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 <C> 1994 by GEnie
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<GEOS-TIM> Tonight's Guests is Fred Bowen, former senior engineer for
           Commodore Business Machines.   Welcome Fred Bowen.

<Fred> Gosh, I was gonna say "Howdy", but Cam already stole my first line...

<GEOS-TIM> We feel really fortunate to have you here tonight.

<Fred> Cool.  I hate hellos and goodbyes, anyhow :-)

<GEOS-TIM> Tonight we have four topics:
           1) Insider's view of the last days of Commodore
           2) What Fred is doing now.
           3) Out of the Ashes: Commodore's reappearance to the scene
           4)  Hardware Q & A

           I will be asking a few leading questions, And will be following each
           topic with questions from the audience. Of course, hopefully you
           will be answering them, Fred. <g>

<Fred> I'll do my best.. (at answering them, as opposed to avoiding them)

<GEOS-TIM> LOL! Fred, you were in the Commodore offices during some of the last
           days. Could you give us a bit of an account of what it was like?

<Fred> Actually, I was in the GMT (the old MOS Technology bldg) building.  The
       West Chester facility was vacated by the "end time." But, since I
       *started* my career at MOS, it was a weird experience being back in
       there again.

       Most of the time, we (there were something like 16 of us, all told)
       sat around and waited to perform "dog and pony" shows for prospective
       buyers.  We actually got pretty good at it, although the repitition
       began to weigh heavy on us.

       Chatting to all the foreigners was interesting, but we had the feeling
       we were almost "begging." All in all, it was easy, we were paid well, we
       didn't work long hours (even built a huge deck on the back of one guy's
       house!), and it was extremely boring.

       All that ended the beginning of December, when we were all finally let
       go. I guess that about sums it up, generally.

<GEOS-TIM> Has the new company made any overtures to any of the former CBM
           engineers? AS far as hiring them?

<Fred> That's a bone of contention- some of us have heard that some not-so-nice
       things were said about the ex-engineers- as far as I know, no one has
       been contacted by ESCOM or their Chinese manufacturing people. Heaven
       knows, some of us held out for as long as we could afford it-  I, for
       example, had 5 months of fun before facing up to reality and going back
       to work elsewhere.

<GEOS-TIM> That sort of brings us to "What is Fred doing now?"
           But before we go into that topic....are their audience questions?

<Fred> Well, about a month ago, I finally accepted a position at Franklin
       Electronic Publishers, in New Jersey.  It's a heck of a commute- I'm
       still living in Downingtown, PA (near West Chester).
       But I'm sorta excited about starting all over again.

       The Franklin product line is filled with lots of 6502 beasties, and
       weird bank-switching schemes- all the things I've missed for some time
       now :-)

<GEOS-TIM> My next question was sort of answered...
           Are the tasks you have similar to those you had at Commodore?

<Fred> Yes and no.  At CBM, I was the all-knowing 6502 guru, supreme
       C64/65/128/whatever know-it-all.  Now, all I can claim is that I know
       6502, and have a whole new BIOS and way of doing things to learn.  My
       brain hates me for this.

<GEOS-TIM> Well, it sounds like you are going to have some nice challenges
           ahead of you with Franklin.

           They seem to have a nice product line

<Fred> I hope so- we'll see what happens. The product line IS very interesting,
       and consumer-ish.

<GEOS-TIM> ShadowM has a question

<ShadowM> Mr. Bowen, what were your day-to-day duties at C=?

<Fred> Huh.  They have changed a bit over the years.  Basically, the last
       couple of years (since the C65 hit the fan) I've been a low level,
       driver-writing sort of guy, using my second-nature hardware debugging
       expertise to help out with the Amiga line, things like the 4091 SCSI-2
       controller, keybd controllers, A4000 debug, AAA debug, etc.

<Fred> Does that about answer it?

<ShadowM> yes, thanks

<GEOS-TIM> Raymond Day, a bit of a hardware hacker himself, has a question.

<Raymond Day> What is all the 1540, 1541 DOS versions and about the date they
              came out? Were 901229-02 and 04 released or made?

<Fred> Actually, the DOS versions you mentioned never came out- they were
       intermediate sort of DOSes.  The 1540 was the original VIC-20 version
       drive, the 1541 was the C64 version.

<GEOS-TIM> Out of the Ashes, It appears that Escom has purchased Commodore,
           have you had any dealings with this company? Or have you heard
           anything about them?

<Fred> They made a good presentation to us (at a dog-and-pony show at GMT).
       Everyone, including Escom, said they were very interested in keeping
       CBM engineers together, getting a quick start, and spending big bucks
       on *advertising* (be still my heart).  But as time slogged on, from
       where I sit, it looks like all that has changed.

