# "Halt and Catch Fire"... Anyone planning on watching?



## Peter000 (Apr 15, 2002)

This looks interesting. It's about a computer start-up at the beginnings of the PC boom.

I can't get a sense of if it's supposed to be a real company or fictionalized history though.


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## vertigo235 (Oct 27, 2000)

never heard of it, sure I'll watch, why not


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

I'm definitely planning to watch. I read a little about it and I'm pretty sure it's about a fictional company. Takes place in Texas, IIRC.


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## redrouteone (Jun 16, 2001)

From the previews it sounds like the idea is loosely based on Compaq.


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

I believe it's based on the company that reverse-engineered the original IBM PC which opened the flood gates for IBM competitors. AMC has been advertising this show for months. I read about it a while back on one of my TV program sites, probably the Futon Critic.

And yes, I plan on watching it.


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

redrouteone said:


> From the previews it sounds like the idea is loosely based on Compaq.


Yeah, they are definitely borrowing some elements from the Compaq story.

Looks like it has some possibilities.


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## smak (Feb 11, 2000)

Looks good. Hope the ?? title doesn't cause people to skip it.

-smak-


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## vertigo235 (Oct 27, 2000)

This show sounds like what I thought Silicon Valley was going to be about


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

The title is presumably based on this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire

(I like the show (and place!) Silicon Valley.. it's very entertaining.)


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## Peter000 (Apr 15, 2002)

mattack said:


> The title is presumably based on this:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire


Thanks! That was interesting.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

AMC has put the premiere episode online and it's available to view for the next 13 days:

http://www.amctv.com/full-episodes/halt-and-catch-fire/3571290828001/i-o-sneak-preview


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## Malcontent (Sep 5, 2004)

The premiere episode is also available via magical means for those that wish to download the episode to watch at their convenience.


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## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

I saw the preview for this while watching Turn. I plan to watch this. I thought initially it was about Dell, since it takes place in Texas, but perhaps, Compaq.


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## AeneaGames (May 2, 2009)

Steveknj said:


> I saw the preview for this while watching Turn. I plan to watch this. I thought initially it was about Dell, since it takes place in Texas, but perhaps, Compaq.


I didn't know which company was the first to build an IBM PC compatible, so I searched for it and it turned out to be Columbia Data Products.

See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Data_Products


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## scandia101 (Oct 20, 2007)

Steveknj said:


> I saw the preview for this while watching Turn.


That must be where I saw it. I set up an ARWL right away. I figure it's worth trying.


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## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

AeneaGames said:


> I didn't know which company was the first to build an IBM PC compatible, so I searched for it and it turned out to be Columbia Data Products.
> 
> See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Data_Products


Wow. I had forgotten about the Columbia clones. I started programming pcs on the IBM PC with DOS 1.1. I worked with the early Compaq clones with their squishy keyboards too.


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## milo99 (Oct 14, 2002)

yes, planning on watching. i read some preview somewhere that confirmed the company is fictional, but loosely based on generic companies that did this.


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## AeneaGames (May 2, 2009)

cheesesteak said:


> Wow. I had forgotten about the Columbia clones. I started programming pcs on the IBM PC with DOS 1.1. I worked with the early Compaq clones with their squishy keyboards too.


Honestly, I had never heard of them!


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## wedgecon (Dec 28, 2002)

AeneaGames said:


> Honestly, I had never heard of them!


Right out of the gate there was a huge amount of competition in the pc clone business and CDP kind of flamed out.


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## toddvj (Apr 22, 2004)

This thread answers the question I have been wondering - whether it is at least loosely based on a real company.

And yes, I'll be watching.


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## scandia101 (Oct 20, 2007)

It was better than I expected and I'm looking forward to seeing more.


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## Bob Coxner (Dec 1, 2004)

cheesesteak said:


> Wow. I had forgotten about the Columbia clones. I started programming pcs on the IBM PC with DOS 1.1. I worked with the early Compaq clones with their squishy keyboards too.


You mean the Compaq "portables" that weighed 28 pounds and cost $3000? With the 9" green screen monitor.

Ah, memories.

Anyone else here use the PC Jr? The biggest PC flop in IBM history.


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

Bob Coxner said:


> You mean the Compaq "portables" that weighed 28 pounds and cost $3000? With the 9" green screen monitor. Ah, memories. Anyone else here use the PC Jr? The biggest PC flop in IBM history.


I still have a PCjr someplace, a gift from my IBM uncle.


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## Bob Coxner (Dec 1, 2004)

kaszeta said:


> I still have a PCjr someplace, a gift from my IBM uncle.


Your uncle must really hate you.


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## brianric (Aug 29, 2002)

Bob Coxner said:


> Anyone else here use the PC Jr? The biggest PC flop in IBM history.


Yep, replaced my TI 99/4A.


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## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Been seeing the commercials for this while watching Mad Men. Setting up the Season Pass night now.


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## ellinj (Feb 26, 2002)

Watched the first episode online. Good enough to grab a season pass.


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## brianric (Aug 29, 2002)

ellinj said:


> Watched the first episode online. Good enough to grab a season pass.


Ditto.


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## Demandred (Mar 6, 2001)

Bob Coxner said:


> You mean the Compaq "portables" that weighed 28 pounds and cost $3000? With the 9" green screen monitor.


I worked at Compaq in the late 90s and we still had to support those things. We only got calls on them once a month or so though. We had a stash of system software on 5.25" floppy that we could send out! but no way to get more. I quit working in that department before we ran out.


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## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

Demandred said:


> I worked at Compaq in the late 90s and we still had to support those things. We only got calls on them once a month or so though. We had a stash of system software on 5.25" floppy that we could send out! but no way to get more. I quit working in that department before we ran out.


I briefly had one my high school was dumping.

Turns out it had a boot sector virus and I couldn't find an anti-virus program at the time that was small enough to fit on a floppy it could read. (knew it had the virus because every floppy you put in it came back infected)

Still played with it a little, but the video was too proprietary to do anything with, and the spare motherboard I had wouldn't work with that old video, so my plans to make it a more powerful luggable got dropped and eventually the luggable went off to electronic recycling.


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## DeDondeEs (Feb 20, 2004)

I watched the "sneak preview" last night. One observation on the time-line:



Spoiler



How are they going to stretch them making an IBM clone out to a whole season or show? They already reverse engineered it and are dealing with IBM legal?


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## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

Bob Coxner said:


> You mean the Compaq "portables" that weighed 28 pounds and cost $3000? With the 9" green screen monitor.
> 
> Ah, memories.
> 
> Anyone else here use the PC Jr? The biggest PC flop in IBM history.


My FIL had one of those and he gave it to me. The thing took forever to boot up. I always felt like I was carrying the codes to the nuclear arsenal when carrying that thing around.


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## BeanMeScot (Apr 17, 2002)

Part of the show was filmed in the building where I work. They changed the atrium to be a restaurant of a Vegas hotel for CES in the 80's.


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## scandia101 (Oct 20, 2007)

DeDondeEs said:


> I watched the "sneak preview" last night. One observation on the time-line:
> 
> 
> 
> ...





Spoiler



The show is about the "war" not just the event that started the war


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## vman41 (Jun 18, 2002)

I knew an intense guy like MacMillian in the mid 1980s. I met him when I worked a summer at General Dynamics. A couple years later offered me a job at a company he was starting, but I turned him down. I think that's the zeitgeist the show's trying to capture.

BTW, binary 1101 is a hexadecimal 'D', not 'B'. He could have been reading it little-endian, but then 1110 would have been '7' instead of 'E'.


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## markymark_ctown (Oct 11, 2004)

Anyone watch yet? I have it tivo'd, but caught a lukewarm review of it yesterday in the paper:



> _Chalk up much of this to the sheer amount of character introduction, exposition and set-up forced into the uneven series opener. Due to faulty programming, it's a mixed bag of delights and drawbacks.
> 
> The performances are exceptional. The dialogue is ham-fisted and stilted. The dark, grim tone is intriguing. The pace is choppy.
> 
> Will "Halt and Catch Fire" find itself and an audience once all this establishing stuff is out of the way? Will it gives us less programmed byte talk and more dramatic bite?_


full review here:

http://www.cleveland.com/tv-blog/in..._catch_fire_gets_off_to_a_lukewarm_start.html


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## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

I watched.

It seems show is set in Dallas, but I saw the capitol building in an opening scene. Was the blonde girl a student in Austin? Did they drive all the way from Dallas to Austin to pick her up and hire her to keep IBM at bay?


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## markymark_ctown (Oct 11, 2004)

Well, how was it smeek? Don't reverse smeek...


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

AMC doing repeat cable showings 10PM tonight


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

jsmeeker said:


> I watched. It seems show is set in Dallas, but I saw the capitol building in an opening scene. Was the blonde girl a student in Austin? Did they drive all the way from Dallas to Austin to pick her up and hire her to keep IBM at bay?


I think that's exactly what happened. The opening scene was in Austin, but the rest of the episode was in Dallas.

I enjoyed it. Looking forward to seeing how they legitimize what Joe and Gordon did.


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## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

DevdogAZ said:


> I enjoyed it. Looking forward to seeing how they legitimize what Joe and Gordon did.


Being very familiar with the 'real' story made that portion of the episode hard to watch without laughing... But I'm willing to let it slide as they need to get "going" after the pilot. (Same problem I had with the pilot episode of 'Silicon Valley' - the stuff they created would belong 100% to their employer, but hey, you gotta get the show moving)

They'll legitimize it by actually DOING the reverse engineering. What was shown was them just COPYING the IBM BIOS - in a manner that was completely unnecessary and horribly complicated.

If you just wanted to copy the BIOS - you could have done that easily from within MS-DOS - using the "Debug" command worst case. No hunting around with a probe and a soldering iron for the "correct chip that contains the BIOS" - it's the one with the sticker on it that says "Copyright 1979-1981 IBM Corp." 

You certainly didn't need to extract each byte by hand using LEDs, paper and pencil. And "running" the extracted code on a TRS-80 III wouldn't have worked, either... 

What they'll hopefully show going forward is the newly hired Cameron Howe and a team crafting a work-alike version of the IBM BIOS from scratch using nothing but descriptions of the functionality. Truly reverse-engineered. The issue faced is one of Copyright - you can't copy the work. But you can make something that behaves the same way. Now, that doesn't solve any patent issues - but the number of "software patents" in those days probably wasn't the big concern - simple copyright was.

Jeff


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## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

markymark_ctown said:


> Well, how was it smeek? Don't reverse smeek...


I thought it was OK. The sales engineer sure is moody. And what was up with the lead character (the hot shot ex-IBM sales guy) doing in his home? Hitting baseballs at his window? WTF?

$40k to start as a newbies engineer in 1980 is some pretty good scratch.

