Commodore: A Company on the Edge
by Brian Bagnall · 13 Sep 2005 · 781pp · 226,928 words
I would do to earn some money was to build computer kits for the science lab or the computer lab,” he recalls. “At a local Byte Shop, I built these systems and got them working. There were a lot of people coming in who wanted computers but they weren’t interested in
Fire in the Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer
by Michael Swaine and Paul Freiberger · 19 Oct 2014 · 459pp · 140,010 words
really needed to get inside the thing and dismantle it. His friend liked his Altair as it was, intact. Millard phoned Paul Terrell, whose nearby Byte Shop was one of the few Altair dealerships in the country. Millard ordered some Altairs for dissection. Over the next few months, Killian would tear the
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late 1976, he was unaware that an actual microcomputer industry was in its infancy. So, he was surprised to find that a new store called Byte Shop had opened on a main street of sleepy, suburban San Rafael, selling computer kits. Rubinstein bought a kit, put the device together in a few
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an operating system, of which there were none as far as they knew, and maybe a high-level language. A chat with Peter Hollenbeck at Byte Shop in San Rafael, California, led them to Gary Kildall, CP/M, and Gordon Eubanks. After months of development on Eubanks’s BASIC and their own
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be done for love or for money, retailing is necessarily a commercial venture. Computer retailing quickly attracted individuals more aggressive than Heiser, including Paul Terrell. Byte Shop Paul Terrell’s friends warned him that retailing computers would never work. Some people, Terrell mused, also said it never snowed in Silicon Valley. Terrell
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recalled his friends’ warnings as he watched snow drifting down on December 8, 1975—the day he opened his Mountain View Altair dealership, Byte Shop, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Like all the other Altair dealers, Terrell soon ran headlong into the MITS exclusivity policy, except that Terrell chose
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from IMSAI and Proc Tech. The MITS edict, Terrell concluded, was not only pointless but, if he followed it, financially harmful as well. * * * Figure 51. Byte Shop The original Mountain View Byte Shop (Courtesy of Paul Terrell) It wasn’t long before David Bunnell, then MITS vice president of marketing, called to cancel
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Byte Shop’s Altair dealership. Terrell argued that MITS should regard Byte Shop as something like a stereo store that carried many different brands and could turn a profit for them all. Bunnell waffled. It
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, Terrell approached Roberts directly about his being dropped from the roster of MITS dealers. Roberts stood firm. Terrell was out. * * * Figure 52. Inside Byte Shop Paul Terrell opened Byte Shop in 1975 in Mountain View, CA. (Courtesy of Paul Terrell) At the time, Terrell was selling twice as many IMSAIs as Altairs, and he
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his and French’s orders. Check in hand, Terrell would ask, “You want cash on the barrelhead, boys?” It was hardware war. Terrell had opened Byte Shop in December 1975. By January, people who wanted to open their own stores were approaching him. He signed dealership agreements with them in which he
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would take a percentage of their profits in exchange for the name and business guidance. Other Byte Shops soon appeared in Santa Clara, San Jose, Palo Alto, and Portland. In March 1976, Terrell incorporated as Byte, Inc. Terrell was part of the hobbyist
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community. He named his store after the leading hobbyist magazine, and he insisted that Byte Shop managers in the Northern California area attend meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club. A single Homebrew meeting might have a half-dozen
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Byte Shop managers in attendance. “If I had a store manager that didn’t attend the club meetings, he wasn’t going to be my store manager
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to the stereo stores of a decade or two earlier, when clerks routinely had to explain woofers, tweeters, and watts of power to puzzled customers. Byte Shop’s cachet soared after the July 1976 issue of Business Week described the chain of stores and suggested that it offered significant opportunity to investors
