How It Was Made: THE COMMODORE 64 factory tour
Using machine learning on some scenes (see pinned comment & description) we've digitally remastered the only known, low-quality footage of the Commodore 64 & 6502 factory production to better show how the world's bestselling computer was made! Check out PCBWay.com - great PCBs from just $5!
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ℹ️ HOW "How It Was Made" WAS MADE:
📼 You may have seen the original very low quality German VHS factory tour of MOS and Commodore that's been around for years ( • How Computer Chips are... ). Sadly a higher quality version never showed up. I've been wanting to do this for a while but the technology only recently got to an acceptable level. It's far from perfect, and the machine learning sharpening can look a little odd occasionally, but I hope you agree that it's better and more palatable than the original, all just in time for the C64's 40th anniversary. I plan future versions as the tech improves. Here's how I made this one:
🔈 AUDIO: I created a file of the German captions and translated it to English then re-synced that to the footage, and reworded it where needed. I also added back in all the sound effects from a foley library because the original German audio was muted.
📺 VIDEO: I used Topaz Labs machine learning video enhancer (www.topazlabs.com/video-enhan...) to create 5 versions of the footage. Some levels of restoration can make the people look cartoony, so by using different levels, I was able to cut each shot to its most natural look and ensure I felt it really was an improvement over the original. Occasionally I use the original shot with only upscaling to 4K. Some shots actually use different levels on different parts of the same frame using masks, so you might see sharp C64 motherboards, but the worker's more natural less reworked face above them, all in one image.
There are qutie extreme flashing colours in the original. I placed a duplicate of each shot above the original, made it 50% transparent, and offset it by 1 frame. This reduces the flashing producing a more uniform effect. Sadly some flashing remains, but removing this further would have led to ghosting of movement.
Next everything was run through a MPEG compression artefact reducing algorithm.
I then trimmed the flickering edges of the image off and extended it to near widescreen using a blurred enlarged version to fill the sides.
I also cut out about 7 minutes of unnecessary stock footage, corporate marketing, & overly long shots to again make things more watchable.
Aside from that there was colour balancing, brightening, and sharpening where possible. Enhance!
🌆 THUMBNAIL: This too is a remastered black and white low-res shot, with faces enhanced using Remini, colourized, and some other little tricks to bring it more to life!
SAUCES & CHEERS
• commodore.ca
• M TV Video
• CTV
• Discovery Channel
• Science Channel
• How It's Made team
• Cem Tezcan: cemtezcan.com
• typewriters101.com
• vintagecomputer.ca
• Nightfallcrew
• Tim and Keegan Morgan
• Woxy
• Wikipedia & Wikimedia Commons
• The Internet Archive
• Gardenside Prods. & Clue Detectives & Paradise Radio
• Special thanks to Ladyfractic & the Puppyfractics!
• All other media featured is marked as public domain on Google Images or used with written permission or shown under fair use law. Every attempt was made to contact others before including content. Rarely things get forgotten in the excitement so don't hesitate to let me know if so & I'll put it right.
• 🛠 Get the tools I use*: 🇺🇸amzn.to/3eT3SzD | 🇬🇧amzn.to/30y05lg
MENU
0:00 Intro & context
3:39 How silicon is made
4:51 Circuit blueprints
8:26 Circuit production
11:49 Chip testing & cutting
13:34 Finishing the chip
15:28 C64 PCB assembly
17:17 C64 assembly & testing
20:49 Packaging & finish
CORRECTIONS
7:16 To clarify, the C64 itself uses the 6510 processor; a variant of the legendary 6502 processor mentioned. And yes I know it's silicon not silicone; slip of the tongu I mean tongue.
11:01 The diffusion furnace does not dope the wafer. It grows a layer. The implant tool dopes the layer.
SOME INGREDIENTS BY
• MattGrandis.net - website design
• / _gazmarshall - some graphics
• / elwoz - colour palette cleanser
• PaulKitching3d.com - some 3D models
©️ All music & content Copyright & ™️ Retro Recipes LLC 1988-2022.
*Some links may offer some peanuts to support this retrochannel but all opinions are 100% unbiased.