I know nothing of how exactly the IBM PC was cloned. I just know that clones emerged. I'm not that hard core about this sort of thing, so I will allow the show a fair amount of artistic license with the technical stuff.


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## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

jsmeeker said:


> I know nothing of how exactly the IBM PC was cloned. I just know that clones emerged. I'm not that hard core about this sort of thing, so I will allow the show a fair amount of artistic license with the technical stuff.


Yeah, I had to "get over it" after watching - what bothered me more is folks reviewing the episode praising the technical accuracy.

Especially when they called what they did in the garage "reverse engineering". Now, the individual techniques they showed - probing pins, extracting ROM contents, etc. are all valid reverse engineering skills - they just don't apply to the 'cloning' of the BIOS... Especially since they even talk about those points in the dialog - that IBM used off-the-shelf parts and so forth. You don't need to probe pins to figure out how it works - call the manufacturer and get the datasheets and some free samples!

Now perhaps we'll see some of the 'real' work (just in summary, though, watching real engineering work would NOT make for good TV!). And I'm hoping they will show the sales guys demonstrating compatibility by running Flight Simulator! But I'll bet they call it a Microsoft product, not SubLOGIC...  (yeah, yeah - it will make more sense for the modern audience)


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## Gerryex (Apr 24, 2004)

jautor said:


> You certainly didn't need to extract each byte by hand using LEDs, paper and pencil. And "running" the extracted code on a TRS-80 III wouldn't have worked, either...


Also, you wouldn't use an oscilloscope to measure the pins on an IC when looking for +5 or 0 volts. Additionally the scope was displaying a sine wave when they were calling out either +5 or 0 volts. However, at least when they said +5 volts the sine wave was at the upper part of the scope while at 0 volts it was at the lower part. Had a chuckle about all of that!

Gerry


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

Gawd as a computer EE you guys are discouraging me from watching


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## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

if you want it to be a technically accurate documentary on how the pc clone industry started, you probably should avoid it.


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## vman41 (Jun 18, 2002)

The Z80 machine was used to disassemble the BIOS ROM to produce the print out, it didn't have to run it. The sine wave on the oscilliscope had a small amplitiude relative to the 5 volts they were measuring and could have been noise.


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## pdhenry (Feb 28, 2005)

My older brother, a computer engineer, was posting some of the same critiques on FB as you guys. I felt like telling him the program wasn't intended for him.


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## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

vman41 said:


> The Z80 machine was used to disassemble the BIOS ROM to produce the print out, it didn't have to run it.


They ran it: "Hey, we got a prompt, that's a good sign".

Now, if two guys read 64K LED hex dumps, transcribed it verbally to paper and then typed in, all without any errors at least in the boot code to actually boot an OS, that would be impressive!

But they really should have used any machine with a ROM programmer to just read the contents of the BIOS directly. They would have gotten themselves "dirty" a heck of a lot faster and still made it out in time for pizza and beer! 

Jeff


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## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

philw1776 said:


> Gawd as a computer EE you guys are discouraging me from watching


It is just the first episode, and I had the same trouble with Silicon Valley's pilot - but that show is hysterical. I'll give them the legal/technical pass on the first episode - especially since they've set up for a real "clean room" reverse engineering plot to go from here.

And willing to forgive the army of IBM lawyers showing up already - get that scene out of the way...

I am sad, though, that we probably won't see them sketching out the industrial design for their PC on a House of Pies placemat...


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## rloper (Mar 25, 2002)

Watching HCF now...definitely not the most accurate story in reverse-engineering the IBM BIOS. Fun to see the antique hardware and sets though.


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## markymark_ctown (Oct 11, 2004)

Caught it last night. Liked it. As with most shows, don't get caught up in the technical inaccuracies and enjoy the story.

This is the golden age of 80s shows...The Americans...HCF.


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## betts4 (Dec 27, 2005)

Recorded and on my TiVo to watch.


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## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

jautor said:


> Yeah, I had to "get over it" after watching - what bothered me more is folks reviewing the episode praising the technical accuracy.


Are we talking about reviews by technical people or TV critics? I'd wonder how TV critics would know about the technical accuracy.

Remember, they have to keep this interesting for us viewers who are not as technical as someone like you and make it somewhat accurate. I understood what they were trying to do without knowing much of the technical details around it. It seemed plausible. But I'm no engineer. I think that's enough to tell the story. But I KNEW that folks here who are intimate with the details would find reason to rip it apart.

Overall I liked it. It had a definite Mad Men vibe to it. It wasn't great, but definitely held my interest. I do wonder how they came up with the legal scheme to proceed and how it would stand up in court.


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## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

pdhenry said:


> My older brother, a computer engineer, was posting some of the same critiques on FB as you guys. I felt like telling him the program wasn't intended for him.


Yes and no. If you're not really any type of "computer person" and you saw that this show is about the beginning of cloning the original PC, you're probably saying "huh"? Thirty years down the road, only those of us who were interested at the time even know that it happened. So the story is going to interest first those who are familiar with it happening....but how do you make the topic interesting to the layman? This is a difficult topic to do that with.


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## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

markymark_ctown said:


> Caught it last night. Liked it. As with most shows, don't get caught up in the technical inaccuracies and enjoy the story.
> 
> This is the golden age of 80s shows...The Americans...HCF.


Also The Goldbergs


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## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

Steveknj said:


> Are we talking about reviews by technical people or TV critics? I'd wonder how TV critics would know about the technical accuracy.


Oh, "technical" folks from the tech-blogs. Yeah, certainly wouldn't expect non-tech critics to understand or care about the distinction. On screen, it "looked good"...



> Remember, they have to keep this interesting for us viewers who are not as technical as someone like you and make it somewhat accurate. I understood what they were trying to do without knowing much of the technical details around it. It seemed plausible. But I'm no engineer. I think that's enough to tell the story. But I KNEW that folks here who are intimate with the details would find reason to rip it apart.


Yeah, like I said, I'm willing to give them a pass to get the story started...

The engineer (having previously designed a computer) would have known exactly how to find and make a copy of the IBM BIOS in a matter of minutes. But the writers needed to explain to the viewers WHY that would bring the army of lawyers for copyright infringement. Which obviously a modern audience can appreciate (certainly more than the homebrew computer crowd of the day did). So the wrote the task (copying the BIOS) as a significant effort, so they could have the payoff of "You idiot, we're going to get sued! We have to start from SCRATCH!".



> Overall I liked it. It had a definite Mad Men vibe to it. It wasn't great, but definitely held my interest. I do wonder how they came up with the legal scheme to proceed and how it would stand up in court.


They'll create their own work-alike version of the software (BIOS), and while we'll probably see more IBM lawyers, if they do it correctly, it would stand up in court (and in reality - it didn't come to that).

As for the show, the history here is a very cool story - and I applaud them for attempting to bring it to the mainstream.

Jeff


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## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

tlc said:


> I'm not sure the company history portion is that accurate either. What company is "Cardiff Electric" supposed to represent?
> 
> Compaq made the first 100% compatible clone. But that was started by 3 guys who left TI and then formed Compaq just to do that. (And I can't find any reference to them attempting it at TI first.) And TI made some (non IBM PC compatible) computers before that, but it doesn't sound like Cardiff is in that business. So Cardiff doesn't sound like a match for either and the whole sales-guy-forcing-people's-hands story is probably completely made up.
> 
> Is it all fiction or have I missed another clone/company?


Fiction... I expected the two guys would leave Cardiff to do their PC on their own, heading to Austin to set up shop. But looks like we're going to see them do it within Cardiff. Which means unfortunately we won't get a scene with the founders discussing whether they should start a PC company or a Mexican restaurant...


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## tlc (May 30, 2002)

Ah! You've already replied. I deleted my post because I started to doubt my assumptions: Wikipedia claims Columbia Data Products was the first clone (not 100%). Of course there were several companies trying to do the same, resulting in various levels of compatibility. So maybe we're not watching the winner.

I'm OK with fiction, but it seems like people who watch will take it for history. Fortunately not too many people watch AMC. Anyway, if the sales-guy-forcing-people's-hands story has any historical relationship, I'd like to know. It seems like somebody said: We need a Jobs-type, a maverick with a vision.


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## rloper (Mar 25, 2002)

I think Cardiff is supposed to represent Columbia Data Products...the first company to do a "clean-room" BIOS reverse engineering.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Data_Products

And I was impressed on how HCF explained how the clean-room was supposed to work.

I was NOT impressed with all of the rigamarole they did to read the original BIOS chip contents. It's not like a) a BIOS PROM isn't easy to spot on an old motherboard and b) PROM readers were all over the place at that time. *Manually* reading 64K of machine code straight off of LED lights on a bread board *looked* cool but was completely implausible.


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## Gerryex (Apr 24, 2004)

vman41 said:


> The sine wave on the oscilliscope had a small amplitiude relative to the 5 volts they were measuring and could have been noise.


Actually, if you look at where the sine wave was when they called out +5 volts vs. where it was when they called out 0 volts, the amplitude of the sine wave was about 1 volt. That's a lot of noise for a 5 volt signal!!!

But I'm just nit picking. Overall I liked it and really didn't expect them to represent all the technical details correctly.

Gerry


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## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

If they simply avoid showing two people frantically typing on the same keyboard they'll be doing much better than average TV!


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## billboard_NE (May 18, 2005)

Gerryex said:


> Overall I liked it and really didn't expect them to represent all the technical details correctly.
> 
> Gerry


This is how I feel. All shows have errors, just watch and enjoy.


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## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

Making it look like it is hard and tedious to copy the BIOS helps the story. It does this in a few ways. For one, it helps establish the difficulty of overall task of cloning a PC and taking on IBM. It also helps to bolster the character of the sales engineer. You need to show he is hot sh*t and knows that he is doing. Prior to that point, it seemed like the guy was just phoning it in.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

jsmeeker said:


> Making it look like it is hard and tedious to copy the BIOS helps the story. It does this in a few ways. For one, it helps establish the difficulty of overall task of cloning a PC and taking on IBM. It also helps to bolster the character of the sales engineer. You need to show he is hot sh*t and knows that he is doing. *Prior to that point, it seemed like the guy was just phoning it in.*


Prior to that point, he was phoning it in. It was clear he was in a massive funk due to depression. He'd failed in the area he was passionate about (building a computer called Symphonic) and now was stuck as a nobody at a company that was boring and old fashioned and wouldn't know innovation or take a risk if it bit them on the ass. And then at home, you see his kids bring their broken electronics to mom to fix, so basically, he's become a complete nobody at work and at home. And even when presented with an opportunity to do exactly what he wants to do, he almost pissed it away because he's too scared of losing his family, going deeper into debt, etc.


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## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

The only thing that bothered me about the first episode was that the director obviously thought it would help ratings if they put a sex scene towards the beginning of the episode.

