Bil Herd
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Bil Herd is a
Early life
He attended the Indiana school system.[1] Herd did not have a college degree, and did not graduate high school, though he was working as an engineer by the age of 20.
Military service
- 1977–1980: 238th Cavalry - Indiana Army National Guard
- 1980–1982: 103rd Medical Battalion - 28th Division Pennsylvania Army National Guard
- 1981: Army Commendation Medal for meritorious service.
Working for Commodore
After first acting as the principal engineer on the
After Commodore
After leaving Commodore, Herd continued to design faster and more powerful computers with emphasis on
Voluntary health care work:
- 1989–1996: Fellowship First Aid Squad / Mount LaurelEMS Inc. Highest rank: Captain (also served as president)
- 1991–1995: Cooper Trauma Center - Camden, NJ: Trauma Technician
Herd has undertaken an entrepreneurial role and is owner of several small companies. As for recent low-level computer hacking, he did a "cameo appearance" by contributing a snippet of sprite logic code to the C64 DTV product designed by Jeri Ellsworth.
Herd appeared in and narrated the documentary "Growing the 8 Bit Generation" (a.k.a. "The Commodore Wars") about the early days of Commodore and the home computers explosion. Subsequently, he narrated the documentary "Easy to learn, hard to master: the fate of Atari", thus becoming the official voice of the "8-bit Generation" documentary series. As of September 2020,[update] he produces videos for Hackaday.
In 2021, Herd co-authored a book with Margaret Morabito, Back into the Storm: A Design Engineer's Story of Commodore Computers in the 1980s, in which he recounts inside stories about his and his team's experiences with designing computers for Commodore.
Notes
- Usenet: [email protected]. Retrieved August 17, 2019.
- ^ [1]Commodore History Part 5 - The C128, retrieved 2021-03-31
References
- Bagnall, Brian: On The Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore, ISBN 0-9738649-0-7.
- Greenley, Larry, et al. (1986). Commodore 128 Programmer's Reference Guide. ISBN 0-553-34378-5. (Herd Co-author)
- Herd, B. & Morabito, M. (2021). Back into the Storm: A Design Engineer's Story of Commodore Computers in the 1980s. ISBN 9798534584950.
External links
- The 8 Bit Generation The story of Jack Tramiel and Commodore International Produced by JunkFood, narrated by Bil Herd
- Hackaday.com – Bil Herd's Original Videos at Hackaday
- Commodore 128 History at Commodore.ca – by Ian Matthews
- A brief history of the computer demo scene – By Tamás Polgár
- The C128 story, by Bil Herd – at Fab's Commodore page (Fabian Meyer)
- C128.com Commodore Users Group Video - Updated 2005 – With Bil Herd, Dave Haynie
- Appearance on The Linux Link Tech Show on September 12, 2007 (ogg) (mp3)
- Two videos of Bil Herd at the 25th Anniversary of the Commodore 64 at the Computer History Museum in 2007
- A video of Bil Herd and Dale Luck post-show at the 25th Anniversary of the Commodore 64 at the Computer History Museum in 2007
- C128.com video of Bil Herd describing the C116 TED family of computers under Jack Tramiel
- Video of Bil Herd and Jeri Ellsworth explaining Phase Locked Loops
- Commodore History Part 5 - The C128