Over on Retro Recipe’s YouTube channel, [Perifractic] has been busy restoring an old promotional video of how Commodore computers were made back in 1984 (video below the break). He cleaned up the old VHS-quality version that’s been around for years, translated the German to English, and trimmed some bits here and there. The result is a fascinating look into the MOS factory, Commodore’s German factory, and a few other facilities around the globe. The film shows the chip design engineers in action, wafer manufacturing, chip dicing, and some serious micro-probing of bare die. We also see PCB production, and final assembly, test and burn-in of Commodore PET and C64s in Germany.
Check out the video description, where [Perifractic] goes over the processes he used to clean up video and audio using machine learning. If restoration interests you, check out the piece we wrote about these techniques to restore old photographs last year. Are there any similar factory tour films, restored or not, lurking around the web? Let us know in the comments below.
I saw that earlier. Amusing the tone and attitude about computers back then.
1:56 on the video, group of people on Commodore PET with no visible image on the screen. PET isn’t on!!!
Or perhaps the worst timing of showing how to clear the screen ?
If you find yourself with a headache from watching the AI enhanced video as I did or call it quits because of technical inaccuracies/translation issues, this is the best cut of the original German one I’ve seen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOBVmgZh18Y
Thank you for your post some of the more original footage.
I also found the AI-enhancement artifacts to be very distracting from the intended improvements. I’m sure lot’s of effort has been made to polish the video. But like many other old things, polishing doesn’t automatically increase its value, it sometimes makes it shiny but worse (lower value, something I learned from the TV series Pawn Stars (Vegas) when people bring in coins, guns or other metal items that have gathered a great patina over the years).
Very true! “Remastering” seems a very abusive claim, since they took an already existing poor quality digital file made from a VHS (not really a format that anybody would qualify as a “Master”!) and apply a IA treatment to “enhance” the video. Less noise and better colors is OK, but the interpolated content is most of the time quite awful. And they don’t even try to correct the Y/C delay.
Fran Blanche of Fran’s Lab has been digitizing many old 16 mm movies and putting them on her YouTube channel. Many are about old technology.
I own a C64 in his original package and each year, i use it tu verify his fonctionality… And always ok!!!
I find it strange that the video is claimed to be improved but it still contains basic issues like the colors of static objects flickering. I dunno, maybe my expectations are too high.
Here is my tour of the Commodore Canada HQ from 1991: https://youtu.be/X9a4ETk1OB0
Ben