I would have bought just about anything they did to portray the cloning process short of having a guy with a pointy hat tossing eye of newt and chicken entrails into a boiling cauldron.


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## markymark_ctown (Oct 11, 2004)

Yes, that scene was cringe worthy. I hope they don't pair those two as a couple going forward.


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## Johncv (Jun 11, 2002)

I like this show regardless of it technical flaws. Unlike Gang Related which I deleted the season pass less than 30 min into the show because I could not understand one word anyone was saying.


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## betts4 (Dec 27, 2005)

Steveknj said:


> Yes and no. If you're not really any type of "computer person" and you saw that this show is about the beginning of cloning the original PC, you're probably saying "huh"? Thirty years down the road, only those of us who were interested at the time even know that it happened. So the story is going to interest first those who are familiar with it happening....but how do you make the topic interesting to the layman? This is a difficult topic to do that with.


I watched last night and enjoyed it. Not a computer engineer or anything - so actually the way they portrayed stuff was interesting, not so much how 100% accurate it was, because, well, I wouldn't know.

I liked that his wife was in T.I. and she took the speak and say apart to repair it. I really liked the idea behind a frustrated genius stuck in a low job and finding a way to finally make his 'dream'.

The one lead guy reminded me of the movie Glengarry Glen Ross - "A-B-C. A-Always, B-Be, C-Closing. Always be closing, always be closing."


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

I liked the show, but the technical accuracies are anything but realistic. Looking at voltage levels on an o-scope should give you a straight line, not a sine wave. As for the voltage level indicated, it all depends on what scale you set the scope to (e.g., 5V/div, 1V/div, etc.). 

Using a breadboard with LEDs to read 64K of hex addresses is about the dumbest thing I've ever seen. The number of errors induced using this method would invalidate whatever they thought they were trying to copy. I couldn't understand why they wrote down the numbers on a pad of paper and then later produced a computer printout of the data dump. This would have required that they key in the addresses manually to another PC or word processor, so why go through the process of writing it down in the first place? I thought these guys were supposed to be geniuses.

The gratuitus sex scene at the beginning was enough to drive my wife out of the room.

Other than that, I enjoyed the show as I found it to be entertaining, but most definitely fiction.


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## Bob Coxner (Dec 1, 2004)

Setting aside any tech errors, I really enjoyed it. Even the opening credits on the green monitor brought back memories.


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## Mikeyis4dcats (Oct 2, 2003)

mr.unnatural said:


> I liked the show, but the technical accuracies are anything but realistic. Looking at voltage levels on an o-scope should give you a straight line, not a sine wave. As for the voltage level indicated, it all depends on what scale you set the scope to (e.g., 5V/div, 1V/div, etc.).
> 
> Using a breadboard with LEDs to read 64K of hex addresses is about the dumbest thing I've ever seen. The number of errors induced using this method would invalidate whatever they thought they were trying to copy. I couldn't understand why they wrote down the numbers on a pad of paper and then later produced a computer printout of the data dump. This would have required that they key in the addresses manually to another PC or word processor, so why go through the process of writing it down in the first place? I thought these guys were supposed to be geniuses.
> 
> ...


a straight line on an o-scope isn't very visually interesting. I understand why they made the choice.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

mr.unnatural said:


> I liked the show, but the technical accuracies are anything but realistic. Looking at voltage levels on an o-scope should give you a straight line, not a sine wave. As for the voltage level indicated, it all depends on what scale you set the scope to (e.g., 5V/div, 1V/div, etc.).
> 
> Using a breadboard with LEDs to read 64K of hex addresses is about the dumbest thing I've ever seen. <snip><snip><snip>


The universe of people who care or know is limited. I'm fairly computer literate, enough to know the phrase "reverse engineering", but couldn't tell you anything about sine waves. It was fun to watch, more so than I would have thought. The reviews weren't flattering, mostly "meh", but I enjoyed it.

I don't think the technical inaccuracies will matter to any but the 1%.



mr.unnatural said:


> The gratuitous sex scene at the beginning was enough to drive my wife out of the room.


Absolutely agree. It had no place in this story, and contributed nothing to the plot. Had this been HBO, at least we could joke it was the required "HBO gratuitous sex scene". But for AMC... an absolute waste, and as you point out, it may have even driven potential viewers away.

I truly don't understand the reasoning of TV execs these days.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

astrohip said:


> Absolutely agree. It had no place in this story, and contributed nothing to the plot. Had this been HBO, at least we could joke it was the required "HBO gratuitous sex scene". But for AMC... an absolute waste, and as you point out, it may have even driven potential viewers away.
> 
> I truly don't understand the reasoning of TV execs these days.


I'm sure their reasoning was to create some dramatic tension between the characters when they meet up later in the show. If he just talks to her and tells her it's a quasi job interview, and then later he shows up and offers her a job, there's no animosity between them and no reason for her to potentially turn him down.

But it just wasn't very well executed. I read a couple reviews where it was speculated that the writers/directors probably thought they were going to be able to make a 90-minute pilot, and then the network required them to cut it down to fit the 60-minute slot. A little more time fleshing out some of this stuff could have really helped.


----------



## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

Mikeyis4dcats said:


> a straight line on an o-scope isn't very visually interesting. I understand why they made the choice.


IIRC, the sine wave shown on the scope was identical to the one used in the opening credits for the show "The Outer Limits" (original series).


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## unitron (Apr 28, 2006)

mr.unnatural said:


> IIRC, the sine wave shown on the scope was identical to the one used in the opening credits for the show "The Outer Limits" (original series).


So, they're having to pay copyright royalties, then?



(you know, I wonder if anyone's patented the sine wave yet? They're issuing patents for all sorts of other stuff you wouldn't think could be patented.)


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## kdmorse (Jan 29, 2001)

I haven't watched the show, so this is only based on the comments I see here... (And thus may be off base..)

But the original IBM PC came with a Technical Reference Manual, which contained a printout of the entire BIOS source in assembly..... So, what exactly were they having to reverse engineer?


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## Numb And Number2 (Jan 13, 2009)

mr.unnatural said:


> The gratuitus sex scene at the beginning was enough to drive my wife out of the room.


Gratuitous is for amateurs. "In your face" is the new energizer.


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## MPSAN (Jun 20, 2009)

Yeah...a sine wave on a chip!! This is digital and you better have pure DC levels!


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

mr.unnatural said:


> ....The gratuitus sex scene at the beginning was enough to drive my wife out of the room...


What was gratuitous about it? It established a (perhaps) intimate (albeit, brief) relationship between the two which becomes a bit uncomfortable when he recruits her to work with him.


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## Mr. Soze (Nov 2, 2002)

I am usually the first to stand up and defend gratuitous sex scenes, but even I was a bit put off. But I did like her "You mean we're not in love?" line.


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

Plus it's later referenced by the third person in their little workgroup, so it was definitely put there for a reason (maybe not a good one)....thus not gratuitious...


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

Bierboy said:


> Plus it's later referenced by the third person in their little workgroup, so it was definitely put there for a reason (maybe not a good one)....thus not gratuitious...


Unfortunately, it was explained too late for my wife to hear. She had already left at that point. In her mind, it was completely gratuitous. I was put off because it immediately set the tone for the show as something that should have been broadcast on Skinemax and not AMC. This was supposed to be a show about computer geeks and not people screwing in the broom closet, regardless of the bearing on the plot.

The writers took the easy way out to set up the relationship rather than think it through and write something more intelligent. Then again, they didn't put a lot of thought into the technical accuracy of the rest of the story so I shouldn't be all that surprised.

In any case, I hope they got that out of their system and can now concentrate on developing a story with some semblance of intelligent forethought.


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## AeneaGames (May 2, 2009)

Hmmm, "like Columbia Data and Compaq"... That was weird, in the pilot ep they said they would be the first to clone the IBM PC and now they aren't the 1st, huh?


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## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

AeneaGames said:


> Hmmm, "like Columbia Data and Compaq"... That was weird, in the pilot ep they said they would be the first to clone the IBM PC and now they aren't the 1st, huh?


Which also made the "with a handle!" comment even more comical. But I was glad they firmly placed themselves in a truly fictional company with a different path than 'reality'. I thought this was a better episode, too.


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## sharkster (Jul 3, 2004)

When I found E01 on my TiVo I was trying to remember why I chose this show. Then I saw that it stars Lee Pace. I've been a huge fan since he did 'Soldier's Girl'. He is very compelling. In Soldier's Girl he was brilliant.

Most of the computer talk is way above my pay grade, but am still deciding if I want to keep watching. I've only watched E01 so far, but I think I'm going to hang in there.


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## DeDondeEs (Feb 20, 2004)

kdmorse said:


> But the original IBM PC came with a Technical Reference Manual, which contained a printout of the entire BIOS source in assembly..... So, what exactly were they having to reverse engineer?


Steve Gibson said the same thing on his Security Now podcast that he had that TRM. Then they write it all down in a notebook, but then later you see them printing the assembly code from a computer.

The aspect of the show that is getting old for me is that most of the show is filmed with that fluorescent lighting look since they are in an office building for 90% of the show. I think the lack of any change of scenery is going to get old for me. Although I do like that Orange is the new Black and they are in a prison all of the time.


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## vman41 (Jun 18, 2002)

They mention using an 80186 CPU, but the flags register map that Cameron wrote on the white board included fields introduced with 80286. Either chip would be in the correct time frame.

So apparently it's not just computers that halt and catch fire.


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## tivoboyjr (Apr 28, 2003)

AeneaGames said:


> Hmmm, "like Columbia Data and Compaq"... That was weird, in the pilot ep they said they would be the first to clone the IBM PC and now they aren't the 1st, huh?


That didn't make sense to me, either. Seems like they were a mash-up of Columbia Data and Compaq, but now they exist in a world with those companies who have already done what Cardiff is trying to do.

But the show is still interesting to me. It's kind of a lesser version of Mad Men but about computers instead of the ad game.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Haven't read the whole thread.. The girl did seem to be doing some reasonable reverse engineering -- trying to rewrite the code without seeing the original code.

Though of course that's another cliche of this show -- hot(shot) female programmer.

Don't read anything extra into what I said. It's nothing negative, it just seems unrealistic, ESPECIALLY given the year.


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## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

astrohip said:


> The universe of people who care or know is limited. I'm fairly computer literate, enough to know the phrase "reverse engineering", but couldn't tell you anything about sine waves. It was fun to watch, more so than I would have thought. The reviews weren't flattering, mostly "meh", but I enjoyed it.
> 
> I don't think the technical inaccuracies will matter to any but the 1%.


This exactly. It reminds me of the people who rip apart a sci-fi show because the "sci fi" doesn't make sense. Only those die hards are going to be upset by it, or even care. The idea is to make it dramatic enough for the layman to continue to watch. They figure, they probably GOT that 1% watching anyway.