#retrocomputing #computerscience #computer
Thanks for watching! I'm delighted by the response to this restoration. Don't forget the original can always be seen at kzhead.info/sun/q9lxds1oq3VvfHk/bejne.html. I know the machine learning algorithm isn't perfect but it makes things more palatable & either way can bring the C64 to a new audience - which was the goal! For a deeper dive into how I made this video please check out the description. C64 forever! To support more videos like this check out patreon.com/perifractic 🙏
I was wondering why it looked washed out a bit, I rewatched it on my TV and that handles it much better than my PC LCD screen. Still a fantastic video!!
You must have had a ice GPU polishing this up. Nice video as usually, Chris!
I dearly love your videos but this ML upscaler has smoked some substances for sure. In some scenes it looks like an LSD fever dream. Things have double outlines, foreground and background items melt into each other (e.g. around 2:30). And sometimes the scene looks like it has geometry warping like in a PS1 game. Text is especially funny when it looks like sci-fi alien alphabets. It would be interesting to see the original. But next time I find some mushrooms I know what to watch :D PS: Oh, I see the otherworldly effects are much more noticeable on a big TV. Doesn't look so bad in a small YT window.
@@CallousCoder Thanks! Each of the 5 different quality passes took 9 hours to render 😱
Definitely and improvement over the 'original' footage and dubbed in English it's easier to understand by international viewers than the original German narration. I wonder how much time went in this project as it must have been many manhours to completely do this remaster, voice-over and editing.
The C64 launched my career in software engineering back in 1982. I'm retired now at 60.
Yeah me too....had a 64 after high school I got used from someone and started to learn programmng . I was a repair tech for lots of things and was interested in computers ...I'm 66 now and still working .
I have worked in a chip factory for 27 years. AND I owned a C64 from 1983 until now. Love that machine. The software and hardware developments are still ongoing. Thanx for this episode.
Same here. Well not working at the chip factory part but still own mine as well. Breadbox beige version. Still love it.
Why are all woman?
@@Rodger_Phillips I got one too but unfortunately it suffered a death from the PSU. Do have a c64 DTV though that I have modded out to be more or less a back-up C64.
Glad to hear you're keeping up with the Commodore, 'cause the Commodore is keeping up with you.
@@alberto3028 Women have far greater manual dexterity than men and so much better suited to delicate factory processes .
No matter how many times I see the process of silicon chip manufacturing, I'm still in awe. Very cool to see such an iconic microchip (and the entire C64) being made and a look at MOS Technology. Thanks for all the effort put into this!
It’s so good of you to restore this fascinating old documentary just as you have lovingly restored so many C64’s. It’s wonderful to learn how our home computer came to be. Great video!
Thank you for your kind words! Means a lot 👍🕹️
As a 80's child its remarkable that we were able to make computers like this given the general tech that was available at that time. I will never forget that time in the UK and the "Home computer boom". We literally had more home computers than you could count on your fingers. Vic-20, C64, C16, Plus4, Spectrum, Oric-1, BBC Micros, Electrons, Dragon 32's, TRS80's, Texas instruments home computers, and so on. It was a crazy and fun time, something i dont think we will ever see again.
Yep, and all those different systems had their own personalities!
And computer magazines had something to show and discuss due to the variety. We had the RL 380z and commodore pet at my school, but at home I followed the Zx81 and bbc model b micro route, then had a 386sx16 by elonex. Once the IBM compatible PC arrived it was the death of all non ibm compatible home computers.
@@carguyuk7525 IBM PC was 1981, they were seriously prices fully loaded, price of a house. 10K But mid 70s PDP11 mini computers the size of a filing cabinet sat at the side of a desk was 100K
I think also with homebrew games on tape, the UK was a bit more exciting than the US. In the 80s, we waited patiently for cartridges then floppy disks. It never occurred to me I could seriously produce my own game and share it, ever. Or that I could work in the industry without going to Silicon Valley. It make me sad, actually.
@@joefish6091 В Советском Союзе, с 1985 года производился домашний компьютер ("Электроника БК-0010"), который имел микропроцессор с системой команд, заимствованной у PDP-11 :)
Man, this took me back, especially the Commodore theme. It's incredible that after 40 years this machine still has a huge fanbase, including myself. Great restoration of the old video!
The theme gave me goosebumps. Even after so long the nostalgia is STRONG.
I not only kept up with the Commodore, but these old Commodores also still keep up with me.
imagine the commodore 64 running the space shuttle man can you imagine that?
