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From: x01001x on 10 Nov 2009 11:11
Where were Commodore's factories (which produced the casing/keyboard
and IC with CPU for Commodore 64/128) located?

Perhaps they had factories in more than one country. I am focused on
Japan if anyone has any specific info regarding manufacturing there.
From: PK on 10 Nov 2009 20:26
x01001x ha scritto:
> Where were Commodore's factories (which produced the casing/keyboard
> and IC with CPU for Commodore 64/128) located?
>
> Perhaps they had factories in more than one country. I am focused on
> Japan if anyone has any specific info regarding manufacturing there.

MOS was the producer of almost all chip created by Commodore.
It was sited in Walley Forge (Pennsylvania).
In California there was the main Commodore research center and the main
factory (in Santa Clara) but other factories was in Japan (were they
often used to re-design and fix the layouy of motherboards) , U.K and
Germany. (Maybe in Switzerland too)
The C64C was made in Germany, Hong Kong and Cina.
This for what I can remember..

(sorry for my english)

Greets

--

From: dott.Piergiorgio on 11 Nov 2009 09:24
PK ha scritto:
> x01001x ha scritto:
>> Where were Commodore's factories (which produced the casing/keyboard
>> and IC with CPU for Commodore 64/128) located?
>>
>> Perhaps they had factories in more than one country. I am focused on
>> Japan if anyone has any specific info regarding manufacturing there.
>
> MOS was the producer of almost all chip created by Commodore.
> It was sited in Walley Forge (Pennsylvania).

Hisorical (both C= and USA) question:

IIRC one of the factors of the C= bankrupt was the loss of an
environmental lawsuit around a MOS factory (in the Reagan era !) so I
was puzzled by this, but if these environmental lawsuit(s) was in THAT
Valley Forge, a.k.a. "the birthplace of US Army", the environmental
issue perhaps has is weight notwhitanding the timeframe...

(sorry, but I'm also by training a Military & Naval historian...)

[SNIP]

> (sorry for my english)

Don't worry, you have written a good english, at least to me, another
Italian ;) One thing one should be careful, english-language people have
difficulties by our use of subjects, objects & verbs "sottintesi"...
(sorry, I don't find the English word now..)

Best regards from Italy,
Dott. Piergiorgio
From: Rick Balkins on 6 Dec 2009 03:13
Norristown, Penn. That is where the facility is/was located.

The EPA issue in Reagan era wasn't the primary issue. This EPA issue became
most problematic after C= went bankrupt. Lets keep in mind that C= had
relatively immediate measures to have chips produced whether it be at the
MOS facility or through a Taiwan fab company called TSMC (same folks who
produces the 65c02 for WDC today was there then. It was a non-issue. The
worst EPA could have done was shut down mass production of the chips but C=
could have worked around it with little issue by just merely operating the
plant as a chip R&D and went fabless (or very limited level which would
satisfy EPA with some corrective measures done to the facility which would
have been relatively a minor expense for Commodore.

What the CEO was making alone in a single year would have A) paid for the
entire correction of the Norristown facility. C= CEO was the highest paid
CEO of any computer company at the time. B) If the CEO put half of what he
made over 5 years from 1989 to 1994 - into correcting the facility and
advertising their product line and did proper management - Commodore would
be here today.

Commodore would likely have resulted in moving into a more 'fabless' or
'limited fabrication" (research level fabrication) of the Norristown
facility by now as the cost would be more cost effective. Of course, C=
designing new chips may still happen but it would probably followed similar
suit as the model used by Western Design Center. Being an IP provider with
licensing agreements. MOS / CSG was a semiconductor subsidiary company of
Commodore which Commodore has licensed to a few companies in the past like
any other semiconductor business. It was semi-independent of the computer
division of Commodore but C= computer division did however employ in-house
chips for obvious competition edge at the time.



"dott.Piergiorgio" <dott.PiergiorgioNIHON(a)KAIGUN.fastwebnet.it> wrote in
message news:jOzKm.32362$813.24735(a)tornado.fastwebnet.it...
> PK ha scritto:
>> x01001x ha scritto:
>>> Where were Commodore's factories (which produced the casing/keyboard
>>> and IC with CPU for Commodore 64/128) located?
>>>
>>> Perhaps they had factories in more than one country. I am focused on
>>> Japan if anyone has any specific info regarding manufacturing there.
>>
>> MOS was the producer of almost all chip created by Commodore.
>> It was sited in Walley Forge (Pennsylvania).
>
> Hisorical (both C= and USA) question:
>
> IIRC one of the factors of the C= bankrupt was the loss of an
> environmental lawsuit around a MOS factory (in the Reagan era !) so I was
> puzzled by this, but if these environmental lawsuit(s) was in THAT Valley
> Forge, a.k.a. "the birthplace of US Army", the environmental issue perhaps
> has is weight notwhitanding the timeframe...
>
> (sorry, but I'm also by training a Military & Naval historian...)
>
> [SNIP]
>
>> (sorry for my english)
>
> Don't worry, you have written a good english, at least to me, another
> Italian ;) One thing one should be careful, english-language people have
> difficulties by our use of subjects, objects & verbs "sottintesi"...
> (sorry, I don't find the English word now..)
>
> Best regards from Italy,
> Dott. Piergiorgio


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