That said, after watching episode 2, I really don't think the layman is going to be all that interested in this show. There's just very little compelling about it. I think they are trying to do Mad Men, 1980s style using the industry du jour. I just don't think IT techies are as compelling as characters as the Ad guys in Mad Men. I guess with better writing, perhaps they could be, but not in this case.


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## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

mr.unnatural said:


> Unfortunately, it was explained too late for my wife to hear. She had already left at that point. In her mind, it was completely gratuitous. I was put off because it immediately set the tone for the show as something that should have been broadcast on Skinemax and not AMC. This was supposed to be a show about computer geeks and not people screwing in the broom closet, regardless of the bearing on the plot.
> 
> The writers took the easy way out to set up the relationship rather than think it through and write something more intelligent. Then again, they didn't put a lot of thought into the technical accuracy of the rest of the story so I shouldn't be all that surprised.
> 
> In any case, I hope they got that out of their system and can now concentrate on developing a story with some semblance of intelligent forethought.


Skinemax, really? it was pretty tame for Skinemax. Actually it wasn't all that hot. I've seen much hotter sex scenes on other basic cable shows. What bummed me about it, was that I just didn't think there was chemistry between the characters, at least THAT fast to warrant a sex scene at that point. They took for a couple of minutes and boom!! Broom closet.


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

astrohip said:


> The universe of people who care or know is limited. I'm fairly computer literate, enough to know the phrase "reverse engineering", but couldn't tell you anything about sine waves. It was fun to watch, more so than I would have thought. The reviews weren't flattering, mostly "meh", but I enjoyed it.
> 
> I don't think the technical inaccuracies will matter to any but the 1%....


Exactly...I posted something similar in the episode thread...


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## SteveD (Oct 22, 2002)

kdmorse said:


> I haven't watched the show, so this is only based on the comments I see here... (And thus may be off base..)
> 
> But the original IBM PC came with a Technical Reference Manual, which contained a printout of the entire BIOS source in assembly..... So, what exactly were they having to reverse engineer?


Not only that, but it also included schematic and logic diagrams of all the boards and interfaces in the computer.

For those who are interested, here is a link to the original IBM PC Technical Reference Manual from 1981. This plus the DOS Technical Reference Manual were must haves for any programming PCs back in the day.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

kdmorse said:


> But the original IBM PC came with a Technical Reference Manual, which contained a printout of the entire BIOS source in assembly..... So, what exactly were they having to reverse engineer?


I thought this was explained in other posts.. but maybe not.

The reverse engineering part is making a copy of the BIOS _without_ literally copying it. Reverse engineering, as in from a "black box" perspective (you don't look inside), so the inputs/outputs of the original and the copy work the same.

A way to make a new BIOS that is binary compatible (as much as possible) with the original BIOS, without actually copying it and thus committing copyright infringement.

This show is (my term) "inspired" by real world events that lead to the proliferation of IBM PC clones.


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## Unbeliever (Feb 3, 2001)

mattack said:


> The reverse engineering part is making a copy of the BIOS _without_ literally copying it. Reverse engineering, as in from a "black box" perspective (you don't look inside), so the inputs/outputs of the original and the copy work the same.


But when the stuff you're "disassembling" is available already, you don't need to do the rigamarole they did on the show. You have one team study that code in the IBM technical reference manual to an inch of its life. That team writes a spec that describes how it works. Then the team throws only that spec over the "Chinese wall", AKA the "clean room", and another team writes a functionally identical program based only on that spec.

It is neither necessary or sufficient to do any of that, but if you do, it makes defense against copyright infringement much much easier if you can say your actual code writers never looked at the original code.

--Carlos V.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

The biggest LOL to me was that in the 1980s we had RED LEDs. That's all. No White, No Blue. IIRC, Green LEDs came early on. When I once asked about a white LED I was looked at like I was total maroon, "And it gives off _WHITE_ light?" HAW!"

And they were relatively expensive, too.


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

MikeAndrews said:


> The biggest LOL to me was that in the 1980s we had RED LEDs. That's all. No White, No Blue. IIRC, Green LEDs came early on. When I once asked about a white LED I was looked at like I was total maroon, "And it gives off WHITE light?" HAW!" And they were relatively expensive, too.


We've had the cheap low-power green and amber ones for a long time. I have some early 1960s equipment with green LEDs.

Blue was the major breakthrough.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

vman41 said:


> They mention using an 80186 CPU, but the flags register map that Cameron wrote on the white board included fields introduced with 80286. Either chip would be in the correct time frame.
> 
> So apparently it's not just computers that halt and catch fire.


The first IBM PC used the 8086. The 286 IBM PC was the IBM PC AT.
...and I can't believe that I remember this stuff.

Trivia: There was never an IBM _PC_ with the 80386 chip. Dell, Compaq and others made 386 PC Compatibles, but IBM didn't. IBM Computers with 386 and later had the EISA bus and were called Model 25, Model 35(?) etc.


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## ej42137 (Feb 16, 2014)

MikeAndrews said:


> The first IBM PC used the 8086.


The first IBM PC used the 8088 chip, not the 8086. The 8088 had essentially the same instruction set but had an eight bit data path while the 8086 chip had a sixteen bit data path. This made the system slower but cheaper to manufacture and more compatible with existing eight bit interface hardware.


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## SteveD (Oct 22, 2002)

ej42137 said:


> The first IBM PC used the 8088 chip, not the 8086. The 8088 had essentially the same instruction set but had an eight bit data path while the 8086 chip had a sixteen bit data path. This made the system slower but cheaper to manufacture and more compatible with existing eight bit interface hardware.


The IBM PC/XT also used the 8088 processor until 1986 when the IBM PC/XT Model 286 was released with an 80286 processor and 80287 coprocessor.

I also found an interesting book written by the founder of Phoenix Technologies back in 1989 which talks about the birth of the IBM clone.

From the book which can be found here:


> I founded Phoenix in 1979 as a supplier of programmers' tools to support the DOS standard. We were successful, but not a phenomenon until we broke through with the PC ROM BIOS in May 1984. It proved to be the missing link for manufacturers to build systems that were 100 percent compatible with the IBM PC and, just as important, 100 percent legal.
> 
> Our "clean room" methodology was responsible. "Contaminated" engineers studied the BIOS' functionality and passed on those functions to "virgin" engineers, who had never seen the BIOS and who then wrote the code that would accomplish specific tasks. I am proud to say the Phoenix ROM BIOS was one of the keys that unlocked the PC market and enabled it to grow to its present proportions.


So the methodology dictated in the show appears to be accurate.


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## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

I seem to recall generic PC clones (and maybe even brand name ones??) that used the Phoenix BIOS. Cool to hear a little bit about the backstory on how that came about.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

**** Red said:


> ...So the methodology dictated in the show appears to be accurate.


That's exactly the process that was required to be legal but the show isn't illustrating it correctly.

Other than no disassembly being required as above, in the real process Gordon would never be allowed to even know about Blondie who was going to write the BIOS to meet his specs. No way they stand in the same room.

That was why the company's lawyer asked her those questions about what she has done and what she knew.

BTW, in spite of doing this perfectly IBM will sue them into the next galaxy. IBM lost.


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## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

MikeAndrews said:


> Trivia: There was never an IBM _PC_ with the 80386 chip. Dell, Compaq and others made 386 PC Compatibles, but IBM didn't. IBM Computers with 386 and later had the EISA bus and were called Model 25, Model 35(?) etc.


IBM's entry into the 80386 space was with their PS/2 line in 1987, which introduced the (heavily protected / patented) MicroChannel Architecture (MCA) bus. It was IBM's licensing terms ($$) that got the "Gang of Nine" PC companies together to form the EISA consortium (and the bus design - the Extended Industry Standard Architecture) to compete with IBM. That was the split that ended IBM's "control" over the PC architecture, as MCA was rarely adopted outside of IBM, and EISA-based systems took over the high-end PC / server space. EISA was followed by an industry-designed PCI bus in the mid-90's...

Jeff


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

MikeAndrews said:


> The biggest LOL to me was that in the 1980s we had RED LEDs. That's all. No White, No Blue. IIRC, Green LEDs came early on. When I once asked about a white LED I was looked at like I was total maroon, "And it gives off _WHITE_ light?" HAW!"


I know someone else already said it, but I remember at the West Coast Computer Faire, I went in the early-mid 1980s, and one of the freebies was goldfish jars of LEDs for people to take a handful of.. and I'm fairly certain there were ones besides red.


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## ej42137 (Feb 16, 2014)

MikeAndrews said:


> The first IBM PC used the 8086. The 286 IBM PC was the IBM PC AT.
> ...and I can't believe that I remember this stuff.
> 
> Trivia: There was never an IBM _PC_ with the 80386 chip. Dell, Compaq and others made 386 PC Compatibles, but IBM didn't. IBM Computers with 386 and later had the EISA bus and were called Model 25, Model 35(?) etc.


You're not remembering it completely accurately. The IBM PS/2 line used the proprietary Micro Channel bus. The EISA bus was an industry extension to the ISA bus used by everyone except IBM.

Also, of the PS/2 models introduced, the 30 was an 8086, the 50 and 60 were 80286 and only the two 80 models were 80386 based designs.


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## kdmorse (Jan 29, 2001)

ej42137 said:


> Also, of the PS/2 models introduced, the 30 was an 8086, the 50 and 60 were 80286 and only the two 80 models were 80386 based designs.


Actually the PS/2 Models 35 and 40 was 80386 based, and used an EISA bus. And at the very least the 55's and 70's were 80386 based as well (MCA)

(Unless we're drawing lines between the 80386, the 80386SX+80387SX coprocessor combination, and the 80386DXs)

(The PS/2 Model 25s and 30s were EISA as well. though not in any way 386 based).


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## betts4 (Dec 27, 2005)

Okay so I have some questions -

Why did cameron and gordon have to be in seperate rooms?

At the end when Joe said the whole thing about portablity - was this the beginning of a thought about laptops? 

And the IBM blue book - was that something Gordon and Joe did in the garage and shouldn't have done or did IBM give that to them and say if you open this your done.


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## betts4 (Dec 27, 2005)

For what's it's worth - I don't know much at all about the hardware or code or software development, but I am enjoying the interplay of the characters.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

jautor said:


> IBM's entry into the 80386 space was with their PS/2 line in 1987, which introduced the (heavily protected / patented) MicroChannel Architecture (MCA) bus. It was IBM's licensing terms ($$) that got the "Gang of Nine" PC companies together to form the EISA consortium (and the bus design - the Extended Industry Standard Architecture) to compete with IBM. That was the split that ended IBM's "control" over the PC architecture, as MCA was rarely adopted outside of IBM, and EISA-based systems took over the high-end PC / server space. EISA was followed by an industry-designed PCI bus in the mid-90's...
> 
> Jeff


Oh, yeah. Now I remember why there was no 386 "IBM PC" even though there were millions of "clones." The Model 25 and up where the PS/2.

