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Bill Godbout, Early S-100 Bus Pioneer, Perished In the Camp Wildfire (vcfed.org)
evanak writes: Bill Godbout was one of the earliest and most influential supports of the S-100 bus in the mid-1970s. He passed away last week due to the Camp wildfire in Concow, California, according to a Vintage Computer Federation blog post. More than 50 other people also died in the fires, but chances are Mr. Godbout was the only one with a license to fly blimps. "Godbout was born October 2, 1939," the blog post reads. "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.'"
Godbout's family has set up a GoFundMe campaign to support their needs in this difficult time.
Godbout's family has set up a GoFundMe campaign to support their needs in this difficult time.
Godbout dates from the wild west days of personal computers. It was a bottom up phenomenon, driven by legions of hackers who passed knowledge through users groups, 73 Magazine, self-published mimeographed "books". In the early days, a 300 baud modem and a real keyboard were a dream. An old Model 33 ASR TTY meant you had hit the "big time". Corporate American hadn't a clue. The personal microcomputer revolution happened under the radar in garages, basements, and bedrooms. Godbout was there front and center, and anyone who was there in those days knows him, or about him, or did business with him.
Rest in peace, old timer.
Has more to do with shitty forest management over the past 40 years than climate change
Where do you think the Feds get their money genius?
Rich countries get that way by allowing successful people to keep and reinvest their earnings. Places where all the wealth is drained off to 'the people' always end in failure. A recent example is Venezuela.
They weren't culling deadwood and managing the forest around their town. All the dead wood and brush is/was a tinder box waiting to flame up. That said, burn offs are completely natural and part of the cycle of life for woodlands.
They weren't culling deadwood and managing the forest around their town. All the dead wood and brush is/was a tinder box waiting to flame up. That said, burn offs are completely natural and part of the cycle of life for woodlands.
Where I used to live people were prohibited from removing built-up fuel near their homes Such deadwood/brush was considered a habitat for some local endangered ground squirrel type critter. Structures and lives were lost as a result, this was decades ago. I'm sure things have gotten no better, probably worse.
You're not entirely wrong, but not entirely right either.
Controlled burns just aren't possible in every part of the country. Nobody's going to let their house burn down to prevent theoretical worse fires further down the line. You can let acres of grassland or pasture burn, or remote forests - but not woods that are laced with homes.
It's also questionable whether that would even have helped. Accumulated fuel can make fires spread fast, and probably contributed here, but there was also plenty of dry grass due to aforementioned dry summer. And what was the natural rate of fires, pre-humans? My reading claims it's been ten years since a fire swept through the affected area, which doesn't seem particularly long for any specific location. I really doubt every part of the forest burned every single year, ten thousand years ago.
There are clearly improvements we need to make. But I don't think your suggestions (which seem based on Great Plains policies) are the right ones for North California.
I only talked to Bill through mail when I was in University - I was building an S-100 Z-80 CPM system and needed some suggestions on how to architect the video driver. Bill pointed me to some reference drawings on the MOT 6845 (same as the original IBM PC) that I could use along with providing me with some software to go with it. The only thing he asked of me was that I pass along the information to anybody who asked.
We lost touch after I got my system working and I always wondered what happened to him.
RIP. He showed me the value of Open Source.
I am Bills daughter in law, and the whole family appreciates you taking the time to post some kind words. You were lucky to have had Bill touch your life in some way, everybody who met him were better for it, he will be missed greatly. I thank you again for your taking the time to acknowledge a great man, Bill Godbout R.I.P