       Escom in general (I have some of their company propaganda sheets round
       here somewhere) is a very big distributor of PC products in Europe.  The
       founder liked (and played with as a kid? :-( the C64 product, and felt
       somewhat obligated to give CBM a comfortable nitch.  I don't know where
       things will go from here.

       Like everyone else, I'm sorta hanging here, waiting to hear what's going
       to happen next.  I imagine they'll be cranking up to produce things like
       the A1200 asap.

<GEOS-TIM> Great computer

<Fred> Why, what have you heard?  :-)

<GEOS-TIM> A Freind of mine has a 1200

<Fred> Yeah, I have several- but I prefer the A4000.

<GEOS-TIM> I understand that Escom is planning to sell C64s to the Chinese. (I
           noticed you mentioned Chinese Manufactoring Companys earlier) It
           seems  that China is promting English in schools and they need an
           inexpensive computer to help them into the computer age. If you were
           in charge of this operation, which 8 bit computer would you market,
           and why?

<Fred> The C64-type technology would suit them well- I was hopeing, before PC
       clones become so cheap, that we'd get into the Soviet block countries.

<GEOS-TIM> I understand they will be marketing to Eastern European countries as
           well.

<Fred> Oh, which would I promote?  Clones are cheap- the C64 would be barely
       adequate today- I'd shove at least an A1200 at them, or if you can't
       beat the price, a C65 type machine.

<Fred> Of course, I think I could jazz-up a C64 pretty good... :-) After all,
       where a company like Franklin is selling 6MB 6502 systems with
       dictionaries, foreign-language translators, bibles, and wine lists that
       retail for around $30 each, a 64 sounds pretty wimpy, yunno?

<GEOS-TIM> Well, we do have our add ons now. :D
           In fact, our next questioner's company produces some of them.
           Peter Fiset, from Performance Perphirals has a question.

<PERIPH> Hello Fred. I am not sure when we met last. Perhaps, in Canada 1990.
         I was interested in your international relations.

<Fred> Got a cool job for me??

<PERIPH> Have you as an engineer had any luck dealing with the marketing side
         of the companies you  work for and with. In particular would your
         knowledge of the players in the market, would you think it possible to
         sell into Russia, E.Europe without spending money on advertising?

<Fred> Nowadays, I think everyone world-wide looks to advertising for cues as
       to what to buy.  Don't think of electronics any differently than
       sneakers.  That said, I'd think a few cheap-but-well-thought-out ads
       would go a long way in Eastern Europe and China, for example.

       I don't have many dealing with marketing people- just about nil these
       days.  When I did, they were never interested in the products of R&D
       'cause they were risky.

       A product like a low-tech C64 might be appealing to them, 'cause it's a
       known commodity, here 10 years later.
       (Gosh, I gotta burp bad!)

<GEOS-TIM> LOL

<PERIPH> Fred, can I interupt?

<Fred> Sure-

<PERIPH> I have some dealings with the international marketing people myself,
         and I have a very good Russian businessman/engineer. He is always
         intersted in what can he get from me. But he has no way to pay
         directly for it? I haven't figured this one out yet.

         The Russians need basically low low cost product, I think the C64 is
         great for that appliocation. Could I tell him C64s are avaible again?

<Fred> Well, I'm not the person to ask about C64 availability.  Most of the
       stuff you mentioned is out of my/our hands anyway.  I wish you luck
       though...

<PERIPH> Fred, are you able to get a hold of Franklin product?

<Fred> Well, I have some Franklin toys here for my personal pleasure, if that's
       what you mean.  :-)

<GEOS-TIM> The next portion of our conference will be audience Hardware
           Questions. I know we have several folks byting at the bit...
           Ray Day has a question.

<Raymond Day> why did they skip the -02 and -04 versions?

<Fred> I don't recall offhand- although I suspect the -04 (if I recall
       correctly) had a bug in it (which I think I found & fixed in the last -
       05 rev) Also, there were some changes necessary to support new drive
       mechanisms, like the ones in the 1541-II.

<Raymond Day> Why did you have to cut jumper 3 in the 1541B so it would not
              bump to track 1?

<Fred> I have piles and piles of dusty notes in the boxes around me, but I'm
       hardly in the mood to dig though them right now!  :-)

<Raymond Day> Can the c65 be in the 4 MHz mode in 64 mode?