As you say, with the patented MCA bus IBM prevented any PS/2 clones. They also prevented any 2nd party MCA peripherals.

I worked at US Robotics, which did sink tons of money in licensing and manufacturing MCA bus modem. They had a warehouse full of them....and fired the executive who did the market research and advocated that making PS/2 modems was a great idea.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

betts4 said:


> Okay so I have some questions -
> 
> Why did cameron and gordon have to be in seperate rooms?
> 
> ...


I haven't even watched yet and can tell you. Gordon was "contaminated" by having seen the actual IBM BIOS and source code. That's why I say that those two could never be in the same room, or city, for that matter.

The original Compaq PC was a luggable "portable" like the Osborne 1 with a built-in 9" (7"?) CRT (think television) monitor and was the first portable PC compatible, although the idea was certainly obvious. Compaq didn't make desktop PCs until a few years later.

Luggable being that the Osborne 1 was ~27 pounds and IIRC the Compaq was about the same. Imagine that today when we we have 2 pound laptops and 12 ounce tablets.


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## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

Beard guy is so boring and then they gave him a brown and yellow kitchen to make him even more boring.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

cheesesteak said:


> Beard guy is so boring and then they gave him a brown and yellow kitchen to make him even more boring.


Back then kitchens were brown, yellow or olive green.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

betts4 said:


> Okay so I have some questions - Why did cameron and gordon have to be in seperate rooms?


Because Gordon was involved in extracting the BIOS info directly from the IBM equipment, so if he was involved in creating Cardiff's BIOS, IBM would be able to claim copyright infringement. But if they can claim that Cameron created a new BIOS without ever seeing the extracted IBM BIOS, then they have a defense to an infringement claim.



betts4 said:


> At the end when Joe said the whole thing about portablity - was this the beginning of a thought about laptops?


This was long before laptops. This was when you had a machine that was basically the size of a suitcase and the front folded open to reveal a keyboard and a tiny little monochrome screen.












betts4 said:


> And the IBM blue book - was that something Gordon and Joe did in the garage and shouldn't have done or did IBM give that to them and say if you open this your done.


That was the results of the reverse engineering that Joe and Gordon did. So in order for Cardiff to claim that Cameron made her BIOS on her own, she can't look at that code.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

dswallow said:


> Back then kitchens were brown, yellow or olive green.


_*cough*_ Coppertone, Harvest Gold, or Avocado,


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

MikeAndrews said:


> _*cough*_ Coppertone, Harvest Gold, or Avocado,


That's what I said. Brown, yellow or olive green.


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## JLucPicard (Jul 8, 2004)

Ok, I pretty much just scrolled through the last dozen or so posts without reading them, but I read enough to know that I'm just going to go on and enjoy the show and not bother to read any of the threads. I pretty much figured for this show the threads would be a lot of 'this isn't right, that isn't right' about the technical stuff, and I'm just not interested in any of that.

I may stop into a thread if something crazy happens just to see what the buzz is, but aside from that I'll just stick to the show.


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## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

mattack said:


> I know someone else already said it, but I remember at the West Coast Computer Faire, I went in the early-mid 1980s, and one of the freebies was goldfish jars of LEDs for people to take a handful of.. and I'm fairly certain there were ones besides red.


Blue LEDs are a 90's invention. White LEDs are a late 90's, early nauties.

The 80s have red, yellow and green LEDs. Though, the "green" was a rather sickly yellow-green color - the greens improved through the late 80s and the really nice deep greens were early 90s. I remember playing with a bunch of these LEDs back then. (And the original IBM PC was released in 1981, so reverse engineering happened far later).

Back in the 70s, red LEDs were standard. But the 80s had red, yellow and green, and even Radio Shack were selling them in those colors. Basically we've been marching down the wavelengths (up the frequency) - the first LEDs were IR/Red, then we had yellows, sickly green ones, then nice green ones, followed by blue ones, violet and ultra-violets. Once we had Blue/UV, we got whites - first through RGB arrays, then later through phosphor.

Oh yeah, the other thing is, the late 90s and nauties have been spent making LEDs more efficient and brighter - in the beginning, LEDs were only good for indicators and they could easily wash out in sunlight (i.e., dim!), but their brightness improved through the years to where we can light our homes with single LEDs.


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## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

kdmorse said:


> Actually the PS/2 Models 35 and 40 was 80386 based, and used an EISA bus. And at the very least the 55's and 70's were 80386 based as well (MCA)
> 
> (Unless we're drawing lines between the 80386, the 80386SX+80387SX coprocessor combination, and the 80386DXs)
> 
> (The PS/2 Model 25s and 30s were EISA as well. though not in any way 386 based).


None of the PS/2's at that time were EISA. The 25 (and the 30?) were "ISA" only - same as the PC/AT - which made them the odd stepchild without the new MCA bus of the rest of the PS/2 line. IBM didn't add EISA slots until they threw in the towel on MCA in the mid-90's. And by then PCI was about to take over anyway.


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

JLucPicard said:


> ....I pretty much figured for this show the threads would be a lot of 'this isn't right, that isn't right' about the technical stuff, and I'm just not interested in any of that.....


This.....soooo much this....


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## betts4 (Dec 27, 2005)

DevdogAZ said:


> Because Gordon was involved in extracting the BIOS info directly from the IBM equipment, so if he was involved in creating Cardiff's BIOS, IBM would be able to claim copyright infringement. But if they can claim that Cameron created a new BIOS without ever seeing the extracted IBM BIOS, then they have a defense to an infringement claim.
> 
> This was long before laptops. This was when you had a machine that was basically the size of a suitcase and the front folded open to reveal a keyboard and a tiny little monochrome screen.
> 
> ...


Thanks. I was close but not quite getting the reasoning.

We used to have a "pc" computer in 1991. All I remember is that it was big and clunky and white. I thought it had a 'handle' but not sure.


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## Thom (Jun 5, 2000)

Now that the third episode has aired, and the show's current focus is on the mounting emotional pressure, I find I'm enjoying the show more.


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## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

Thom said:


> Now that the third episode has aired, and the show's current focus is on the mounting emotional pressure, I find I'm enjoying the show more.


Agreed. Third episode was the best one so far... And Joe's, um, "actions" at the dinner party were a surprise.


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

jautor said:


> Agreed. Third episode was the best one so far... And Joe's, um, "actions" at the dinner party were a surprise.


And I don't quite understand how his actions impacted the funding situation...


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

Bierboy said:


> And I don't quite understand how his actions impacted the funding situation...


Joe didn't want to partner with the rich lady and made that very clear during dinner, but then she went around him and got his boss to approve the deal anyway. So he then went and cheated with her boy-toy, and came out and with a look on his face that said everything. Basically, Joe made it clear that he wasn't going to play ball with her, so she was smart to kick them to the curb.


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## markp99 (Mar 21, 2002)

Thanks for this thread. I grabbed the first three episodes and did a mini-binge.

I'm in. I like the premise and characters. The era is very close to when I started my engineering career, but I find I don't care much about the technical accuracy of the whole reverse engineering thing. This is just good summer viewing fun.


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

DevdogAZ said:


> Joe didn't want to partner with the rich lady and made that very clear during dinner, but then she went around him and got his boss to approve the deal anyway. So he then went and cheated with her boy-toy, and came out and with a look on his face that said everything. Basically, Joe made it clear that he wasn't going to play ball with her, so she was smart to kick them to the curb.


OK...I guess. I just don't see exactly how him messing around with her lackey would negatively affect the business deal. Maybe I'm oblivious....


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

Bierboy said:


> OK...I guess. I just don't see exactly how him messing around with her lackey would negatively affect the business deal. Maybe I'm oblivious....


He wasn't her lackey, he was her husband/boyfriend/lover. So Joe was basically sending a message that if she was going to go around him to Joe's boss and still do the deal, then Joe was going to go around her to mess with her. Not a good way to start off a financial relationship.


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

DevdogAZ said:


> He wasn't her lackey, he was her husband/boyfriend/lover. So Joe was basically sending a message that if she was going to go around him to Joe's boss and still do the deal, then Joe was going to go around her to mess with her. Not a good way to start off a financial relationship.


Hmmm....I didn't get that relationship between the two of them at all. Like I said....oblivous!


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

Worf said:


> Blue LEDs are a 90's invention. White LEDs are a late 90's, early nauties.
> 
> The 80s have red, yellow and green LEDs. Though, the "green" was a rather sickly yellow-green color - the greens improved through the late 80s and the really nice deep greens were early 90s. I remember playing with a bunch of these LEDs back then. (And the original IBM PC was released in 1981, so reverse engineering happened far later).
> ....


So I'm vindicated, because Gordon definitely had white LEDs and clear red LEDs on the breadboard.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

MikeAndrews said:


> I haven't even watched yet and can tell you. Gordon was "contaminated" by having seen the actual IBM BIOS and source code. That's why I say that those two could never be in the same room, or city, for that matter.


Disassembly, not source code. (Though I admit at assembly level those are pretty darn close to each other.. but you don't have comments, user-given label names, etc..)


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

JLucPicard said:


> I pretty much figured for this show the threads would be a lot of 'this isn't right, that isn't right' about the technical stuff, and I'm just not interested in any of that.


That's funny, because for this show, I think that level of comment, even though I have been a part of it, has been actually pretty tame..


----------



## blazin6969 (May 19, 2014)

Man I love this show!!!


----------



## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

MikeAndrews said:


> So I'm vindicated, because Gordon definitely had white LEDs and clear red LEDs on the breadboard.


Yeah, neither would be in the early 80's.

In fact, if one were doing a ROM dump that way (which is idiotic), the old style colored LEDs work best - you don't want clear LEDs, the color LEDs help show where there are LEDs and then it's just a matter of seeing "on" and "off". In fact, it would make the circuit a lot more compact.

Anyhow, you wouldn't need a ROM dumper or anything - the PC itself can read that ROM chip out for you plain and simple since it's always mapped into the last 64K of the available memory space (the x86 boots at 0xF:FFF0 - 16 bytes from end of memory). A lot of these tricks were used to hack the original Xbox, too.

As for portable computers, the early 80s had the "luggables" - PCs you carried with huge handles to which you could carry it around. Gordon mocked, but considering you're talking about a $5000+ machine, being able to carry it home meant you could work at home instead of driving to the office.

