! Shame the organisers made you cut it the presentation short. I worked for CBM from 90-93 in the UK tech support. I got the job at the interview. Still the proudest moment of my life. Nothing will top the feeling I had when I got it. The 6510 and c64 made me. Annoyed how CBM ended. Apple and Atari won. Pisses me off. Wished I'd told CBM management the "C65" would be a good computer to sell.

Great presentation, interesting to this old computer nerd. Although my only interaction with C16/64/128 machines was with a local computer store, I was always intrigued that the floppy drive had about as much computing power as the computer itself (unlike with my TI-99/4a setup). And... I spent many hours on one playing MULE. I was always amused by all the PEEK and POKE commands to do certain things, and at the time - having to care about these hardware register things (instead of floating registers in the TMS9900). Good times...

My favorite computer ever when I 1st seen it at school and got to use was amazing Jr high 7th grade mid 80s great times

What a great TED talk...

I cut my programming teeth on the Commodore Vic-20 and then later the C64 and am now the lead AI programmer for Tesla Autopilot. [Just kidding, but I had you going there for a minute, didn't I?] Anyways, great memories of playing games with my brother and friends and waiting for over an hour for a TINY program to download from the local BBS at the amazing speed of 300baud, only to discover that the file was corrupted. Ah, good times. The SID still sounds amazing to this day and I always wonder why it was never improved with other iterations of the C64 or with the C128. Even the Amiga's sound chip, Paula, was never updated as far as I know with more voices, higher resolution (12 or 16 bit). So many good times, but also lots of missed opportunities too.

The C64 legacy of having to tune your tape device to avoid seeing the dreaded "Loading Error". Getting a disk drive 1541-II was heaven.

Atari guy here. Always loved the Commodore line but man, what a bunch of knuckleheads in charge. Why were the designers never given enough time to do things properly.

I took a picture with him when he came to Toronto for the Commodore show a few years back. I was literally nervous like I just met a famous movie star. Great guy and definetly a star!

The C128D was, is, and will always be my favorite computer of all time. Bought the C64 in July 1983 when TI and Commodore were going toe-to-toe. Got it at Target for $199. Still have it, still have the receipt. But I really cut my teeth on the C128D Basic 7, assembly language via the Monitor, CP/M mode, and forcing myself to understand all of the pieces that went into the 128 (2 CPUs, 80 col RAM, VIC II chip, MMU, and so on). Modern computers are far more capable, but they are just tools... The 128 was/is.... FUN.

Very cool! This video also has the “proto” history of the Atari ST as Shiviji and Velinsky lead the design of ST and some of the subsequent models.

I am even more happier that C128 was my first computer. Thank you!

LOL. “I’m gonna go quick here today.”

My Mom brought me and my brother a commodore vic 20 my 1st computer 1989

Commodore building should have been made a tech museum. So sad

...hmmmppphhhh.....what could have been !!!!! Never get tired of ol' Bil.....

Did you know they used the C64 in all of the John Wick movies as their computers?

I hate it when I heard that "I don't have time...". Give these talks unlimited time, come on.

Thankyou Bill. I still regularly use mine. No chance of a deliberate device destruction by Bill Gates,unlike EVERY device running on the later operator systems. The fact that one of you engineers hid the secret message to Bill in EVERY C64 always tickles me😺👈

Thank you for documenting this.

Finally noticed he has only 9 fingers.

I worked at a Commodore dealer when the C64 first came out. It was hell with customers streaming back in with dead ones! We would get a shipment of units in and have to run them all and send failers back! Fun times.

Lots of smart people worked at Commodore.

Gold! Thanks Bil.

Where are those videos of act i and act iii or did I miss a thing ?

The obvious mistake was assuming a security guard can read.

How a great and ingenious man is Bill Herd!

I remember Commodore from CBM (Commodore Business Machines) from their calculators. I think I still have a PR100 programmable and an M55 somewhere. If I remember rightly that one had things like Bessel functions built in as standard. I saw the Commodore PET at various shows but by that time I had access to mainframes so was a bit spoiled in terms of what I expected from a computer in terms of CPU, memory and storage.

There's plenty of Bil Herd stories in Brian Bagnall's book trilogy on Commodore's rise and fall. Specifically in the "Amiga Years" book. Crazy wild times. I'm glad to see Bil in such seemingly good shape. Apparently there was a lot of drinking and hard living during those years so that could get the best of any person. I didn't know that Bil had published a book - definitely gonna binge it as soon as I can :).

C128 with 3 CPUs in 3 modes. The c128 basic was slower than c64. But I liked that basic. It was better than GWbasic. Assembly was also great! But 64k addressing was outdated!

Commodore!

I'm trying to remember where I know Bil Herd from.. Did he run a BBS back in the day? I want to say I used to download games for my C64 off his BBS with a 300 baud modem. In New Jersey. Incubus BBS?

Given that the CP/M cartridge didn't really work all that great or was all that useful, I'm surprised that a Z80 was included at all on the C-128.

I wonder if Commodore would be were Apple is today if things were different !

Great story. Brilliant 👌👋👍

Hmm, JSR $FFD2, doesn't that mean print?

I love Commodore and you can tell why :) I still have my A4000, A500, A600 and 1200 !

Commodore completely misjudged what the Sinclair Spectrum was all about and didn't stand a chance of killing it. It was the best selling computer in the UK with games being released for it every week by the shed load. Unless it was the ZX81 they were trying to kill but that was already an old machine by then. But i did like my C16 and Plus/4 and wish i had kept them!

1:10:31 No Coors East of the Sippi?? You boys need to talk to Bo Darville, he's East bound and down. If they're thirsty in Atlanta, there's beer in Texarkana, he'll bring it back no matter what it takes :)

I ADORE MY 64!!! Who didn't have 1000's of floppys!!! Remember the fast load program that sped up the drive! LOL

💛💛💛💛👍👍👍👍

13:00 it's funny he had so many fun experiences walking around the building and nowadays that would get you fired and your badge at least wouldn't even let you in the doors of the other departments.

Is there a version out there with all the "illegal opcode" included in his presentation? (I mean the fucking swearing to be clear.)

Are you keeping up with the Commodore?

What's funny is that he still thinks it was the security guards who kept locking his door...

Legend.

Commodore wasted too much money by going in weird directions. Once C64 was a huge sucess, it should just double everything inside it and ONLY using same intellectual properties it already had. Trying to create cost savings products like C16 or plus4 etc that would never recoup the R&D cost. The C128 should just have been two C64 : 128K, 2MHz 6510, 6 channel sid, VicIII should been 16 sprites, 80 column and 256 colors.

It's weird that the "business" computer was going to be the low cost computer going against the Spectrum - a game machine. I wonder what they were thinking?

The TED machines was beautifully designed machines, not just technically, but aesthetically. They looked much better than anything else they ever made.

Looks like John Malkovich

"Fix it or you're fired" Yeah, sounds like a fun place to work. NOT.

as a kid i used to draw it 😊

Ironically the C16 sold better in Europe where the Spectrum did best. Probably because the computer only cost 50 quid.

Herdware isn't the only thing though. Could've ran at megaHerds.

2:41 MOS omg when I hear that name, my palm closes in a fist.. I mean who on this world have a C64 with some MOS replacement (i did it at home, it was MOS RAM, 2 modules)?