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had negotiated a price for an 8080 chip below what IBM was paying. (IBM was not yet building a microcomputer.) By the time Terrell sold Byte Shop operation in November 1977, he had 74 stores operating in 15 states and Japan. He valued the chain at $4 million. * * * Figure 53. Stan Veit
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more.” Relief from the potential hazards of buying through mail order was one of the best selling points the new retailers could offer. While running Byte Shop, Terrell began marketing his own brand of computer. Called the Byte 8, it was a private-label product with a profit margin close to 50
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largest chain of computer stores. At the close of 1977, it had 24 stores; by June 1983, 458 ComputerLand stores were operating. ComputerLand outdistanced the Byte Shop chain, and its fiercely competitive practices helped bury the Data Domain chain in the Midwest. In the early 1980s, Faber could reasonably claim that, as
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be better. If Jobs and Wozniak really had something, Terrell figured they’d keep in touch with him. The next day, Jobs appeared, barefoot, at Byte Shop. “I’m keeping in touch,” he said. Terrell, impressed by his confidence and perseverance, ordered 50 Apple I computers. Visions of instant wealth flashed before
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able to suggest ways to better its design. Before he went to work for Apple, Espinosa spent a lot of time at Paul Terrell’s Byte Shop. He recalled that a “tall, scraggly looking guy would come in every day and say, ‘We got a new version of the BASIC!’” That was
The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal
by M. Mitchell Waldrop · 14 Apr 2001
Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia (motto: "Running Light without Over- byte"), which published its first issue in 1976. There were specialty stores like the Byte Shop and ComputerLand, the latter soon to be a nationwide chain. And increasingly there were young entrepreneurs who were beginning to imagine that consumers might want
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Differential Analyzer and, 25-26 Individual empowerment Idea of, 28-29 Wiener's Idea rejected by, 29-30 Buslcom, 339 "byte," 246-47 Byte, 433 Byte Shop, 433 C (language), 168,319,426 Califorma Network, 226 Cambndge ProJect, 315-17 Cambndge University, 100 Cape Cod System, 115 Card, Stuart, 346, 354, 363
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - 25th Anniversary Edition
by Steven Levy · 18 May 2010 · 598pp · 183,531 words
to computers for his personal use and become a hacker of the Third Generation. While still in high school, he landed a job at the Byte Shop in Hayward. He loved working at the computer shop. He’d do some of everything—repairs, sales, and programming for the store owner as well
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the high-level hacking that took place in universities. He dropped out for the freedom that personal computers would provide, and went back to the Byte Shop. An intense circle of pirates hung out at the shop. Some of them had even been interviewed in an article about software piracy in Esquire
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God Burnstein, Malcolm, Revolt in 2100 Burroughs computer, The Wizard and the Princess Byte (measurement), Every Man a God Byte magazine, Tiny BASIC, Tiny BASIC Byte Shop, Applefest C California Polytechnic, Pomona Campus, The Wizard and the Princess Call Computer service, Woz Cambridge urchins, The Tech Model Railroad Club Captain Crunch, Woz
Computer: A History of the Information Machine
by Martin Campbell-Kelly and Nathan Ensmenger · 29 Jul 2013 · 528pp · 146,459 words
vehicles for selling computers by mail order, in the tradition of hobby electronics. Mail order was soon supplanted, however, by computer stores such as the Byte Shop and ComputerLand, which initially had the ambiance of an electronics hobby shop: full of dusty, government-surplus hardware and electronic gadgets. Within two years, ComputerLand
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computer enthusiasts, he did recognize the latent market they represented. He therefore cajoled Wozniak into developing the Apple computer and marketing it, initially through the Byte Shop. The Apple was a very crude machine, consisting basically of a naked circuit board and lacking a case, a keyboard, a screen, or even a
Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days
by Jessica Livingston · 14 Aug 2008 · 468pp · 233,091 words
showed off his home-built computer, the Apple I, at Silicon Valley’s Homebrew Computer Club in 1976. After Jobs landed a contract with the Byte Shop, a local computer store, for 100 preassembled machines, Apple was launched on a rapid ascent. Woz soon followed with the machine that made the company
