Many personal computing pioneers have passed on one way or another since the Personal Computer revolution began to roll in 1975. And I’ve been privileged to have known and worked with many of them, particularly those from the Silicon Valley region of San Francisco Bay. One of them was Bill Godbout who started out in the surplus electronics field selling surplus and new components and parts from the back of an old WW2 barracks building shared with the legendary Mike Quinn, the rumpled and curmudgeonous proprietor of Mike Quinn Electronics. This decaying building was one a several that were located at the north end of Oakland Airport, a mecca for those of us into the more serious side of analogue and digital electronics back in the 1960’s.
Bill expanded from selling electronic kits such as digital clocks and other gadget-oriented items for the do-it-yourselfer and into the new 8-bit microprocessor platform that would be known as S-100 bus. The naming distinction rightfully is attributed to Harry Garland and Roger Mellen of Cromemco whose first “S-100”-based offerings were assembled into a relabled IMSAI 8080 cabinet and power supply (labeled as Cromemco Z-1), and using their own Zilog Z-80 system boards board and other creations for the fast-growing market.
I first met Bill in 1967 when I was working for IBM, then last saw him at the 1982 West Coast Computer Faire at Brooks Hall in San Francisco where we were both exhibitors, he with Godbout Electronics/CompuPro/Viasyn and me with Fischer-Freitas Corporation. Though I seldom had any business directly with him I frequently saw him when I was doing business with Mike, which was frequent when I first started working for IMS Associates (soon to be known as IMSAI) in February of 1976 and later when my former wife and I acquired the IMSAI brand and intellectual properties in 1979.
What I did NOT know until a few months ago was that Bill had moved to Concow CA near Paradise, both communities devastated and mostly obliterated by the horrible Camp Fire in 2018. Bill was one of the 86 fatalities.
Having known Bill to a small degree I could kind of understand his defiant and stubborn nature giving him the determination that he could defeat the monstrous onslaught of flame and destruction. Six residents of Concow died in Concow that horrible day and night in November of 2018… and Bill Godbout was one of them.
I still have a hard time squaring his death in my mind. He lived so close to me, and we never got to have a few drinks together that we both promised after the 1982 WCCF. Bill was the kind of guy I wish I had known better when we were both younger and fueled with enthusiasm in a new and incredibly promising frontier. My heart goes out to his wife and family for the loss of a really remarkable man.