When did the band retire?
Wow...as someone in logistics his whole life...seeing such extensive quality control makes me in awe of not having such standards today
The standards at a company like Intel must be even higher today. The latest processors have transistors with features 1/100 of the size of those MOS were making.
When I was 19 I worked at a plant that produced silicone wafers. I was in the growing department. It was the most interesting job I ever had. We’d build the silicon rocks together in a crucible, put it in a furnace and use either boron or arsenic. It would take around 12 hours to grow the ingot. Very cool job
silicon*
@@Araye 😂 yeah I saw that but just didn’t bother correcting it. I’m lazy that way I guess 🤣
I also worked a lot with silicone, mostly for sealing bathtubs and sinks... :P
The phrase 'pulling a silicone ingot' has a whole other connotation...
@@zybch nice.. 🤣👍
This is so nostalgically delightful! Oh, how I do wish there were more such "How it was Made" films from this era.
Me too!!
What great memories we all have of the Commodore 64. My Commodore 64 prompted me to build a career in IT which continues to this day. Fantastic video, thank you!
This episode has blown me away. It must be a combination of your passion for the subject and that magic Hollywood insider know how on production! And I’m sure hours and hours of hard work and sacrifice. This episode easily belongs right alongside all of the greatest Commodore documentaries of all time.
Thank you for your kind words! Means a lot 👍🕹️
The making of computer chips were and is still almost science fiction, with the projecting of circuits onto silicone from a photography. It is still impressive that it can practically be done with multiple layers and whatnot. Thanks for showing us this, imagine all the work that went into those computers and all other electronics that we take for granted!
And everywhere the older ladies working with pacience, experience and highest precision needed in this type of high tech procedures. Yess they made the moonlanding possible too. Respect.
At 21:35, brought a wave of nostalgia and a tear drop or two... Thank you, Retro Recipes!!!
Great work! I'm amazed you were able to find that much raw footage. It's unfortunate it couldn't be higher quality, thuogh.
Thanks! I hope some day better quality will show up in somebody’s attic…
@@RetroRecipes Thanks for video. It's what I've would have been absorbed into for hours when I was a child. I still do. Talking about the enhancement process, when I saw the wall clock at around 10:30 I could put words onto what the code does. It's 'open loop - non-directed - non-contextual'. It's obvious that the AI doesn't know what it's looking at. For example there was an earlier shot of a zoom of a board - The next after next generation of AI could probably deduce it's looking at the same picture and use the larger one as a reference to take details from. The enhancing of the MOS logo was to me a clearly directed one - there may have been more. Thanks again
Your comment, Adrian, is releasing and at the same time disturbing. Perifractic has done his best thing, his journalistic deeds (a kiss for Puppyfractic though **the th german pronounced, sorry**) In no ones attic will be a "RED Digital Cinema | 8K & 5K Professional Cameras" (sorry commercial) from 1984 and back lying around. Doc Brown (Back to the Future) wasn't there;) And they couldn't (backward annotated) pay a storage card ... you cannot pay it today (even!):P Thank you for the "Kleinod", Retro Recipes Family. And ask yourself: What would've Jack Tramiel made with such video quality, back then? ;) :PPPP
Its really good quality. Its from 1979 what do you expect? Jeez. Can never impress a nerd 🤓
Maybe if we used AI upscaling, it could look maybe a bit better?
Still have mine. That thing has taken a beating. From lugging it to computer group meetups in the mid 80s to multiple moves all around the country. Still works great!
You don't even have to make sure you keep oil in it! Hope your 64 keeps buzzing along at a blistering 1 MHz for the next couple of centuries.
I have bought and collected 5 units over the years from Ebay and craigslist. Plan to setup my commodore station very soon!
@@Pau_Pau9 5 Commodore 64s == 40 bit computing!
Thanks to those wonderful ladies for assembling my Commodore 64 so well it lasted over a decade and enabled me to build the foundation for a thirty-year IT career.
I love these old machines. One of my hobbies is to buy broken 80's machines and restore them and so far in my collection I've got a Vic20 (the rarer 'VC20'), and 2 64's. One of them a 'Breadbin' original with a low serial number, and the later C64 model C. I adore these old machines and have a real passion for them. I feel sorry for the kids these days who will never know the joy of learning programming on these machines.
