> Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor

As soon as I saw the name Godbout, my mind immediately jumped to Pournelle, whom I mainly read as an early-teen in the mid-late 80's. Even at that late date, Pournelle referred back enough to his older S-100 machines that I got a sense of their importance, even if I didn't know of it first hand. (Come to think of it, the S-100 machines were around 10 years old or less at the time, so about as old as an original iPhone is today.)

Also, I can't mention Pournelle without thinking of this: http://www.panix.com/~clp/humor/computers/general/Jerry-Pour... :-)

I remember Pournelle was a big fan of S-100 based systems because you could upgrade them. His motto was something like "silicon is cheaper than iron," meaning that you could replace boards in an S-100 system rather than buying a whole new computer.