<Fred> All the "bump" stuff was greatly affected by the particular drive
       mechanism.  Some of the mods (maybe that was the -04 rev) included
       patches for track-0 sensors, but just as we thought we'd finally get a
       trk-0 sensor, along came a cheaper drive without one :-(

       Yes, the C65 can be in 3.58MHz mode in C64 mode.  But don't try to talk
       to disk drives and things like that- the serial routines have some time
       -sensitive stuff in 'em that'll puke and hang.

<Raymond Day> Do you know the poke to put it in 3.58MHz mode?

<Fred> Uh, not off-hand- sorry.

<GEOS-TIM> ShadowM has a question.

<ShadowM> What's the real story behind the supposed bug in the relative file
          "P" command? the "@0:" prefix?

<Fred> (I was just lookin' through the manual, but it's taking too long...)
       Oh my goodness.  The P command stuff had a bug dating from code
       borrowed from the PET days.  An in fact, the save@ bug came to play for
       about the same reason- I could wax on poetically about the exact
       problems, but won't just now...

<GEOS-TIM> Ray has a question.

<Raymond Day> So because the jumper in the 1541b waas not cut it could load or
              be more compatible?

<Fred> By the way- "fast bit" on C65 is in B7 of VIC reg 31.

       Re: 1541B jumper- I'm not sure what jumper 3 did anymore- it might have
       been the trk-0 sensor present/not present thingy.  Just not sure. Any
       schematic should tell you what it does...

<Raymond Day> When you turned on the drive it would kick it's head. But when
              you cut jumper 3 it never did.

              Yes it's sensor present/not.

<Fred> Well, ha!  There you go...

<Raymond Day> I love my 1541-II I can swap ram with ROM 32k ram. Got a
              optoisolators sensor in it and DOS sensis track 0 now with the
              added code. battey backed up RAM 16k swop at a time.

<Fred> Sounds impressive.

<Raymond Day> Used a LS86 to swap address's

<GEOS-TIM> Hardware questions from the audience.....just type /rai to get into
           line.

           ShadowM has a question

<ShadowM> What are your biographical data? What was your role in the
          development of the C64? Did you write the code in the ROMs?

<Fred> Didn't do any original-C64 code work.  I helped debug the VIC chip
       though. I was more involved with B-series (including the never seen
       color 8032), etc.

       Tim reminds me we talked about some of this stuff in our last conference
       (when the heck was that??? :-)  So I don't impeach myself, heh, heh, you
       might check it out.

<ShadowM> thanks, I'll d/l it.

<GEOS-TIM> I don't have the file Number right onhand, but I will Email it to
           you, Shadow

           We only have about ten minutes....any other Questions
           Raymond has another question.

<Raymond Day> Some day I hope you dig through those papers and make a text file
              telling the history of the 1541 drives and DOS. Can't find that
              info any were.

<Fred> Make a text file???  Sorry, but I doubt I'll be typing that stuff in
       anytime soon.  Sorry to disappoint- I now nominate you to be da man!

<Raymond Day> Just like a 1 page thing.

<GEOS-TIM> Jim Brain has made a FAQ of some of that, Ray. Jim will be a guest
           next month June 20th. He will be telling you how to access his home
           page

<Fred> Sorry- sounds like Mr. Brain be da man already.

<Raymond Day> I still don't get why the 1541B was shipped with the trk-0 not
              on.

<Fred> Because manufacturing could never coordinate which boards were matched
       with which drive mechanisms. It happened all the time.

<Raymond Day> I seen 4 1541B's all had the trk-0 not on them and cutting
              Jumper, thus fix it. Thanks for all the info Fred!

<Fred> Your welcome!

<Raymond Day> Did the 251968-02 ever get out? last one, question for me. :)

<Fred> I think so, at least in the 1541-II.

<Raymond Day> No the 1541-II has 251968-03 in it. You had a text file telling
              the update on the 251968-01 to 02.

<Fred> I recall sending out the update notices, but my accuracy is shot to hell
       these days.  See what happens when you learn C?

<GEOS-TIM> You need a Franklin planner, Fred. Than you could page back to that
           date. <g>

<Fred> I think I have one...

<GEOS-TIM> Well, time is running out..

<Fred> Now you want me to type it all into my planner, hey?  :-)

<GEOS-TIM> I would like to thank Fred Bowen for coming in.  It has been an
           educational and entertaining evening.  Hopefully, we can do this
           again in the future.

<QT> Thank you Fred!

<Fred> Sounds good to me- guess I'll have to bone up on my old CBM knowledge by
       then... :-)

<Raymond Day> Yes thank you! :-)

<GEOS-TIM> You did great

** <GEOS-TIM> Room is now in the talk mode.

<GEOS-TIM> Everyone can stretch now.