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didn’t work, we’d fix them and put them in a box. Eventually, Steve Steve Wozniak 45 would drive the boxes down to the Byte Shop in Mountain View or wherever and get paid, in cash. We had the parts on credit and we got paid in cash. That was the
The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America
by Margaret O'Mara · 8 Jul 2019
there were retailers, who’d popped up on the scene as distributors of Altair kits, and quickly morphed into far more. Paul Terrell started the Byte Shop in Mountain View at the end of 1975, disregarding the advice of friends who thought he’d never find customers. When sixteen people showed up
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one day for a seminar at the store on “Introduction to Computers,” Terrell realized that computer courses needed to be a regular feature at the Byte Shop. How-to classes translated into sales, which were so brisk that Terrell opened a second location four months later, and had sixty stores nationwide by
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seas of thought—alone.” The inaugural sales flyer was similarly loopy, with a typo in the first sentence.7 Jobs persuaded Paul Terrell at the Byte Shop to buy fifty units of the Apple I, which Terrell agreed to do under one condition: no kits. The machines needed to be fully assembled
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future; and because it needs them, it will have them.”26 CHAPTER 12 Risky Business As hundreds crowded into Homebrew meetings, long lines formed outside Byte Shops and Computer Faire booths, as subscriptions soared to Byte and tens of thousands of copies of 101 BASIC Computer Games flew off bookstore shelves, it
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market for its more expensive product, the company needed to appeal to the heart, not the head. Those curious buyers wandering into Computerworld and the Byte Shop needed to be convinced that Apples were not cheap playthings, but indispensable home appliances, well worth the sticker price. The start-up founded by two
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Bushnell, Nolan, 106, 108, 149, 267 Business Month, 275 BusinessWeek, 33, 70, 180, 186, 202–4, 340 Bylinsky, Gene, 104 Byte, 139, 140, 148, 186 Byte Shop, 140, 148 California Commission on Industrial Innovation, 213, 214, 219 Caltech, 29, 30, 208, 225 Campbell, Bill, 236, 364, 376, 379 Campbell, Tom, 331 Campbell
Troublemakers: Silicon Valley's Coming of Age
by Leslie Berlin · 7 Nov 2017 · 615pp · 168,775 words
they were calling the Apple I.IX Thus far they had sold 100 boards at $500 each to the Byte Shop, a tiny new store in a strip mall in Mountain View. The Byte Shop would add a keyboard and screen and resell the computer to customers, mostly young white guys whom one early
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in the garage in the fall of 1976, Apple was a profitable, albeit very small and very amateur, operation. The circuit boards sold to the Byte Shop for $500 each cost Apple about $220 to assemble.1 Before Markkula, however, Apple was a business by only the loosest definition. The family bedrooms
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Wozniak had come up with the $666.66 retail price for the Apple I by adding 30 percent to the $500 they were charging the Byte Shop and rounding so that the price would contain repeating digits—something that Wozniak enjoyed seeing.3 Markkula’s note card commitment had been to help
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cost.6 Jobs was ferociously interested in launching a business, but in the fall of 1976, that meant trying to deliver the boards that the Byte Shop had ordered and then using that income to buy supplies to build more boards. Twenty-one years old and with fifteen months’ experience in the
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to use. He looks to you for professional advice.”66 Across the country there were nearly four hundred dedicated computer stores, with names such as Byte Shop, Micro Store, Computer Mart, and Digital Deli. Another four hundred stores, ranging from stereo and TV repair shops to small department stores, included among their
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dirty tricks and greed.” Wayne feared the same fate for Apple—not because he distrusted Jobs and Wozniak but because he had doubts about the Byte Shop. XIII. Markkula bought a condominium at Northstar ski resort in Lake Tahoe from a Louisiana oilman who also invited him to take a quarter-interest
