Episode 140 - Interview with Paul Terrell, The Byte Shop - Part 1

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Sponsors:

• 8-Bit Classics 

• Arcade Shopper  

Hello, and welcome to episode 140 of the Floppy Days Podcast, for June, 2024.  I am Randy Kindig, your guide to this journey through vintage computer goodness.

This month I’m bringing you another interview episode.  Paul Terrell is a name well-known in the annals of computer history; probably most famously for his kickstart of Apple Computer through the purchase of one of Steve Jobs’ and Steve Wozniak’s first batches of Apple I computers for his Byte Shop.  The Byte Shop was a very early computer store that was one of the few that existed in the world, at the time.  I’ve had an earlier introductory interview with Paul where numerous topics were covered in a more general manner.  I also talked with Paul about his time at Exidy working on the sorcerer computer.  In this interview, we focus primarily on The Byte Shop, how it got started, what it was like, and much more.  Through several conversations with Paul, the interview ran quite long, so this is part I of The Byte Shop discussion.  If you want to know what it was like to run a computer store in those early days, this is the interview for you!  Along the way, you’ll learn even more about just what the home and hobby computer scene was like in those days.

New Acquisitions/What I’ve Been Up To

• American Computer and Robotics Museum - https://acrmuseum.org/ 

• Vtech Pre-Computer Unlimited - https://vtech.fandom.com/wiki/PreComputer_Unlimited 

• USB-C Power Adapter for Atari 8-bit - https://mozzwald.com/product/atari-8-bit-usb-c-power-adapter/ 

• USB-C Power Adapter for Apple IIc - https://mozzwald.com/product/apple-iic-usb-c-power-delivery-adapter/ 

Upcoming Shows

• Show list I maintain for the remainder of the current year - https://floppydays.libsyn.com/current-year-vintage-computer-show-schedule) 

• KansasFest, the largest and longest running annual Apple II conference - July 16-21 (in-person), July 27-28 (virtual) - University of Illinois in Springfield, IL - https://www.kansasfest.org/ 

• Southern Fried Gaming Expo and VCF Southeast - July 19-21,  2024 - Atlanta, GA - https://gameatl.com/ 

• Nottingham Video Game Expo - July 20-21 - The Belgrave Rooms, Nottingham, U.K. - https://www.nottsvge.com/ 

• Fujiama - July 23-28 - Lengenfeld, Germany - http://atarixle.ddns.net/fuji/2024/  

• Vintage Computer Festival West - August 2-3 - Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA - https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-west/  

• Silly Venture SE (Summer Edition) - Aug. 15-18 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-se  

• VCF Midwest - September 7-8 - Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL - http://vcfmw.org/ 

• VCF Europe - September 7-8 - Munich, Germany - https://vcfe.org/E/ 

• Teletext 50 - Sep 21-22 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, UK - https://www.teletext50.com/ 

• Portland Retro Gaming Expo - September 27-29 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/ 

• Tandy Assembly - September 27-29 - Courtyard by Marriott Springfield - Springfield, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/ 

• AmiWest - October 25-27 - Sacramento, CA - https://amiwest.net/ 

• Chicago TI International World Faire - October 26 - Evanston Public Library (Falcon Room, 303), Evanston, IL - http://chicagotiug.sdf.org/faire/  

• Retro Computer Festival 2024 - November 9-10 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England - https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72253/Retro-Computer-Festival-2024-Saturday-9th-November/ 

• Silly Venture WE (Winter Edition) - Dec. 5-8 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-we  

Meet The Listeners

• Brian Cox's site FVResearch.com - https://www.fvresearch.com/ 

Transcription of Interview-only

Randy Kindig: All right. Today I'm with Paul Terrell. Paul, today we wanted to talk about the Byte Shop and, exactly what happened with that, how it got started, a lot of things about it. So maybe we could just kick it off by how did the idea of the Byte Shop come about and, how did that kind of get started?

Paul Terrell: Okay, yeah basically I had a rep company called Repco in Mountain View, California. I started Repco in 1975, the beginning of the year and January sort of frame. Uh, with Repco it's a manufacturer's rep representative sales representative in a geographic territory. And Boyd and I had our partnership company for Northern California, Northern Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.

Paul Terrell: And then there was also another territory, the electronic rep association divides the country up into about 26 different geographical areas and then people, can join the ERA and become members of the ERA. Reps in those territories and with the association they have contractual information and they provide contact information with different manufacturers and such.

Paul Terrell: With Repco we're selling electronic products, but mainly, different kind of instruments, multimeters from companies that manufactured that, and companies would use reps when they were just getting started out and they couldn't afford to have direct sales people and offices all over the country.

Paul Terrell: So they would hire a rep and typically pay about, oh, anywhere from 5 to 10 percent commission on sales that happened in that territory. And Boyd and I we're carrying power supply companies and instrument companies. One day I got a phone call from one of my customers at Stanford research facility in Palo Alto, California, and he was saying that he had just read about an Altair computer that used a 8080 Intel processor chip, and he was wondering why the products he was buying from me were costing so much.

Paul Terrell: And basically the Altair computer was on the cover of Popular Electronics, and so he went ahead and ordered one of these.  They were for sale, mail order, and so I told him that I personally didn't believe that it could be sold for $439, I believe was the mail order price for this and it was in kit form rather than an assembled and tested computer.

Paul Terrell: I told him that I thought that, basically that product was a paper tiger, and it would never really show up and that he should continue to buy the Intel processor cards from the company that we were representing, which was Prolog down in Monterey, California. And about a month later I got another phone call from this guy and he said “Hey, Paul”, he said, “if you're free for lunch, come on over because the paper tiger has arrived at Stanford Research and we're taking a look at it.”

Paul Terrell: I went over there and sure enough, there was a computer and it did have a true Intel 8080 microprocessor chip included in there. And quite honestly it had a very professional Optima rack mounted case up that was part of the kit product.And so they were going to have to assemble the unit themselves, but to the computer, it it looked very much like a Data General with panel contr