Editing MOS Technology (section)

===Commodore Semiconductor Group===
However successful the 6502 was, the company itself was having problems. At about the same time the 6502 was being released, MOS's entire calculator [[Integrated circuit|IC]] market collapsed, and its prior existing products stopped shipping. Soon they were in serious financial trouble. Another company, [[Commodore Business Machines]] (CBM), had invested heavily in the calculator market and was also nearly wiped out by [[Texas Instruments|TI]]'s entry into the market. A fresh injection of capital saved CBM, and allowed it to invest in company suppliers in order to help ensure their [[Integrated circuit|IC]] supply would not be upset in this fashion again. Among the several companies were [[LED]] display manufacturers, power controllers, and suppliers of the driver chips, including MOS.

In late 1976, CBM, publicly traded on the [[NYSE]] with a [[market capitalization]] around {{US$|60 million}}, purchased MOS (whose market cap was around {{US$|12 million}}) in an all-stock deal. Holders of MOS received a 9.4 percent equity stake in CBM<ref>{{cite web|title=MOS – The Rise of MOS Technology & The 6502
|publication-date=2006-01-18<!-- originally written by Ian Matthews of commodore.ca in 2003-02-15 -->
|date=March 2015
|access-date=2016-05-10
|url=http://www.commodore.ca/commodore-history/the-rise-of-mos-technology-the-6502/
|quote=MOS Technology is privately owned and valued at around $12 million.<!--original source: September 1976 edition of New Scientist-->
}}</ref><ref>{{Cite magazine|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xUAV0VcszIQC&pg=PA541,|title=Calculator maker integrates downwards |magazine=New Scientist|date=September 9, 1976 |page=541 |volume=71 |issue=1071|publisher=Reed Business Information|via=Google Books}}</ref><ref>"Commodore Buys MOS Technology", ''New Scientist'', September 1976</ref> on the condition that Chuck Peddle would join Commodore as chief engineer. The deal went through, and while the firm basically became Commodore's production arm, they continued using the name MOS for some time so that manuals would not have to be reprinted. After a while MOS became the '''Commodore Semiconductor Group (CSG)'''. Despite being renamed to CSG, all chips produced were still stamped with the old "MOS" logo until week 22/23 of 1989.<ref>Images of chips with week 22 and week 23 date codes.{{better source needed|{{subst:DATE}}|date=August 2024}}</ref>

MOS had previously designed a simple computer kit called the [[KIM-1]], primarily to "show off" the 6502 chip. At Commodore, Peddle convinced the owner, [[Jack Tramiel]], that calculators were a dead end, and that home computers would soon be huge.

However, the original design group appeared to be even less interested in working for Jack Tramiel than it had for Motorola, and the team quickly started breaking up. One result was that the newly completed [[MOS Technology 6522|6522 (VIA)]] chip was left undocumented for years.

[[Bill Mensch]] left MOS even before the Commodore takeover, and moved home to Arizona. After a short stint consulting for a local company called ICE, he set up the [[Western Design Center|Western Design Center (WDC)]] in 1978. As a licensee of the 6502 line, their first products were bug-fixed, power-efficient [[CMOS]] versions of the 6502 (the [[65C02]], both as a separate chip and embedded inside a [[microcontroller]] called the 65C150). But then they expanded the line greatly with the introduction of the [[65816]], a fairly straightforward [[16-bit]] upgrade of the original 65C02 that could also run in [[8-bit]] mode for compatibility. Since then WDC moved much of the original MOS catalog to CMOS, and the 6502 continued to be a popular CPU for the [[embedded system]]s market, like medical equipment and car dashboard controllers.