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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.
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.
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.
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.
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The fire moved *extremely* quickly. Winds up to 50mph (80km/h), and it's been a very dry summer and fall so things caught fire fast. 20,000 acres were ablaze within twelve hours, and it only spread from there.
AFAICT most of the casualties so far were people caught in their cars while evacuating. Lots of people got encircled by fire, no way out but through. Others were trapped in traffic and the fire caught up.
(As usual, you should ignore Trump's attempts to somehow blame this on Democrats, saying they weren't "managing" the forests properly. This is both incorrect - better forestry would at best have slowed the fire's spread by a small amount - and improper - most of the forests affected are on federal land. Weather conditions were so ripe for a wildfire that the power company considered shutting off power, since wind blowing down power lines can ignite fires. This wasn't done (shutting power off is itself dangerous to the public), and a downed power line is now the primary suspect for the immediate cause of the fire.)
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.