I have always loved the C64c or 128 design style, but never had one. I still have a lot of my original commodore equipment, but they are earlier. I have a bread bin 64 and two Vic 20s, with one of the Vic’s being very early. I also have accessories like two 1541s, tape drives, a 300 baud and 1200 baud modems, a mps printer, and a 1571 drive. The C64 was the heart on my setup, the accessories were all bought to connect to the C64 over the years. I wish I kept things like my commodore 1084 monitor, c16, plus 4, few other items…. But back then they were my daily use computers so the things I still have were the items that were most useful and taken care of ( to the point where I have the original boxes, manuals, etc). I ended up using the 1084 as a TV due to the really good picture quality until it wore out and died, then discarded….who would have thought back then that 30 years later I would miss it, lol. Today my son is learning about retro tech and really loves it, I built an emulator for him using an dell board with a amiga 2000 case that had a board beyond repair, he loves his ‘commodore’. It runs Linux and VICE so he can select C64, VIC20, C128, etc .. but he loves it’s in a commodore beige case and wired it up so the LEDs, power switch, etc all work as intended. :)
Dude, this was SO cool, and took me back to the days of watching Discovery and History Channel when they actually bothered to show real educational content. If you can keep putting out a segment like this even monthly, I think you would have a winning formula. I am into computers, but had no idea how a mico chip was manufactured or designed. I just saw the chip as some magical component, but this unravels the magic into very easy to understand process.
Sadly there just isn’t much footage like this. Let me know if you find any!
Very well done. And as a Canadian I appreciate the love for one of our shows. It is kind of crazy that for such a geographically large country our population is smaller than that of California.
I was s confused as to what CTV has to do with this
I was in the 9th grade when I first touched a computer, the TRS 80 model III. That was 1984 one year later I was introduced to Matt Kell who had the Commodore 64. My world was instantly transformed. Joining clubs and borrowing floppies to take home and make a copy. Any one remember getting ice in a container and putting it on power supply to help it stay cool so you could get to the next level of Jumpman or Space Taxi or Gateway to Apshai or Zork series or my favorite the Phantasie series. Oh how I miss those days where my only concern was completing a game, not having to get up to go to work, managing a marriage, raising children. A world about only you. I feel blessed that my entire teen years and 2 preteen years were from 1980 - 1989. What a time to be a teen.
I bet there are footage like this one, hidden in someone's attic, yet to be discovered. Great episode and a wondaful job with the narration.
Thank you! I find videos like this can actually bring other things like it out of the woodwork. I can't wait to see what's in some attics!
There's no greater nostalgia from a movie or video than when watching one about the Commodore 64.
I still can’t get my head around the brilliance of the engineering and inventiveness also the manufacturing and tooling.. there must have been a massive amount of brilliantly talented people behind all of this spanning over many decades all adding their bit to make this possible..
It's amazing to think how far the semiconductor has come from it's beginnings in the late 1940s. The jump from 1947 with a single transistor to 1982 microchips was incredible... the jump from 1982 to 2022 is mind boggling.
This one was really entertaining. Great job to dig this out. Back in 1984 one of those bread bins was my christmas gift and changed my life forever.
Same. It was a year of suffering until my parents could afford a 1541 lol.
Ah, what a lovely brilliant memory. It was a real treat to see the C64 take form. Thank you.
9:39 - This looks like a city, like a little model of a city!
Wow! Very emotional for me; especially the last 2 minutes. I started with the Vic20 and PET in 1985. And in 1986 My parents got me my C64. I am so blessed! I still have the C64 but it's not functional anymore. And I also had the 1541 floppy drive and an LX80 printer. It is so sad that the new generation of students have so much more resources but learn almost nothing! Thanks for putting this video together.
When you look at what „normal“ office workplaces looked like during that time, the tech they were using alomst looks like alien technology. Look at that CAD workplace…high resolution graphics, dragging lines with almost no delay…
Awesome video Chris!! This is the kind of stuff I’d like to see more of on your channel!! Great work!
If you know of similar source footage for other machines I’d love to do more! 👍🕹️
The C64 was before my time but this is a truly humbling insight into microchip production and the reminder that we have nature to thank for even the most advanced technology of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
After my fifth or sixth(!!!) ZX Spectrum died I was invited to collect a brand new ZX Spectrum+ from Sinclair Research HQ in Cambridge, I can recall how excited I was in believing that was where they were manufactured so hopefully my dad and I would get a tour and possibly meet the great Sir Cliver. Now imagine how disappointed I was when we got there and neither one were there!
