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Bill Godbout, a legend in the S-100 community for his 1970s-1980s work at Godbout Electronics and CompuPro, perished November 8 due to the Camp wildfire in Concow, California. He was 79.
There is a family-led GoFundMe campaign to support their needs in this difficult time.
Godbout was an important advocate for the industry-standard S-100 bus in its early days, as well as being a parts supplier for electronic music projects, according to 1970s microcomputing expert Herb Johnson.
Godbout was born October 2, 1939. He talked about his introduction to computing in an interview with InfoWorld magazine for their February 18, 1980 issue. "My first job out of college was with IBM. I served a big-system apprenticeship there, but I think the thing that really triggered [my interest] was the introduction of the 8008 by Intel," he said. "I was fascinated that you could have that kind of capability in a little 18-pin package."
Steven Levy, in his book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, wrote about Godbout's Silicon Valley electronics business. "Bill Godbout... bought junk on a more massive scale — usually government surplus chips and parts which were rejected as not meeting the exacting standards required for a specific function, but perfectly acceptable for other uses. Godbout, a gruff, beefy, still-active pilot who hinted at a past loaded with international espionage and intrigues for government agencies whose names he could not legally utter, would take these parts, throw his own brand name on them, and sell them, often in logic circuitry kits that you could buy by mail order."
Does anyone else remember the days of the S-100 Bus? One of my first jobs actually entailed using an Altair 8800 on which the S-100 bus was based. Though I had no personal connection with him, I recall often seeing his name mentioned in the various articles I read.
One of the long-Long timers has passed. R.I.P.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DannyB on Wednesday November 14 2018, @02:39PM
I remember the S-100 bus. I remember the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics. And soon after BYTE magazine. I never had an S-100 bus, as I could never afford one as a young teenager. By 1978 I had a loaner TRS-80 from a Radio Shack store, so I could write some software for them. Had it for almost a year and a half in high school until going to college. From 1977 my high school had a Wang 2200 with 8K and BASIC. A very strange beast. The BASIC was far more advanced than anything I saw in BYTE in the microcomputer world. It was 42.5 K of ROM. Microcode that ran on a 4-bit slice processor. But it was a really cool BASIC. I never again saw anything like it.
You can find PDF versions of BYTE magazine here [americanradiohistory.com] or higher quality scans hear. [archive.org]. Popular Electronics issues are found here. [americanradiohistory.com]. Creative Computing is here. [archive.org]
Ancient issues of AI Magazine here. [aaai.org]. I only mention it because I subscribed for about six years in the late 80's, early 90's during my "common lisp" addiction.
It's sad but true that heroes from the early microcomputer era eventually get old like all of us.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.