Note Type
General NotesNote
CompuPro started out as a company call Godbout Electronics founded by one of the legends of the early micro-computer era, Bill Godbout. Unlike some of the other S-100 computer founders Bill had quite a bit of experience in building and selling computer/electronic equipment. He started in the business working as a manager and buyer for a guy named Mike Quinn who had a legendry electronics equipment store near Oakland Airport in California. Mike's store in the early 70's was a hive of activity where pioneers in the field like Lee Felsenstein, Bob Marsh & Gordon French (Processor Tech) , George Morrow (ThinkerToys, Morrow Designs) , Chuck Grant & Mark Greenberg (Northstar Computers) , Howard Fulmer (Equinox-100), Brent Wright (Fulcrum) and many others hung out. Eventually Bill started his own mail order business in the early 1970's selling electronic experimenter kits. He setup in the building behind Mike Quinn -- thereby always being in contact with new products, ideas and people.
Bill started in the S-100 board business in 1976 by selling RAM memory boards out of his Godbout Electronics mail order business. His contacts and experience in getting chips fast and at good prices help him get going quickly and allowed Godbout Electronics to fill a market need for boards that Altair, IMASI and even Processor Technologies could not meet in those early days. In the end Godbout/CompuPro had more different types of S-100 RAM boards than anybody else in the business. All their boards were static RAM boards. As the business grew the evolved into most other S-100 board types eventually putting together complete S-100 systems. Their S-100 boxes were arguably the most solid and reliable ever made. His innovative products played a large part in the success of the S-100. Bill played a major role in setting the specs for the S-100 bus IEEE-696 standard, being one of its authors.
CompuPro made a number of complete systems over the years. The CompuPro 8/16 came in various forms of capability and probably represented the best example of a S-100 boards cooperating with each other. It was one of the last commercial systems to come out for the S-100 bus. There are still some of these boxes around still working! At a late point in the companies history CompuPro started to call themselves Viasyn. Late boards were labeled with this name.Note Type
Object Specific InformationNote
This appears to be an early CompuPro chassis as the motherboard has the markings "1980" and "155E"
This item contains just the chassis, power supply and motherboard/backplane. All S-100 cards that may have been in this machine and are in the Ray E. Murray collection were stored separately.
This item was purchased from the estate of Ray E. Murray through his son-in-law Max Law as part of Mr. Murray's complete collection of computers, accessories, software and documentation.
(More details coming soon.)