🚀 go-pugleaf

Tim Shoppa <sho...@trailing-edge.com> writes:

> Dan Mathias wrote:
> > 
> > Where did the company GODBOUT Electronics go? the maker of the famous
> > S-100 boards and bus stuff ?
> 
> Godbout became Compupro, Compupro was bought up by Viasyn.

Hmmm...  actually I think CompuPro BECAME Viasyn.  It was the time
when wacky 2-part greek-derivative synthetic company names were all
the rage.  I believe it was about the time Sperry-Univac became Unisys
for the same reason.  I remember a lot of S-100 people being pissed
off, and wondering why they'd throw away a name with a lot of history,
reputation, and recognition behind it.  As I recall, they paid a set
of name consultants a lot of $$$ and there was a memo from Bill
Godbout to all us customers explaining what the new name meant, a
"merging of the ways to the future" or something similarly stupid.  I
also seem to remember laughing at a pompous TV ad Unisys bought that
aired during a football game, explaining their new name.

Am I right or has there been too much beer damage to the memory
synapses?

At the time I was responsible for several CompuPro S-100 systems
running MP/M 8-16, which was a wacky version of CP/M-86 that was able
to run a dual 80286 CPU & Z-80 CPU board, running multiple 8-bit
programs on the Z-80 along with multiple 16-bit programs on the '286
simultaneously.  The Z-80's copy of "CP/M 2.2" was just a branch table
to hand off control to the '286 that did the OS duties, and returned
the results in CP/M 2.2 fashion.  The company that did the OS design
was Gifford Computers, and they were big in the S-100 world.  They
also did the CP/M ARCNET implementation that I used to network all the
CP/M systems.  Boy, we thought we were just the hottest sh*t.  Look
ma, I can make the other computer's floppy light from across the net
(and the room) 

Gifford had a female engineer with the sexiest voice.  I remember
speaking to her when I was trying to use some weird services they'd
added, allowing you to take control of I/O & interrupts independently
of the OS w/o having to go all the way and write full drivers.  She
designed and implemented it, if the brain cells aren't lying.

I remember loving Televideo 970 terminals, and HATING the WYSE 50 we
had, and remember building my own serial cables.  We also had some
ancient Datapoints & ADM-3As too.

I remember just before leaving the company to go to college, my boss
and I looked at the systems, and there was memory boards in the system
ranging from 16K up to a new absolutely ENOURMOUS!! 16MB board.

I also seem to recall an IBM-PC compatible board that let you run
PC-DOS, and gave you CGA graphics etc.  It was buggy as hell, thrown
together in a hurry, and generally crap.  I don't think many folks
bought them.

Wow, I can't believe I pulled some of these names back out of the air.
"Obi-wan... I haven't heard that name in many years...."

-gc