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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.
hardly anybody has ever heard of this person. His biggest claim to fame is dying in the 2018 Cali Camp Fire.
PlanetVulkan.com
By all means, donate what you can to help the CA fire victims. Most donation centers are now saying they have enough of many supplies (clothing, etc, are just piling up), and they mostly need money now, which can be converted into whatever the most urgent local needs are.
However, be careful: there have been a number of "disaster scammers" setting up fake donation sites and absconding with the money. So donate via reputable organizations, or do your due diligence to verify what you are donating to.
But do donate! A whole city was wiped off the map. 71 confirmed deaths so far, with over 1000 missing and many of the missing being elderly people who could not quickly evac and probably burned to death. Firefighters are finding charred remains huddled in cars. Tens of thousands have lost their homes, their pets, and the very fabric of their lives.
It's really bad. So go donate. Just use some common sense in the process.
The last day or so, I tap on a story on my iPhone and get the extra pop up about winning a new phone, etc, etc, total phishing bullshit. /. Is serving up these ads to its users and that is some bullshit. Of all sites, you expect /. To know that this is unacceptable.
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.
I remember spending many a pleasant Saturday out at the electronic junk store at the Oakland Airport back in the early 1970's where Bill worked. I can't think of the name of the place at the moment but I'm sure it will all come back later tonight for surely I'll be remembering him and his personal contributions to my life. I remember helping him sort and test parts in between spending hours perusing all of the amazing things there. Bill could explain it all and he was on top of everything going on in the industry back then and I learned much from him. He handed me the first microprocessor that I ever held in my hands. Sometimes he had rejects from the new companies down the road and he would come up with things to do with them anyway. Later he went on to design many things and had success at S100 memory boards but I had gone in other directions and never saw him again. So sad to hear this news. I've often wondered where he ended up. He was one of the people instrumental in making the better parts of the world what they are today. RIP.
It came from PGE DEFECT powerline
stop saying CAMP FIRE
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.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
.... but donations required!
Nuff said.
Ezekiel 23:20
For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion(operation of wandering)(planet) so that they will believe the lie.
Working of Error
All these innocent lives lost to climate change and STILL, Trump does nothing about it!
Did the authorities screw up and not tell people to leave? Did people not leave? Were people unable to leave?
The stories all cover the amount of people dead or missing, but there seems to be no coverage as to the why.
Every dead Californian makes the world a better place.
lol
Who could forget Ample Annie?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
... As usual, you should ignore Trump's attempts to somehow blame this on Democrats, saying they weren't "managing" the forests properly ...
Don't let your politics fool you. Science does in fact say we are mismanaging forest and brush lands. Trump may be an idiot but via the broken clock effect he is occasionally correct. In this case our hyper aggressive firefighting over many decades, overseen by both republicans and democrats, has let fuel accumulate. The result has been more and larger fires that are more difficult to contain.
There are many ways to f' up the environment. Some of them are industrial, some of them are well meaning and superficially pro-environment policies. Fires are a natural part of the environmental cycle in some regions. That needs to be recognized and fire suppression needs to start taking that into account.
I used to buy memory chips from him. Wonderful guy full of excitement concerning anything having to do with building your own computer. An information spreader. Serial Good Guy that would help anyone out with tips on DIY, and "where to get it" advice.
Correction: Trump is a fucking evil Forest Gump... Evil Donald Grump.
This was an urban fire; once it hits populated areas, forestry doesn't matter.
My first home computer was an S-100 computer with 2 8" floppy drives, I built from parts in a 5' Sperry-UNIVAC rack in my living room. Had a Hazeltine and 2 Televideo green screen monitors.
;)
Just my 2 cents
Started personal computing with CP/M and a homebrew S-100, back when I was young enough to spend countless hours trying to get things to work, but old enough to have some income to buy hardware. I even wrote a printer driver in assembler for my CP/M system.
I was lucky to have been involved in the beginning of the Micro Computer era. I worked for Mt Takayoshi Shiina at SORD Computer of Japan in the early 1980's. I remember talking with Mt Godbout, George Morrow who passed away some time ago from cancer I believe and Mt Shiina as a 20 something starry eyed kid that was totally enthralled with microcomputers and watching the business explode with ideas.
God's speed Mt Godbout!
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Is he a Mountain (Mt) or a Mister (Mr) ?? Make up your fucking nígger mind!
I lived vicariously the golden, heroic days of microcomputing via my S-100 computer hobby, and the Godbout cards are some of the nicest, best engineered ones. From everything I read about him, I could deduce that he was a generous, giving and thriving man, a pillar of the home computing community.
He will be missed dearly.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
"Give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day, but set fire to him and he’s warm for the rest of his life."
DON’T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH. ./ I'LL SEE MYSELF OUT.
I can't bear to part with my S100 computers; Vector Graphics and Alpha Micro. I'll take them to my grave. My Alpha Micro colleagues feel the same way. IIRC, at the Atlantic City Computer Festival (August 1976?), I rode the elevator up with Carl Helmers, editor of Byte Magazine. He was excited by a meeting where the various hardware manufactures agreed on a moniker of S100. I also had a conversation with Steve Jobs at his cardtable booth. He claimed to have advanced orders for 600 Apple 1 boards. I thought that was bullshit because no one had that kind of volume. He confided that Apple would soon release an improved model, called Apple 2, that offered color, a completely unique offering. I asked if people really cared about color. Wasn't monochrome just as useful? He assured me people would snatch up there completed-system color computer. I often told this story to illustrate how Steve was so much more attuned to peoples wants than I was. But in 1984, he rolled out the first Macintosh, a monochrome computer -- so much for must-have color computers.
THIS IS A FRIENDLY REMINDER FOR YOUR UPCOMING APPOINTMENT. PLEASE DRESS APPROPRIATELY, IT'S GOING TO BE A LONG WAY DOWN.
“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the watchmen? Me. I watch him. Always.”
“I'd rather be a rising ape than a falling angel.”
"Bill Godbout was one of the earliest and most influential supports of the S-100 bus in the mid-1970s."
Most machines of that time were using little bits of plastic or even metal supports, so he was really thinking outside the box. Or maybe /. needs editors that know how to edit.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
rip