Commodore 16
The Commodore 16 was released in 1984. It was intented to be an entry-level computer and replace the VIC-20. This computer was also sold as a cheaper version (mainly in Europe) the Commodore 116.
The C16 belongs to the Plus/4 family and is internally very similar to that machine. However, the C16 only has 16KByte of RAM, and lacks the user port that the Plus/4 has. Software for the Plus/4 does run on the C16, provided it does not need more than 16KByte of RAM. The C16 flopped in the US, but had some success in parts of Europe and Mexico due to it's price point of only $99. A total of 1.3 million Plus/4, C16s and C116s were sold worldwide.The C16 has a MOS 7501 or 8501 CPU running at 0.89/1.76 MHz. The system was designed around the TEX chip, which stands for Text Editing Device. The TED chip offered a palette of 128 colors, more than the C64 was capable of, but due to the lack of hardware sprites and RAM, games were limited.
TED - Text Editing Device
The 7360 Text Editing Device or TED, was an integrated circuit made by MOS Technology Inc. It was a video chip that also contained sound generation hardware, DRAM refresh circuitry, interval timers, and keyboard input handling. It was specifically designed for the Commodore Plus/4 and the Commodore 16.
The video capabilities provided by TED were basically a subset of those in the VIC-II chip. The TED supports five video modes:
- 40x25 Text Mode, 8x8 pixel characters
- Multicolor text (4x8 pixels per character, double pixel width)
- Extended background color mode (8x8 pixels per character)
- 160x200 Multicolor Graphics
- 320x200 Hi-Res graphics
MOS 7501/8501 CPU
The MOS 7501 and 8501 was introduced in 1984 and both chips are a variant of the 6510. Where the 6510 had 6 I/O ports, the 7501 and 8501 used all 8. However the CPU omits the pins for the non-maskable interrupt and the clock output. The 7501/8501 were used in the commodore 16, the commodore 116 and the Commodore Plus/4 computers. The I/O ports controlled the Datasette and the CBM Bus interface.
The 7501 and 8501 were functionally equivalent, but the manufacturing process was different. The 7501 was manufactured with HMOS-1, and the 8501 was manufactured with HMOS-2. HMOS-2 used a channel length of 2 microns against the 3 microns of HMOS-1.
Source: WikiPedia
