Talk:MOS Technology

Confirming currency for dollar figures quoted

Can someone confirm if the dollar figures in the article are all USD, and if so, update the article accordingly ? OZ_Rhett 23:15, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Many more MOS chips

I'm thinking of expanding the "Products" section to include a lot more MOS Technology chips, but it might start getting a bit long because of all the PAL and NTSC variants of the video chips. Is it worth doing? It would probably be better to list all the VIC chips in the VIC-II article. Any feedback is welcome. Bill Bertram 07:46, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps it may be done like the existing VIC, VIC-II listings, i.e. naming the article based on the product name instead of the number, and then list different variants together on the same line? BTW, which are the chips you're talking about? Could you list them here on the discussion page for us other 'Commodorians' to see? --Wernher 18:48, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I think you're right, I'll list the VIC variants in their respective pages. I'll just add some other MOS chips which haven't been listed. I guess what I'm trying to do is to make the MOS Technology page a gateway for Commodore chips on Wikipedia, so people won't have to search for them. Bill Bertram 21:41, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

OK, great. Looking forward to see the as-yet unlisted chips! --Wernher 17:10, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I'm working on it! :-) Bill Bertram 18:54, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Amiga chips

I want to add as many chips I can get information on, including the chips for the Amiga. I know the chips weren't designed by MOS, but they probably contributed to some of the design to get the Amiga chipset to market. Would it be correct to add Amiga chips to the list? Bill Bertram 21:41, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, if the chips were at least produced by MOS/CSG, mentioning them in the MOS article might be correct as long as the originating companies were listed as well. But since you're asking, I would certainly have listed other chip design companies' chips under those companies' articles. BTW, did MOS design any of the Amiga chips? Not at all being an 'Amiga man', I would guess some/most of the significant Amiga chips were designed by Miner & Co. over at Amiga, Inc., before the Commodore buyout? --Wernher 17:10, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The chipset was designed at Amiga, but the chipset was nothing more than a collection of breadboards. I'm sure a lot of the work to transform the breadboards into a mass produced IC was most likely carried out by engineers at MOS, with input from Jay Miner et al. Bill Bertram 18:54, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

MOS and CBM chip designers were already working in the same office when Amiga was bought and the Amiga staff was pretty much integratet on an adhoc base. At least when the company was renamed to CSG Semiconductors there were basically no seperate companies anymore. Before that time? Dunno. Also one should distinguish between the designers and the implementers. The designers were not directly working at the MOS fab and MOS did quite some postprocessing at the fab itself. Overall I think one can treat MOS, Amiga and CBM as being one entity after being renamed as CSG Crass Spektakel (talk) 06:20, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

4510?

Looking through Category:Computer stubs, I saw 4510 (computer chipset), and was wondering if this might be a MOS chip. If so, that page should probably be renamed accordingly. It was used in the Commodore 64. I suppose it could have been made by just about anybody... —User:Mulad (talk) 18:47, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

I did a quick Google search for "MOS 4510" and, among other things, I found "MOS 4510 (CGS65CE02), 3.45 MHZ" in a specification for the Commodore 65. I'm not sure if it was used in the 64, but if you have definite proof of this I guess it was. :-) Anyway, I'll list it in the list of MOS chips. Thanks for mentioning it. --Wernher 10:17, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Name?

What does the name mean—is it supposed to be an acronym for Metal Oxide Semiconductor, or what? TIA, Maikel 15:25, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes. --Brouhaha 18:01, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Original Research (?) - Ability to fix masks

Regarding MOS Technology's ability to fix broken masks, the article refers to a phone call with Mr. Mensch as the source. Could this be considered original research if it was done specifically for the Wikipedia entry?

Personally, I'm interested in this aspect of the MOS team. If the phone conversation with Mr. Mensch was documented, I'd like to see a link to a transcript. Dinjiin (talk) 23:42, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

The book "On the edge" by Brian Bagnall attributes the high chip yield to a non-contact mask process developed by John Pavinen (pages 18, 22) There is no mention of mask fixing. As an electrical engineer I find this more believable than what is claimed in this article. Avian (talk) 10:12, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Call him up yourself, I did. He seems more than happy to talk about MOS history. Maury Markowitz (talk) 20:08, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Mask Repair at Bell Labs in Allentown, PA

SPOT IT was a system to detect and repair defects in photomasks for hybrid thin-film circuits. Developed at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Allentown, PA. Electronics magazine, October 30, 1975. pages 29-30

"David Munro, one of the system's inventors, says the most common defect in masks is caused by extraneous small opaque material although the operator is sometime confronted with ragged edge and long narrow flaws. All of these can be removed by focusing a neodymium yttrium-aluminum-garnet laser on the unwanted areas to vaporize them away. To aim the Laser the operator first manually lines up the defect with the crosshair of the microscope, then presses a button that fires the Laser. Munro says SPOT IT is being used successfully with photomasks made of both chrome and iron oxide."

