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: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Wednesday November 14 2018, @01:52PM (1 child)
I bought it...or someone was giving it away for free at a flea market. It's half the size of my dishwasher and weighs about as much. Currently on loan to a neighbor for use as a coffee table, I never bothered to get it working
(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.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 14 2018, @01:55PM
> I recall often seeing his name mentioned in the various articles I read.
Same here, his ads were in the early micro computer magazines too.
We had an S-100 bus computer in the early 1980s. It was originally assembled as a port-concentrator to sit in front of a VAX. I guess that use didn't work out and it was given to us to use for our subcontract work. Had two 8" floppy drives, iirc 600KB each, these spun continuously which meant that access time (for typical small files of the day) was perfectly acceptable. Also had several 4-port serial cards sitting on the S-100 bus...
Ran CP/M, we used it with an Ann Arbor terminal that had a full page text mode (60 lines), great for writing documentation.
With a 1200 baud external modem (and an account on that VAX) we were good to go!
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 14 2018, @03:52PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow78cUDdTOg [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday November 14 2018, @03:58PM (1 child)
I once met a combat veteran who served during peacetime. He could not enter a room without first locating the exits and firing points
He said his missions were classified
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 14 2018, @07:48PM
I worked with a guy who was not much of a coder, but had been given this job that involved some coding. He had his own office. The big story was about him being abducted in Central America and somehow talking his way out of it. There must have been some other shit too. Getting that job had to be some kind of reward. His "project" was 100 lines that a decent CS undergrad could bang out and debug in a day. He exuded PTSD and paranoia in a way that was hard to fathom. Our company had done a lot of TS work in the past, but it was winding down and he was one of the last cleared people to work there. As a general rule, patronage doesn't sound like a good idea... but how else can we reward that kind of sacrifice when the VA is absolute shit?
(Score: 2) by DutchUncle on Wednesday November 14 2018, @04:13PM (1 child)
1979 four of us fresh-outs were customizing CP/M for a custom-hardware Z80 based system on a "standard" S-100 CP/M system. The changes "to save on parts" wound up limiting the system's capability and top bus speed. OTOH the system also had a fiber-optic comm line that was absolutely astounding for the time - one single frame delay for a full spool of cable, even with our fastest scope, and the DMA chip couldn't possibly feed it fast enough (yeah, separate DMA controller, remember those?)
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Wednesday November 14 2018, @09:08PM
Yay for blitters.
(Score: 3, Funny) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday November 14 2018, @04:23PM (1 child)
Back when I dreamed of the day when I could own my own computer. Now I've got an iPhone that could crush a cray 1
I figured I'd have to build on
He once sold a pin chuck with the suggestion you stick a paper clip in it to make a versatile tool
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by suburbanitemediocrity on Wednesday November 14 2018, @09:19PM
I got bored, or at least tired of, computers by the time I realized my personal computer could crush a cray. I remember drooling over one of the first crays in the Bradbury museum. At the time, it was still far faster than anything I could afford (286).
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 14 2018, @04:31PM
All those liberals suffering and dying in California, trumptards must be extatic right now. Nothing gives them more pleasure than to see liberals suffer and die.
They are so totally and completely consumed by their hatred of liberals that, just like captain Ahab, they are willing to go to any extreme, to sacrifice their future, their children's future, their country, their planet, everything, just for the pleasure of seeing that damned liberal white whale suffer and die.
And they'll keep voting pedophile after pedophile to the white house, as long as said pedophile promises them that he'll make sure nothing is done about climate change, as long as (preferably rich, privileged) liberals keep dying.
Go ahead, mod me troll all you want. But you know I'm right.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Wednesday November 14 2018, @05:14PM
Yep. Still have one; works fine. I have an SS-50 system too, and a few of the smaller systems, like the 1802 COSMAC. These days, having written an emulator for the SS-50 / Flex systems [datapipe-blackbeltsystems.com], I do everything virtually when I feel like digging out correspondence from the last century or just playing some old games. The old SS-50 hardware just sorta sits there. :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 14 2018, @06:40PM (1 child)
Insanity to stick around thinking you and your house are immune to fire.
GTFO! Go live with friends or relatives for a few months if you have to.
"It happened so fast!" WTF! It has been burning so long now as to become old news.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Thursday November 15 2018, @07:14AM
Most of the deaths most likely took place in the first couple of days of the fire. Fire alerts were only sent out through an opt-in setup rather than through a mass broadcast, and the fire spread at an absolutely shocking speed, so a lot of people had no idea it was coming until it was almost upon them; even then, there was a traffic gridlock and roads quickly became blocked by the fire itself, so people couldn't drive in to rescue friends/relatives who couldn't get out on their own.