This video brings back a lot of memories. Some of my friends had Commodore 64s when I was a kid. When I was about 20 yo I worked in a company called Taconic (in Ireland) which had a small separate factory for making the boards for printed circuits. I don't remember exactly what I was doing (because I was only working there when they needed extra help) - I remember they were a kind or copper color and we used a runny gravy-like liquid for etching them for some reason. We also cut them down to size from large sheets. There were ovens involved too. Anyway. Great video!! Edit: I also worked in an IBM chip manufacturing facility near Dublin for a short while. One job was I did was loading trays of tiny chips into a machine that electronically tested each one. Fun fact: They had a hard drive division called Storage Technology Division - my friend worked there and he suggested they change STD to something else (for obvious reasons) LOL - They changed it to something like SDD (Storage Drive Division)
What an excellent video. Thanks for putting in the huge amount of effort to bring this to us.
it actually amazes me how technology was advanced in that periode of time. Thank you for great video.
My mind can't even comprehend 80's chip technology let alone tech from 40 years later. This all looks like a science fiction :)
Thank you so much, Chris. This video has totally made my day! I was 6 when the Commodore 64 made its world debut. As I sit here there's a C64 just to my left, recently repaired, and another sitting to my right, which was taking the other's place while it was feeling under the weather. And a 1541 sitting in a laundry basket, because I haven't put it away yet.
So glad you liked it! Cheers!
Holy crap without a doubt one of your best videos ever. Please do more of these history series. Well done!
Thank you for your kind words! Means a lot 👍🕹️
Amazing work! I am super happy having access to watch this multiple times! Long live the Commodore 64!
I think that the ML tech is just "not there yet" for this kind of restorations... But the overall documentary is ❤🔥
definitely a step back
the documentary is heartburn? lol I like the idea of a "watchable version", translated into English; it's so much better than the original. Quote: "I plan future versions as the tech improves". I think Retro Recipes is already quite aware of the problems.
Thank you for renewing this amazing documentary. It amazes me that the chip making is so much more complex than what I imagined - and I thought I knew "How it is made"! What is even more mind-blowing is that this is the process used 40 years ago! I cannot grasp how much complexity increased in manufacturing modern CPU's like the Intel Core i9 in regards to a fairly simple MOS 6510. This only shows how technology is in fact a global venture in science and engineering. To make a chip you need to understand chemistry, electronics, optics, management, engineering, metrology, etc. This video is an excellent example on how a "simple" product like the C64 requires so much global resources and input from so many fields of science. And, finally, this video shows that there are single individuals that are visionaires: they really push mankind and Jack Tramiel was indeed such a person. My greatest respect to him.
This has to be the most significant video on this channel... You hit this out of the park for many reasons: 1. Historically recovering the building of the C64... WOW 😍, 2. How chips are manufactured, tested, etc. (more on that later), 3. PCB Assembly and test, 4. product assembly and tested. I know a lot of people who watch this channel have always grown up with a computer in the house, they never knew the days before. And a lot of what goes on inside the boxes are like magic, they have no clue what goes on behind the scenes to make it possible. I worked in the mid to late 90's at Hewlett Packard's (then became Agilent in 2000) Semiconductor Test Division in Santa Clara, CA... We built machines that big names semiconductor manufacturers like Intel, AMD, Fujitsu, etc. purchased to put in their cleanroom FABs to test their FLASH memory devices at wafer sort... in other words, while the FLASH chips were still a wafer, before they were cut into chips. Our machine interfaced with the prober and when the wafer was Z'ed up and the needle probes touched down, a signal was sent to our equipment to perform the test... The customers that used our equipment wrote their own proprietary scripts and patterns to run for their design (that's part of the secret sauce) , and there's a lot of magic that happens at test, including a tricky way they could "repair" the die if it didn't pass using redundant circuitry inside the chip, but in the end result is either PASS or FAIL. The ink dot in the center of the die indicated BAD or FAIL. Our testers had multiple test sites so we could test more dies at the same time to minimize the number of touchdowns needed, as they were limited and are slightly destructive to