MOS Technology was located in Norristown, PA; 50 miles from Bell Labs. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 01:42, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

History

Just wanted to explain my potentially non-obvious reasons for an edit.

The article said, in effect, that Chuck Peddle's team couldn't become a fabless semiconductor company because there weren't any fabless semiconductor companies at the time. This is like saying the wheel couldn't be invented because there weren't any wheels yet.

Instead the issue was that in those days, all the fabs were owned by companies that designed chips. Companies like MOSIS could broker access to fab services for short prototype and production runs for non-commercial and (generally) non-competing commercial customers, but they couldn't guarantee production volumes or support designs of leading-edge complexity.

In short, it was the lack of pure-play semiconductor foundries that made fabless semiconductor companies impossible. It took another decade before there were enough independent design teams to keep an independent foundry reasonably busy, at which point fabs like TSMC and design firms like the Western Design Center (non-coincidentally also descending from MOS Technology) started to spring up. 98.247.224.9 (talk) 09:53, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

GMT Environmental Issues

Kuru are you sure the book "Early Home Computers" by PediaPress is not a reliable source? It doesn't seem like a circular reference to me (the info isn't a regurgitation of information from this article) and it seems authoritative in the subject matter. I wouldn't undo your edit but I would ask you to relook at it again as I believe it to be a reliable reference. Specifically page 695, paragraph 3, the last two sentences:

However, in 2001 the United States Environmental Protection Agency shut the plant down. GMT ceased operations and was liquidated.

Thank you for reexamining this reference. I will abide by whatever you think is best for this cite. Kc7txm (talk) 06:22, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Happy to re-examine. You can scroll to the first page of the "book"where it credits Wikipedians as the "author", or you can look at the extensive attributions back to Wikipedia at the end of the "book". The sentence in question is directly lifted from our article on Commodore International and credited as such. There are many times that other publications copy our work and attempt to obfuscate the attribution; this is not one of those cases. Kuru (talk) 13:09, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for the insight on how to better examine a reference source Kuru, and thank you for the review. I will look deeper into reference sources from now on Kc7txm (talk) 20:37, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Kuru I can't find any reference that the United States Environmental Protection Agency shut the plant down nor that GMT ceased operations and was liquidated because of it. Is the best methodology to delete the sentence stating such (or hide it with an html comment) or just leave the [citation needed] in place? Thank you for your help teaching me the proper etiquette to navigate proper editing. Kc7txm (talk) 01:21, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

The only sourcing I was able to find quickly was a mention in the third five-year review by the EPA for the site: " GMT Microelectronics, Inc. discontinued its operation in 2000 and abandoned all of its assets including the Site." (page 4) This does not support claim. The usual protocol is to leave a "citation needed" tag up for a reasonable amount of time in non-urgent situations. I'd consider a year and a half ample time; feel free to remove the material. Kuru (talk) 05:09, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

That's pretty much the same thing I found from a different source, that GMT shut down down due to financial concerns (I suppose EPA recovery expenses would be a contributing factor) @Kuru:. Either way, I'm learning why WP:V exists since this appears to have been floating in the article for a long time and, as of now, appears to be false. I will comment it out and if anyone finds a proper reference they can reference all this discussion here in the talk (and are welcome to ping me about it). Thank you once again Kuru for your help. Kc7txm (talk) 16:37, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

History paragraph should be massively improved

It lacks a lot of things and mislead other. The "funny" thing is that some (most?) are written in another article ( MOS Technology 6502 .... )

Another two sources of info are General Instruments ( especially GI Microelectronics chapter ) and, of course, team6502 website Yes i know .. be bold. :)

87.19.41.121 (talk) 20:43, 2 August 2020 (UTC)