Of course, the Mac, and in the latter half of the 80s, Toshiba meant "luggables" got a lot smaller (the Mac was inherently portable and many companies made carry bags for that purpose). Toshiba released the T1100/T3100 laptops in 1986, dooming luggables as the Toshibas were way more portable (sure they were 3" thick and about 12" square, but they were also only about 16lbs, and had a BUILT IN BATTERY. Yes, you could use this thing away from the plug! Of course, the traditional clamshell design for laptops came later. (I can't remember who started it, but Apple copied it for the Mac Powerbook 100, considered to be one of the nicest portable machines at the time).


----------



## DeDondeEs (Feb 20, 2004)

Show is OK for me so far. I wish they would stop playing that awful early 80's punk music every time they show Cameron. The only thing that could be worse is if they start playing a bunch of whiny David Byrne stuff.


----------



## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

DeDondeEs said:


> Show is OK for me so far. I wish they would stop playing that awful early 80's punk music every time they show Cameron. The only thing that could be worse is if they start playing a bunch of whiny David Byrne stuff.


I'm not the only one who hates her "theme" music.


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

Add me as one who hate the music they're picking whenever Cameron is on screen. Maybe that stuff was popular then and I'm just a few years to young to recognize it, but to me it comes across as "we can't afford to license real 80s music that anyone would recognize, so we're making her be into some really alternate punk."


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

I don't like some of the music, but at least one or two of the songs I thought were entertaining.. I didn't bother to look them up, but at least they're *different* songs than you hear in most period stuff. (My best example -- can you see any documentary or drama set in the 1960s and NOT hear "For What It's Worth"? I actually REALLY like the song, too..)


----------



## Unbeliever (Feb 3, 2001)

Dropped the season pass. Never got into the any of the characters and story.

--Carlos V.


----------



## leeherman (Nov 5, 2007)

DeDondeEs said:


> Show is OK for me so far. I wish they would stop playing that awful early 80's punk music every time they show Cameron. The only thing that could be worse is if they start playing a bunch of whiny David Byrne stuff.


I used "Shazam" on one song, and it's NEW, not from the '80s.

LH


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

I'm giving this one more episode and I'm gone. It's a snooze fest. They are trying to make this a character study, like Mad Men, only either the characters are really boring or they are taking WAY too much time to flesh them out. I just don't care to learn their back stories at this point already. The only one I find remotely interesting is the blonde engineer. But she's a horrible actress. She reacts to everything exactly the same way.


----------



## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

And she has crappy music. I ffwd'd through her "solo" scenes because of the music.


----------



## betts4 (Dec 27, 2005)

Steveknj said:


> I'm giving this one more episode and I'm gone. It's a snooze fest. They are trying to make this a character study, like Mad Men, only either the characters are really boring or they are taking WAY too much time to flesh them out. I just don't care to learn their back stories at this point already. The only one I find remotely interesting is the blonde engineer. But she's a horrible actress. * She reacts to everything exactly the same way.*


I like the Gordon/wife back story and hope that she gets into the design. I think that was hinted at with her showing Gordon how to do the motherboard on top of each other.

The others are pretty boring. The blonde chick is like a really really bad version of the blonde chick in Some Kind of Wonderful. Which is okay since it is set in the 80's I guess.


----------



## Rainy Dave (Nov 11, 2001)

I'm still watching, but I have to say the whole thing seems so disjointed so far.


----------



## Gerryex (Apr 24, 2004)

Steveknj said:


> I'm giving this one more episode and I'm gone. It's a snooze fest. They are trying to make this a character study, like Mad Men, only either the characters are really boring or they are taking WAY too much time to flesh them out. I just don't care to learn their back stories at this point already. The only one I find remotely interesting is the blonde engineer. But she's a horrible actress. She reacts to everything exactly the same way.


I agree 100% and am kind of disappointed in it. Yeah I knew it could not be all about the technical stuff as it would be way over the heads of normal people. And yeah I knew whatever technical stuff would be mostly wrong so that they could make it more dramatic. But the characters ARE boring the story is moving very slowly. I'll probably stick with it for now but I do hope it gets better!

Gerry

P. S. Lawsuit or not if I were the boss of the company and saw how the salesman guy (Lee Pace) backed it into a corner and how he keeps trying to force the company to do things that may be questionable, I would beat the crap out of him!!!


----------



## tivoboyjr (Apr 28, 2003)

I'm feeling the same way. I wanted this show to be better than it is. It has some interesting elements, but it's kind of a Mad Men knockoff combined with a bad 80's movie.

I'm going to keep watching, for now. Mostly because without Game of Thrones and Fargo, I need something else to watch.


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

betts4 said:


> I like the Gordon/wife back story and hope that she gets into the design. I think that was hinted at with her showing Gordon how to do the motherboard on top of each other.


Yeah, she seems like she could be a good hardware engineer.


----------



## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

I think she was introduced as being a rather experienced hardware engineer - they're at least equals in skill I believe. (They worked together on that computer they designed).

She's also cool under pressure - between the kids, the broken speak and spell, etc.


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

Gerryex said:


> I agree 100% and am kind of disappointed in it. Yeah I knew it could not be all about the technical stuff as it would be way over the heads of normal people. And yeah I knew whatever technical stuff would be mostly wrong so that they could make it more dramatic. But the characters ARE boring the story is moving very slowly. I'll probably stick with it for now but I do hope it gets better!
> 
> Gerry
> 
> P. S. Lawsuit or not if I were the boss of the company and saw how the salesman guy (Lee Pace) backed it into a corner and how he keeps trying to force the company to do things that may be questionable, I would beat the crap out of him!!!





Spoiler



I would have fired his butt the second that he sensed that this was going to be trouble. I'd have at least hired a lawyer to figure out if it legally made sense. And the fact that the Lee Pace character was new, and came in and completely screwed up the company (at least at this point, obviously, we know the outcome was that PC Clones were immensely popular and profitable).



I spoilered the above since this isn't the series thread (or the episode thread). People might be reading having not watched yet.


----------



## MPSAN (Jun 20, 2009)

...and what the heck did the BIRD add to this story so far? I did not like that at all!


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

MPSAN said:


> ...and what the heck did the BIRD add to this story so far? I did not like that at all!


I think it was a metaphor for how Cardiff appears to be dead in the water and should they just kill it or let it sit there and suffer.


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Worf said:


> I think she was introduced as being a rather experienced hardware engineer - they're at least equals in skill I believe. (They worked together on that computer they designed).


Actually, I got the impression she was originally a "technician" or something like that.. basically someone soldering parts together on an assembly line.. (Remember, we used to have that in the USA?)

...but then it seemed to me this ep showed she really knew/learned a lot more about hardware.


----------



## MPSAN (Jun 20, 2009)

DevdogAZ said:


> I think it was a metaphor for how Cardiff appears to be dead in the water and should they just kill it or let it sit there and suffer.


OK, but I still did not like it.


----------



## danielhart (Apr 27, 2004)

I am enjoying this show.

Don't care about the technical accuracy. 

And maybe I'm the only one but I dig the punk music. 

Cooked a delicious breakfast for Nancy using Tapaskillet


----------



## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

I'm just about done with this show. I want to kill the SP but I'll wait a couple of days to see if I'll reassess and give it another chance. I already have to rearrange my Sunday night recordings if I want to watch anything live so one less show won't kill me. I hate Joe. I despise Cameron. Gordon's a weak and spineless character. The only person I like is Gordon's wife.


----------



## Craigbob (Dec 2, 2006)

I'm still watching it, though the technical errors in the past week's episode really rubbed me the wrong way.



Spoiler



I mean how the hell can you read a hard drive manually in that environment? There'd be so much dust that the drive would be unredable. and moving the disk manually You're dealing with head movements on the order of microns.

I'm not a fan of any character, Joe comes across as a smarmy used car salesman with little idea of what he's attempting on a technical level. Gordon is weak and has no ability to stand up for himself or his beliefs. Cameron is the most likeable, but her snarky anti-establishment crap is getting old.



I'll keep the SP since I want to see where the story goes, but I think this is a one season and done for me.


----------



## danielhart (Apr 27, 2004)

Yeah last night's episode was pretty lame in a number of ways. Perhaps I spoke too soon.

Cooked a delicious breakfast for Nancy using Tapaskillet


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Yeah, the hard drive platters out in the open was stupid.

I keep wondering what the various machines/terminals they're using are (possibly have been answered before). The things that look vaguely like Commodore PETs with built in floppy drives.

Also, I keep noticing other tech in the background. In the scene where the guy asks the secretary to take Cameron to go get cleaned up, they're at an old copier with a (CRT) screen, right? I didn't realize any copiers back then had separate screens for control.


----------



## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

I've seen those copiers before - they're used by print houses back in the day in order to do copies REALLY fast. As in literally pages per second. You put your original on, key in the number and options, and the thing uses a flashbulb to illuminate a photosensitive belt (instead of a drum) which lets you have dozens of pages in flight and be able to do hundreds of copies in a few minutes.

You had oldschool copiers back in the day, but generally they took anywhere from 5-10 seconds to do one page.

These days, copiers are digital - they scan the document into digital memory first then use a laser or CRT imager to imprint the drum with the page contents. CRT imagers are used in the high speed copiers because they can image a page in milliseconds. (Old style typesetters also used high-res CRT displays to image the plates).


----------



## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

Spoiler



Joe is so despicable that I didn't care that he got the crap beat out of him by the good ol' boy cops. Plus, that made me dislike his boss for being too much of a coward to punch Joe in the face himself.


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

cheesesteak said:


> Joe is so despicable that I didn't care that he got the crap beat out of him by the good ol' boy cops. Plus, that made me dislike his boss for being too much of a coward to punch Joe in the face himself.


I guess this is now a spoilers allowed thread? I am not sure why they beat up Joe. Was it just because he was an outsider? I didn't get that.

Also, I've always called the File Allocation Table "FAT" as in not skinny. They kept calling it F A T. Do people actually call it that?

I'm still in, but honestly, I don't know why.


----------



## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

Steveknj said:


> I guess this is now a spoilers allowed thread?
> 
> Also, I've always called the File Allocation Table "FAT" as in not skinny. They kept calling it F A T. Do people actually call it that?


I spoilerized my comments. A couple of other people posted spoilers and I followed like a lemming.

I always pronounced it as "FAT" also, not "F.A.T."


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## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

cheesesteak said:


> I spoilerized my comments. A couple of other people posted spoilers and I followed like a lemming.
> 
> I always pronounced it as "FAT" also, not "F.A.T."


This kind of thing I guess bugged me in the same way as the more technical here have been bugged by a lot of the other things. But, that's because I know the term. If I didn't I wouldn't have even noticed it.

The show is still all over the place and we still really know very little about what makes these characters tick. They are all just mostly annoying. I keep coming back to Mad Men because I think that's what they are going for here, but by the end of the first episode or two in Mad Men, we already knew enough about the main characters to get a feel about them. Right now all we know is that they are pretty much all unlikable.