the bonding pads... I could write even more about this, but that's the big picture. In the video it was depicting a single die being tested, since I saw the ink dot, I knew that this wafer was bad and it was being run through the tester again for demo purposes... clearly that was not in a cleanroom, in production the whole thing is done in the cleanroom, the wafer would be loaded into the prober and the table is Z'ed up to allow the probes to contact... the table also is able to translate X and Y very precisely... I mean every little detail is so impressive! I digressed... Back to the wafer, it would test multiple dies at a time, at some point we were able to test up to 16 at a time, in parallel, we had interfaces with 100's of channels and each channel had the ability to set a voltage, read a voltage, characterize current, connect to a pattern generator... it was insane how much our tester could do in parallel. At the time I worked there we were part of the Semicon and they collaborated on a video called Silicon Run I kzhead.info/sun/nqeFnbaXi4OZjHA/bejne.html and Silicon Run II... and there are other videos that explain the semiconductor chip manufacturing process... They still command high $$ for an old video, but something that the public is unaware of and sadly I think should be taught in school, I mean, Why not?!? So I hope you get a lot of positive feedback for the video with a lot of people saying they had no clue how this modern miracle of electronics is made possible... more people with respect and humility to know that we indeed stand on the shoulders of Giants! Kind regards!
Thank you for your kind words! Means a lot 👍🕹️
I had an Atari 800XL when Jack left Commodore for Atari, the guy was a visionary. "power without the price" was one of his slogans. I wasn't an owner of a C64 until some 37 years after the model was released and I really enjoyed this behind the scenes look at how they were made. Great video!
SO glad to see that you were able to restore this important piece of computer history.
I worked for Commodore Australia in the 80's, it was a grest job, getting paid to play with Computers, I got to see all Commodore computers come out, the biggest time was when saw he Amiga 1000 for the first time, I worked my way up to Amiga user groups support , I was also the president of the Australian Amiga User Association, I had to keep quite about new Amigas, I got to take home many Amigas, It was hard having a Amiga 3000 under a tea towel when a mate came over. great times
You have lived thru a legendary period in computing history experiencing it first hand. I've owned the Vic 20 and 64 and an Amiga. Truly legendary computers.
So cool!
I always loved How It's Made, so I'm very happy for it to come up here.
Great video as always Perifractic. Interestingly, according to Brian Bagnall's excellent book "Commodore a company on the Edge", much of the original 6502 design was done by hand, not by CAD! I wonder what the workers on the production line back in 1982 would think if they knew the computers they were building were still being used 40 years later?
Well some of them might still be alive, because some of them seemed in their 20ties. I guess they would maybe still live in or near braunschweig, so maybe one could put a message in a local newspaper to contact them for an interview.
Yeah, I remember an image of people laying out rhe traces with kapton tape on a big table.
I´m glad I didn´t see this documentary before, now I could enjoy it even more! Amazing voiceover as always and in this case, maybe more than over, style of the music for your channel is SO MUCH SPOT ON! Brilliant review!
Bought a 64 in 1982. 64..Gorilla Banana Amber Monitor and later a 1541 disk drive. Because of that my wife and I found our way to Computer Shows. This was in the San Jose area of California. Bought bulk diskettes. Found the source and began selling bulk diskettes. Ran that business with 4 or 5 employees using the 64 right up until about 1985 when we switched to PC's. The 64 is an amazing and very capable machine.
Truly impressive work! The extra work put into remastering the footage was definitely worth it.
"Work"? They ran it through Topaz and had no idea what they were doing, hence the footage looking like crap.
I genuinely love how you have taken the spirit of one of my favorite programs and turned it into a "was" made! The narration and restoration are above what I usually expect to find on KZhead, BUT exactly what I expect from an episode on RR. Keep up the amazing work and thank you for using your gentle voice to guide us back through a time portal into the creation of a triumph in computing history!
Thank you for your kind words! Means a lot 👍🕹️
@@RetroRecipes Any time! I don’t post much on comments but your videos are kind of like If Joe Pera was a genius. Let’s see who gets that one 😄!
First computer in our house in the mid 80s. Me and my brother got it for Christmas 🎄. Feel soo old now when I see what my kids use!!!