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his beloved 1967 Corvette Stingray. Courtesy: Benj Edwards Atari founders Ted Dabney and Nolan Bushnell with Larry Emmons and Al Alcorn. Courtesy: Corey Cohen The Byte Shop in Mountain View, the first store to carry an Apple computer, 1976. Courtesy: Stanford News Service Niels Reimers at the Stanford Office of Technology Licensing
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, 182–85, 280–81, 326, 354–55 business startups, see start-up companies BusinessWeek, 185, 257, 317, 321, 322 Byers, Brook, 192n, 195, 258, 262 Byte Shop, 207, 228–29, 234, 247 calculators, 48, 86, 160, 183, 213, 216, 225 California, University of: at Berkeley, 11, 15, 32–36, 56–57, 96
Steve Jobs
by Walter Isaacson · 23 Oct 2011 · 915pp · 232,883 words
important person stayed behind to hear more. His name was Paul Terrell, and in 1975 he had opened a computer store, which he dubbed the Byte Shop, on Camino Real in Menlo Park. Now, a year later, he had three stores and visions of building a national chain. Jobs was thrilled to
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and Woz his card. “Keep in touch,” he said. “I’m keeping in touch,” Jobs announced the next day when he walked barefoot into the Byte Shop. He made the sale. Terrell agreed to order fifty computers. But there was a condition: He didn’t want just $50 printed circuit boards, for
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an emergency call (Jobs had been persistent). The Cramer manager told him that two scruffy kids had just walked in waving an order from the Byte Shop. Was it real? Terrell confirmed that it was, and the store agreed to front Jobs the parts on thirty-day credit. Garage Band The Jobs
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house in Los Altos became the assembly point for the fifty Apple I boards that had to be delivered to the Byte Shop within thirty days, when the payment for the parts would come due. All available hands were enlisted: Jobs and Wozniak, plus Daniel Kottke, his ex
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only eat leaves picked by virgins in the moonlight.’” After a dozen assembled boards had been approved by Wozniak, Jobs drove them over to the Byte Shop. Terrell was a bit taken aback. There was no power supply, case, monitor, or keyboard. He had expected something more finished. But Jobs stared him
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build the boards more cheaply than we thought, because I got a good deal on parts,” Jobs recalled. “So the fifty we sold to the Byte Shop almost paid for all the material we needed to make a hundred boards.” Now they could make a real profit by selling the remaining fifty
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Woz would drive up and down Camino Real trying to get the electronics stores to sell it. In addition to the fifty sold by the Byte Shop and almost fifty sold to friends, they were building another hundred for retail outlets. Not surprisingly, they had contradictory impulses: Wozniak wanted to sell them
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New Age An Integrated Package As Jobs walked the floor of the Personal Computer Festival, he came to the realization that Paul Terrell of the Byte Shop had been right: Personal computers should come in a complete package. The next Apple, he decided, needed to have a great case and a built
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. There was one part of the process he didn’t control: the experience of buying an Apple product in a store. The days of the Byte Shop were over. Industry sales were shifting from local computer specialty shops to megachains and big box stores, where most clerks had neither the knowledge nor
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–53, 54–55, 72, 75, 217 BusinessWeek, 141, 160, 166, 225, 236, 311, 320, 374, 406 Buyer, Lise, 463–64 Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 224 Byte Shop, 66–67, 68, 71, 368 Calder, Alexander, 151, 183 Calhoun, Greg, 5, 39, 51, 86–87, 88 California Motor Vehicle Department, 24 Callas, Maria, 330
Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom)
by Adam Fisher · 9 Jul 2018 · 611pp · 188,732 words
with no money and we built the computers in ten days and sold them for cash at the Byte Shop. Trip Hawkins: The Byte Shop was the first of the chain computer stores. In the Byte Shop basically you’ve got a whole bunch of card tables set up that had a bunch of circuit boards
The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
by Walter Isaacson · 6 Oct 2014 · 720pp · 197,129 words
The Big Score
by Michael S. Malone · 20 Jul 2021
Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart Into a Visionary Leader
by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli · 24 Mar 2015 · 464pp · 155,696 words
So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love
by Cal Newport · 17 Sep 2012 · 197pp · 60,477 words