----------



## Mr. Soze (Nov 2, 2002)

Steveknj said:


> I guess this is now a spoilers allowed thread?  I am not sure why they beat up Joe. Was it just because he was an outsider? I didn't get that.


I think it was at the behest of his boss (the bald guy whose name I can't remember).


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## danielhart (Apr 27, 2004)

Steveknj said:


> I guess this is now a spoilers allowed thread? I am not sure why they beat up Joe. Was it just because he was an outsider? I didn't get that.
> 
> Also, I've always called the File Allocation Table "FAT" as in not skinny. They kept calling it F A T. Do people actually call it that?
> 
> I'm still in, but honestly, I don't know why.


it was his boss showing him who is boss (iow he got his cop buddies to beat him up and arrest him - then he goes to the station and gets him released - an exercise in showing him who is really in charge)

it was a very lame plot device imo

Cooked a delicious breakfast for Nancy using Tapaskillet


----------



## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

danielhart said:


> Cooked a delicious breakfast for Nancy using Tapaskillet


Ok, I'll ask. Wtf?


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

cheesesteak said:


> Ok, I'll ask. Wtf?


Someone has a Tapatalk fetish.


----------



## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

mattack said:


> Yeah, the hard drive platters out in the open was stupid.


It's become standard operating procedure for most of the tech sequences... Conceptually correct, individual techniques also true, but actual execution not even in the realm of reality! 

But yes, you can take apart a drive and mount its platters into a functional motor unit (and its a valid technique for data recovery specialists to perform) - but yeah, don't want to do that in the open, and certainly not spinning it by hand.



mattack said:


> I keep wondering what the various machines/terminals they're using are (possibly have been answered before). The things that look vaguely like Commodore PETs with built in floppy drives.


There's a number of Zenith Data Systems Z-100 scattered around the office. Those were really nice CP/M machines in the day...

Yet another compromise for a modern audience is the sheer number of computers shown in this 'typical' office. The combination of the high cost and the narrow applications / uses for "PCs" at that time makes that unlikely - more like one unit set out on a desk by itself for people to use when they needed it... The accountant and the executive secretary might have one to themselves. And the chief executive might have one for "show" (unlikely to actually know how to type in those days!).

And for every machine there would have been a hulking printer attached. If you were really lucky you'd have a daisy wheel printer waking the dead at ~16 characters per second. 

Now, I want to see some smoking in the office for realism! Especially from the mainframe operators smoking while working on the unit with the access panels open. My first job I watched in horror as the operator did this on more than one occasion! The smoke was so bad in the MIS (we'd call them IT now) department that the CRTs all had a yellow film on them - I could wipe the screens with a paper towel and make nicotine patches out of them if I so desired.

Jeff


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## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

Yeah, the technical content has taken a huge dive in the last episode.

Though, a computer on every desk wasn't TOO uncommon - maybe really nice machines, but some companies did put a computer on everybody's desk. After all, we're looking around the early to mid 80's at this point, and I believe even an Apple II was fairly affordable for those who needed a computer (something like starting at $666, and yes, that price is real). Or a Commodore 64.

IBM PCs would be REALLY rare - the basic model started around $5000 or so, and a fully tricked out one could cost $10,000 all said and done.

Anyhow, oddly there's no mention of something the original IBM PC shipped with - ROM BASIC! (A really odd form of BASIC since you had to boot into DOS then run BASIC which jumped into the ROM.) I actually had a program from the ancient days that used it... when you ran it, it came back with "Unable to find ROM BASIC". (I don't know when IBM got rid of it, but I was, coincidentally, running it on an official IBM PC at the time!)


----------



## ADent (Jan 7, 2000)

The Apple ][e (later //e) came out in 1983 for $1395, $1995 with floppy drive and monitor and the full 64KB.


We didn't get computers on all the desks at work until 1995 - when PCs dropped under $1500 so they didn't have to be in the capital plan.


----------



## Bob Coxner (Dec 1, 2004)

Unless I missed a post somewhere, no one has mentioned the (to me) 800 pound gorilla in the room. Joe is bi-curious, unless his manhandling of the money lady's boytoy was just a business maneuver. 

FWIW, *that* would get you beat by Dallas cops, even as late as the 1980's.


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## vman41 (Jun 18, 2002)

Considering their business before Joe came was mainframe software, shouldn't you see some 3270 terminals?


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

I think I like the show so far. The alternate history is a bit off putting.


----------



## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

Bob Coxner said:


> Unless I missed a post somewhere, no one has mentioned the (to me) 800 pound gorilla in the room. Joe is bi-curious, unless his manhandling of the money lady's boytoy was just a business maneuver.
> 
> FWIW, *that* would get you beat by Dallas cops, even as late as the 1980's.


I thought it was pretty obvious that he's bisexual. I don't think it makes a difference.


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## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

Does Joe's boss know that Joe banged investment lady's boy toy?


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

cheesesteak said:


> Does Joe's boss know that Joe banged investment lady's boy toy?


As of this weeks episode that was not apparent.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

The Apple I is what started at $666.


----------



## Hunter Green (Feb 22, 2002)

vman41 said:


> Considering their business before Joe came was mainframe software, shouldn't you see some 3270 terminals?


I'd say VT100, VT52, VT320, etc. would be more apt since they weren't selling IBM gear, but competitors thereto.


----------



## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

With so many people in this thread who claim they don't like the show, I'm amazed at the number of posts  ....I like it, and I'll keep watching. I like the characters and I have a tech crush on Donna...


----------



## Jonathan_S (Oct 23, 2001)

I finally got around to watching the 2nd episode and decided the show wasn't for me <shrug>. Ah well, plenty of other stuff I can do instead.


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## rhuntington3 (May 1, 2001)

I'm on the fence. Thinking of bailing but feel somehow committed to finishing it.


----------



## brianric (Aug 29, 2002)

Bierboy said:


> With so many people in this thread who claim they don't like the show, I'm amazed at the number of posts  ....I like it, and I'll keep watching. I like the characters and I have a tech crush on Donna...


Sort of like Under the Dome.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

I haven't watched the latest yet but I'm amused by how they have like 12 lines...


```
MV A,01
LD A,AX
NOP
NOP
```
and Cameron is madly scribbling more of the same, and Gordon looks at it on the white board and says, "THIS IS BRILLIANT!"

Um, guys, seeing what's going on in an algorithm in Assembler takes *a LOT* OF LINES.

Bedsides which the BIOS mostly has to interface with the hardware and the routines to do that will be common shared code and/or come from chip makers.


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## Gerryex (Apr 24, 2004)

rhuntington3 said:


> I'm on the fence. Thinking of bailing but feel somehow committed to finishing it.


Frankly I think it not very good but I'll probably stick with it any way!

Gerry


----------



## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

Worf said:


> Anyhow, oddly there's no mention of something the original IBM PC shipped with - ROM BASIC! (A really odd form of BASIC since you had to boot into DOS then run BASIC which jumped into the ROM.) I actually had a program from the ancient days that used it... when you ran it, it came back with "Unable to find ROM BASIC". (I don't know when IBM got rid of it, but I was, coincidentally, running it on an official IBM PC at the time!)


That's only partially true. If you booted an IBM PC without an operating system it would go directly into ROM BASIC. That's why the whole idea of clone PCs not actually copying the BIOS, despite what was written earlier about Phoenix, is pure BS. I owned plenty of them in back then, many with Phoenix bios. And every single one of them would give the error message about ROM BASIC missing if you forgot to put in a floppy with an operating system on it.


----------



## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

midas said:


> That's why the whole idea of clone PCs not actually copying the BIOS, despite what was written earlier about Phoenix, is pure BS. I owned plenty of them in back then, many with Phoenix bios. And every single one of them would give the error message about ROM BASIC missing if you forgot to put in a floppy with an operating system on it.


Not sure what you mean. The BASIC interpreter was not part of the PC BIOS. It *was* delivered by IBM embedded in the ROM alongside the BIOS, and as you said, if you didn't put in the PC-DOS floppy, it would default to the ROM BASIC prompt. The Wikipedia page on IBM BASIC has a good write-up of the various flavors.

But cloning the BIOS didn't include replicating the BASIC interpreter because it didn't need to. That component was a product of Microsoft, and was bundled into the non-IBM "MS-DOS" product. Since the BASIC was Microsoft's real product (before DOS!), you could just buy it. And Microsoft was happy to sell more copies!

Jeff


----------



## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

jautor said:


> Not sure what you mean. The BASIC interpreter was not part of the PC BIOS. It *was* delivered by IBM embedded in the ROM alongside the BIOS, and as you said, if you didn't put in the PC-DOS floppy, it would default to the ROM BASIC prompt. The Wikipedia page on IBM BASIC has a good write-up of the various flavors.


The point is simple. If I'm reverse engineering the BIOS I'm going to insert a message such as, "Please insert operating system disk" or something similar. If I'm lazy and just copying the BIOS then I'm going to end up with the exact message that IBM has coded into their BIOS.


----------



## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

midas said:


> The point is simple. If I'm reverse engineering the BIOS I'm going to insert a message such as, "Please insert operating system disk" or something similar. If I'm lazy and just copying the BIOS then I'm going to end up with the exact message that IBM has coded into their BIOS.


No, you're going to replicate the functionality 100%. Including the bugs and all user messages. The only notable exception being any mention of 'IBM' and the copyright messages...

Because if programmers are expecting behavior from the IBM PC, you want yours to be exactly the same. When there's a bug in the IBM BIOS, a developer would work around it (a BIOS upgrade for a bug fix in those days required a physical chip swap - this is before EEPROM "flashable" chips were installed). You want to make sure that workaround doesn't do something weird on your version as compared to the IBM.

Now, later in time, once the idea of "100% IBM Compatibility" is well-established and potential customers believe that compatibility, you'll see the BIOS implementations drift away from this rigorous replication.

An interesting side note regarding copying and copyright: A common practice among cartographers (map makers) is to insert short, fake / non-existent roads into their maps (typically a dead-end street so as not to screw up navigation). Then, if a competitor produces a map with the same fake road, you've got great evidence that they copied your work - as that's the only way that fake road would appear...

Jeff


----------



## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

jautor said:


> No, you're going to replicate the functionality 100%. Including the bugs and all user messages. The only notable exception being any mention of 'IBM' and the copyright messages...
> 
> Because if programmers are expecting behavior from the IBM PC, you want yours to be exactly the same.


There's no OS running so there's no program running to expect any behavior to happen. The only functionality to duplicate is not functioning. It can be done using any message you want. It doesn't need to be the one lazily copied from IBM.


----------



## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

midas said:


> There's no OS running so there's no program running to expect any behavior to happen. The only functionality to duplicate is not functioning. It can be done using any message you want. It doesn't need to be the one lazily copied from IBM.