Things have only gotten 1,000x more complicated, tiny and precise. Truly, it's amazing. When you walk around with a modern smartphone, or use a modern computing device, it's practically miraculous.
Back then, I was in the Amstrad CPC464 camp. But I regularly defected to C64 when visiting my cousins. I now own a handful of C64s...and to look at them now, knowing the amazing journeys that each has taken over the decades to end up with me now...if only they could talk. To see how their origins began, is fantastic.
Great job Chris! Another piece of Commodore history saved.
I love the song. “Are you keeping up with the Commodore? Because the Commodore is keeping up with you!”
Fantastic video. These were such incredible, never to be repeated times in history. I'd always wanted to see inside the walls of the Commodore manufacturing process and here it is. Thanks for all your work.
Fascinating video Peri, you forget these days just how much work went into designing and building these machines.
I've read about how these chips were made but never actually seen footage of all the steps. Thanks!
Love this love this love this! ❤️ Never saw the original before - I’m amazed by all the quality checks - plus the process of making and assembling the chips as well.
The best machine i ever had. My first machine in age of 8. The best time i ever had. I wish to go back to the 80's, but today there are so much options to enjoy the great old times again and again. ;)
Nice shout out to How It's Made at the beginning. :) I like the brief glimpse of the Pet towards the end. It was the first computer I used in school. Writing simple programs on a tape cassette. This was a top notch documentary. I could see it going in a computer museum display on the Commodore 64. :)
This is such a great Documentary 😃 A great smorgasbord of tech History and production. I really loved it. I knew some about the manufacturer of CPUs but I hadn't seen how a commodore 64 was built and tested. Thank you for sharing this with me, Perifractic.
My pleasure!
Fascinating to watch and understand how much work went into building and testing a micro computer back then
Hello Recipients. Very, very nice picture. Yes i outpacked out mine in the first half of the 1980s as i was a young teenager. Programmed it in Basic and Assembler. Tuned it with a parallel floppy booster. Sold it finally for a custom steering wheel for my first car. After that one followed a C500 Amiga. I still kept this one in the cellar. Addon memory board but unbroken guarantee seal. An Amiga 1200 completed the trio and as an successor never came is buyed a windows personal computer, heavy hearted. Good old times. Many of the persons in this film are already very old or died in between for shure. Greetings from Germany.
9:39 You did a Björk! 😆
As a longtime, hardcore C64 fan, that was fun to see. Thanks for this!
Many thanks for all the work in restoring the old video. I still remember when I got my C=64 back in 82 when I was 12, I wish I still had it :(
Best How it WAS Made episode! Amazing video quality. Thanks for making this video, I've never seen this footage before.
I grew up near Cray Research, and it always amused me that these electronic monsters were built by sweet old ladies.
Sweet old ladies (and young ones, too) did a bang up job of advancing the computing art during the 20th century, all over the place. Not every hero wears a cape. In 20th century computer science (and before, and beyond), a massive number of them wore skirts.
Very well done! I love seeing these "How it's Made" or.. er... How it WAS made kind of shows or videos! That one lady adding the gold thread traces from the silicon chip to it's housing was super talented! She must have had some steady hands to be able to do what she did.
That was done by an automated machine, unless I am mistaken about the stage you are describing (I think this is @13:55).
Great episode!! I bought my first C64 in August of 1983. I was headed to the CCM (Center for Contemporary Music) at Mills College in Oakland, CA. This little PC changed my life! I was here for graduate school studying electronic music. I wrote and performed a lot of pieces using the C64's 3 voice synth chip with BASIC and assembly language routines creating loops to look up the variables for pitch and the poke and peek commands. I collaborated with a friend and we clock synched 2 C64s so we'd have 6 voices. I loved the fact you could use a tv for a monitor. Over time I purchased a monitor, 2 disk drives, and added a printer. Later, it was a wonderful game machine for my kids. It was an amazing computer and I still have a lot of fond memories.
Thank you for taking the time to remaster the old footage and make a new video on the golden oldie!
As a Canadian who grew up by the CTV studios, I approve this video. 👍🇨🇦
Never really experienced the C64 era since I was born way after it was released. But I do love computer history and this is a great watch with great narration!
It was pure magic.
Great job restoring and translating this piece of history! Subscribed!
