Vintage Computers - The "Bugs" are 40 years old !

8080 Bugbook 

Bugbooks

Integrated Circuit looks like a Bug 

When Bugbooks 1 & 2 were written a logo was needed for the books and other projects. The books were written to teach basic digital electronics using small Scale Integrated Circuits.  I named the books bugbooks because the small digital integrated circuit looked like a bug with its legs. I had made several attempts at a logo however they were not very inspiring. The best I can remember Professor Peter Rony ask students to submit their ideas for a logo and  this one was selected.  I have been very pleased with this logo and it has made many millions of impressions during the past 40 years. The 'Bugs' logo has been great as a branding image for the work of my colleagues and myself.

Here are a few examples of the Bugs use during the past 40 years.
Enlarge the photo's by clicking on them and then even more by a right click and select "View image' you can easily read the text.

Code card 1978 

John Titus designed this very useful octal code card for 8080 microprocessor machine code programming in 1978.

Japanese translation
 of Bugbook 2

Japanese translation of Bugbook 2 in 1976. The Bugs logo is prominent on the front cover. Several of the Bugbooks were included in these translations.

Italian Bugbooks

An advertising button used by our Italian representative.  Our group had a large presence in Italy during the late 70's and early 80's. About 20 of our Bugbooks were translated into Italian,  we taught 15 or so microcomputer instrumentation seminars, and a lot of the MMD-1 training computers were sold.

Fist Fighter code fixer 

Our group was called "The Blackburg Group" and the Bugbooks was one of the group's many ideas and projects. Here is a product Dr. John Titus designed for the amateur radio market. This was called the fist fighter and it made perfect code out of code sent manually with a telegraph key. A very clever idea but it was not a popular product.  It did use the 'Bugs Logo' as you can see in an expanded photo.



More information about the name and use of the 'Bugs' & 'Bugbooks'

The reason I call our museum  "The Bugbook Historical Microcomputer Museum"  is because of the "Bugbooks"

Bugs Logo 

. About 1974 I was part of a team that produced these books. The first two Bugbooks were written and published by Professor Rony and I.  I named the books bugbooks because the small digital integrated circuit looked like a bug with its legs.  Professor Rony typed the manuscripts and we self published the first few printings of the "Bugbooks" . www.bugbookcomputermuseum.com  These books were the start of a book series called "The Blacksburg Continuing Education Series" .  The books covered various topics of digital electronics, computers and software. Dr. John Titus and Dr. Chris Titus joined the group and became important members of our team.  During the period 1974 to 1984 about 75 books were published with a circulation of over 1 million copies.  Our team hired 31 other authors to help write books in the series. In addition to the books our team designed several computers and other teaching / engineering aids that were sold world wide. John Titus was the computer designer and I designed the digital engineering  / teaching hardware aids.  Many engineers, technicians and  electronic hobbyist of the late 70's and 80s used  these books and hardware.  All the books and hardware are on display in our museum. A reoccurring comment from  folks visiting the museum is - I  learned digital electronics from the "Bugbooks". The Bugbook story involves many relationships, interesting events and eclectic people.  It is my  intent to get the details of these adventures in writing -- soon I hope.

David Larsen 

It has been an interesting 40 years.  I am still getting calls about the Bugbooks and other computer and electronic things. Just tonight a fellow here in Floyd called and was in need of a 10 ohm resistor. He could not find a shop in the area that sold these parts.  I was able to find one in my old junk pile and will deliver it to him tomorrow.  He needed it for his computer power supply - Still doing computer projects.
WOW just as I posted this I received an email from Earles L. McCaul the author of   TRS-80 ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE MADE SIMPLE.  This is one of the books in our "Blacksburg" series of books from 1981.

  ^{"by David Larsen"  KK4WW Computer Collector Historian}   
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Amateur Radio Pioneer 'Wayne S. Green' 91,died 'W2NSD SK' September 13th - First Publisher of '73' & 'Byte' Magazines.

Wayne Green

Bugboooks

Wayne Green died September 13th 2013, he was 91 and lived a long an interesting eclectic life. Wayne  (W2NSD ) was a champion of early use of single sideband (SSB), repeater technology which he said was the idea for cell telephones and more. I remember one story about him convincing the military by flying around the world in a military plane  transmitting with SSB with high ranking officers that SSB was the wave of the future . Wayne will be remembered by Amateur Radio operator for many of his pioneer ideas in radio technology and publishing a variety of publications. His most visible work was the publication of 73 magazine for radio hams.  His editorials in 73 magazine were usually controversial creating a following that thought he was a bit crazy or others that thought he was on the money for many of his ideas and theories.

Byte Magazine

Wayne joined the microcomputer revolution very early and suggested  folks could make real money in this new field. Wayne started several businesses in the computer field and early on had some success selling software to microcomputer users. He better known for his computer magazines starting with Byte Magazine  September 1975. His wife at the time hijacked the magazine from him in the first few months and this created  dozens of intriguing stories.  He immediately started Kilobyte only to be sued by his former wife to not use the word Byte and he had to change the name to Kilobaud. He started and published many more magazines about computers and ham radio.

Wayne was always interesting to talk with and at one time he suggested he accompany my FAIRS group on a visit to the Soviet Union - He was sure he could be a help them do better at amateur radio.

Here is a post by former Wayne Green employee Robert Mitchell - it tells a lot about Wayne Green.

I liked Wayne and he was truly a pioneer and deserves a lot of credit for his computer and amateur radio contributions.  Many folks would do well to use some of the many useful ideas he presented in his magazines and lately his blog postings.

David Larsen

Good by Wayne you made us all think more about the life we live and how we could do better.

   ^{"By David Larsen" KK4WW Computer Collector Historian}