Thanks for bringing this footage back from the dead and making it digestible for us, fantastic job 👏
In the mid-to-late90s I worked here!! in the clean rooms at the facility you showed in the beginning ("MOS" in Norristown PA) just a couple years after Commodore sold it - After Commodore, when i was there it was used by Motorola to manufacture silicone wafers for chips that went inside of those ID cards we all scanned to get into doors at our jobs in the 90s and early 00s (the white, thicker ones, if you saw one you'd recognize it. These days they are in every/any ID card but back then was a specific tech that Motorola had the patents for). Also Commodore stored solvents improperly and it became a US Superfund site to cleanup chemicals left behind that leaked from tanks underground
Amazing! I didn’t think I’d hear from workers there. The original video seemed a little confused as it referred to the big building with MOS logo on it (now QVC) as Norristown. But that wasn’t Norristown but Westchester down the road, is that right?
@@RetroRecipes Oh I worked at the one in Audubon PA when it was called GMT technologies probably 1994-1995 which spawned from Commodore Semiconductor Group, MOS's successor. West Chester was the HQ (now QVC) but Audubon is where they manufactured
Watching all the care, love and time they put into assemble, might explain why the one I had for Christmas was broke. It would either display a lovely picture and no sound, or have lovely sound but no picture. Devastated I was.
No, it wasn't broke. It was BROKEN! Do try to use the English language correctly.
@@SpeccyMan I stand corrected. Please forgive my grammatical faux pas.
WOW :) Great video, thank you so much for taking the time to clean up the footage and narrate for us.
Amazing how far we’ve come since the 80’s. I remember using a C64 in high school, kids today can’t imagine using a cassette tape as a hard drive, lol. It took FOREVER to download files from that thing, lol. Thank you for taking time to make this video.
one of my biggest takeaways from your awesome video is the strenuous automated testing that was built into the process.
Thank you for this beautifully made and informative video. It's also a great tribute for the Commodore founder Jack Tramiel, who after the 2nd WW lived in my hometown in germany for around 2 years, before he went to the U.S. It also makes me think, after reading his biography, why he opened the Commodore factory in Braunschweig, which is next to the place where he and his father were treated so badly in a Nazi labor camp.
That’s a very interesting thought. And you’re welcome. Thanks 🙏
Jack Tramiel was responsible for making computers affordable - for those of us that couldn't afford an Apple ][ !!!
LOVE LOVE LOVE! Retro Recipes in its original straight up informative, entertaining, no fluff form! Great Video!
Hello RR, Thanks for the video! and the efforts of restoring and bring this video to life...
not me downloading this because of the historical footage.
1:38 Really Perifractic? 🤣 Or maybe Lady Fractic is to blame? I have a keen eye, as I also think like a 13 year old. I didn't have a lot of exposure to the C64 but I still find videos such as this "how it's made" style documentary fascinating. I'm just not sure how I feel about the ML upscaling. One part I found fascinating was around the 7:10 mark and the ML seemed determined to turn some random buttons into a sequence of letters.
🤭
I think this was his was of getting some Aurebesh into the video ;)
Fantastic work! Thank you for tackling this task, it turned out damn good imo. 👍
1:51 -- When we were a kid, we always were like, _"Let me press the elevator button, please! Oh, a keyboard! Let me press the keys, please!"_ hahaha!
Impressive work on the video upscale. I remember getting my C64 from under the Christmas tree, magical times!
Lionel Richie was a Commodore.
Man, I was born in '82 and my dad bought a C-64 when it was new. I can't tell you how many remarkably fond memories are associated with it. It will always have a place in my heart. I still sometimes play Impossible Mission on an emulator.
The memory's, thanks for bringing me back to my childhood. I think i remember my amazement when I received the terminator 2 game which was on a cartridge and it loaded straight away. My mind was blown after years of tapes.
Silicone?
Amazing that you can use silicone not only in your bathroom, but also to make chips, right? This always triggers me as well 😂
Quite a bit of artifacting on the AI side, TBH I would have been fine with it being its original video quality, but it was still a good video.
Thanks for sharing your opinion, @personwhodumb
AMAZING work you have done here, I'm glad I read the video description :D
Brilliant upload as always. I’ve had my childhood C64 since 1983 it still Works to this day. This video really is a fantastic piece of history. I haven’t seen any of that footage before. Well done guys for putting this all together. 👍👍👍