It's not just the program compatibility - it's the user expectations. In those days, the very idea of "IBM Compatibility" was THE issue, and customers needed to be assured that the machine was 100% functionally identical to the IBM PC (and yes, the ROM BASIC difference was noticeable and had to be explained to customers). People shopping for "PC clones" in those days would bring copies of Flight Simulator and other software along with them to test the compatibility for themselves.

There was no "laziness" there - it was replicated and matched on purpose because of those customer concerns.


----------



## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

jautor said:


> It's not just the program compatibility - it's the user expectations. In those days, the very idea of "IBM Compatibility" was THE issue, and customers needed to be assured that the machine was 100% functionally identical to the IBM PC (and yes, the ROM BASIC difference was noticeable and had to be explained to customers). People shopping for "PC clones" in those days would bring copies of Flight Simulator and other software along with them to test the compatibility for themselves.
> 
> There was no "laziness" there - it was replicated and matched on purpose because of those customer concerns.


I still call BS. On a real IBM PC you'd never see that message because ROM BASIC wouldn't be missing. You want to prove 100% compatible, don't show them a message that they'd never see with a real IBM PC. Show them actual ROM BASIC. No consumer would have ever expected to see that message and none would have ever demanded to see that message. Pure BS.


----------



## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

midas said:


> I still call BS. On a real IBM PC you'd never see that message because ROM BASIC wouldn't be missing. You want to prove 100% compatible, don't show them a message that they'd never see with a real IBM PC. Show them actual ROM BASIC. No consumer would have ever expected to see that message and none would have ever demanded to see that message. Pure BS.


You can call BS all you want, but this IS how it happened and is a fact...

The message could appear on an IBM PC if the ROM BASIC chips weren't present. It was separate from the BIOS (and I had to look it up, but on the original 5150 PC model it appears to have been actually four chips, while the BIOS was contained in a 5th).

Since the clone makers knew they wouldn't include those chips, it would be simple to test the behavior on an IBM machine by removing them and documenting the results. So the message would have appeared on-screen, and that was then written down in the specifications passed to the clean room BIOS team as a functional requirement.


----------



## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

jautor said:


> You can call BS all you want, but this IS how it happened and is a fact...


See, where we disagree is that the whole clean room stuff is true. I don't believe it. I believe they did their best to try to make it look that way. But to me their argument on this is just too weak to believe. If you buy the story, that's fine. It's too far fetched for me.


----------



## ElJay (Apr 6, 2005)

Bierboy said:


> I like the characters and I have a tech crush on Donna...


If the show didn't have Donna I probably would've bailed by now. The Joe character is no Don Draper, so if AMC is expecting a Mad Men of the 80s out of this then I think they need to find out how to focus on somebody else. Don is a creative person who can do a good job when the politics of his firm enable that. This Joe guy has nothing but pompousness and bluster that isn't backed up by any clue in what he's doing. Don has lots of sex, but I don't remember him doing it purely for manipulating people in business like we've seen Joe do twice already.


----------



## AeneaGames (May 2, 2009)

midas said:


> See, where we disagree is that the whole clean room stuff is true. I don't believe it. I believe they did their best to try to make it look that way. But to me their argument on this is just too weak to believe. If you buy the story, that's fine. It's too far fetched for me.


If the clean room stuff wasn't true it means they have copied the BIOS byte for byte. Even if IBM would have found 20 bytes the same at the same offset they would have proven the clean room thing wrong and would have had a case. They couldn't so the code was different enough to allow the clones to exist.

Sure, they might not have had a perfect clean room thing going, but they did rewrite the code themselves differently enough to allow all this to happen. Could they have changed the text of the message? Sure. Why didn't they? I don't know, maybe some applications used it to see if it was running on a genuine IBM PC or they were afraid it could be used for that and kept the text the same...


----------



## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

I sure don't know where this "Mad Men of the 80s" stuff came from, but I haven't read ANYTHING like that about this show. Far as I know, this show is uniquely styled for the subject...


----------



## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

Bierboy said:


> I sure don't know where this "Mad Men of the 80s" stuff came from, but I haven't read ANYTHING like that about this show. Far as I know, this show is uniquely styled for the subject...


C'Mon. They are going for the Mad Men vibe.

I can see them selling the show as Mad Men with a smaller cast and much cheaper budget.

What about them getting Joe beat up by the cops?


----------



## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

MikeAndrews said:


> C'Mon. They are going for the Mad Men vibe.
> 
> I can see them selling the show as Mad Men with a smaller cast and much cheaper budget.
> 
> What about them getting Joe beat up by the cops?


no. it's not that at all. unless you just think any period piece is that.


----------



## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

midas said:


> See, where we disagree is that the whole clean room stuff is true. I don't believe it. I believe they did their best to try to make it look that way. But to me their argument on this is just too weak to believe. If you buy the story, that's fine. It's too far fetched for me.


We also went to the moon. Really.   

It's not too far fetched, in that it was done multiple times by several independent companies (and I work for one of them, and know many of the folks that did the work in those days - all retired now).

The show may be a bit light on detail as to what information can be used in the particular case of replicating the PC BIOS. But many, many things have been "reverse engineered" over the years. The BIOS was a bit different, in that it was software, and the concern is about copyright, not so much patents. Now, it certainly wasn't accomplished "in real life" by one person locked away in a closet over the course of a few weeks. There was a whole team of folks involved in those efforts.

The "clean room" folks can't look at the IBM source code (in any form), and to be extra careful, these teams didn't look at publicly available IBM documentation. There is a story of one new hire showing up for his first day of work - in preparation for his new job, he spent hours reading the IBM technical manuals - he was re-assigned to another role... So yes, they were being very careful to keep the clean room team out of anything to taint them.

A "dirty" team would look at the IBM machine, and would generate a functional specification - all the BIOS calls and functions - for the folks in the clean room to code up. So it wasn't so much a "black box" case trying to figure out what the thing does without a clue to the inner workings. The hardware was built from off-the-shelf parts, so making that all work was straightforward (I won't call it easy!).

Jeff


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## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

jautor said:


> A "dirty" team would look at the IBM machine, and would generate a functional specification - all the BIOS calls and functions - for the folks in the clean room to code up. So it wasn't so much a "black box" case trying to figure out what the thing does without a clue to the inner workings. The hardware was built from off-the-shelf parts, so making that all work was straightforward (I won't call it easy!).


See, I guess I don't consider that true reverse engineering. I see duplication of specific functions and bios calls differently than just figuring out how to make it work.


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

b_scott said:


> no. it's not that at all. unless you just think any period piece is that.


Exactly. I don't understand why he's so insanely fixated on MM....


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## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

midas said:


> See, I guess I don't consider that true reverse engineering. I see duplication of specific functions and bios calls differently than just figuring out how to make it work.


Ok, but that's different than saying it didn't happen or is "too far fetched."

Wikipedia has a really good article on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering

And it talks about the distinction of the term applied to 'machine' vs. 'software'. Which fits this scenario. The level of care depends on what your end goal is, how much legal trouble you expect, and the scope of the effort. If you just wanted to figure out how the IBM BIOS worked, you'd read the Technical Reference Guide, and certainly just look at the disassembled code.

And reading that article, I wouldn't have called "figuring out someone's code where no high-level documentation or specs exist" reverse engineering. I'd call that a typical software engineering day. 

But yes, it's a different process with software than it is with hardware. And writing specs doesn't look exciting on TV, which is why they made it look more like a hardware problem in the show... 

You may be thinking of a "captured enemy technology" type scenario - where you have absolutely zero information to start from, and very little to go on. And yeah, that's way harder.


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## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

jautor said:


> Ok, but that's different than saying it didn't happen or is "too far fetched."


I don't know. Seems like, with every post, that clean room is getting dirtier and dirtier


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## Hunter Green (Feb 22, 2002)

jautor said:


> And reading that article, I wouldn't have called "figuring out someone's code where no high-level documentation or specs exist" reverse engineering. I'd call that a typical software engineering day.


Word!


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## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

midas said:


> I don't know. Seems like, with every post, that clean room is getting dirtier and dirtier


Well, it's "clean" as far as the lawyers are concerned! If you want to question a lawyer's definition of "dirty", well, hey, not going get in the middle of that one!


----------



## markymark_ctown (Oct 11, 2004)

rhuntington3 said:


> I'm on the fence. Thinking of bailing but feel somehow committed to finishing it.


same here...not sure why I am committed to finishing it though


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## Sixto (Sep 16, 2005)

I bailed.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

jautor said:


> No, you're going to replicate the functionality 100%. Including the bugs and all user messages. The only notable exception being any mention of 'IBM' and the copyright messages...


*ESPECIALLY* when you have only a limited # of bytes in which to put the strings.


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## danielhart (Apr 27, 2004)

This show should have two threads imo. One for tech nerds and one for normal people.


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## Hunter Green (Feb 22, 2002)

I think the "normal people" thread would end up pretty quiet and lonely...


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## betts4 (Dec 27, 2005)

Bierboy said:


> I sure don't know where this "Mad Men of the 80s" stuff came from, but I haven't read ANYTHING like that about this show. Far as I know, this show is uniquely styled for the subject...


I agree. I haven't seen anything that reminds me of Mad Men either.

I am still watching it but am not sure how much longer. It's sort of at a point of I don't care whether I watch it or not. Though it is still on SP so I might if I have run out of other things.


----------



## Church AV Guy (Jan 19, 2005)

I certainly remember playing ADVENTURE. The "terms" fe fi fo fu, and Plugh were a blast form the past. I remember decrypting the data file to read the text.


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## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

betts4 said:


> I agree. I haven't seen anything that reminds me of Mad Men either.


Like Mad Men, almost none of the characters are likable.


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

cheesesteak said:


> Like Mad Men, almost none of the characters are likable.


Disagree....I like Gordon and Donna. Cameron is a teddy bear, too...


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## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

rhuntington3 said:


> I'm on the fence. Thinking of bailing but feel somehow committed to finishing it.


That's kind of where I am. The last episode was such a total bore that I wound up actually losing interest in it about 1/3 way through and started playing Candy Crush. Yet the topic itself is what keeps me watching. I just wish I actually gave a crap about any of these people. Maybe then I'd be more interested.


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## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

Bierboy said:


> I sure don't know where this "Mad Men of the 80s" stuff came from, but I haven't read ANYTHING like that about this show. Far as I know, this show is uniquely styled for the subject...


http://www.avclub.com/review/halt-and-catch-fire-tries-reverse-engineer-mad-men-205150

http://www.bustle.com/articles/26286-amcs-halt-and-catch-fire-is-more-mad-men-than-breaking-bad

https://tv.yahoo.com/blogs/yahoo-tv/halt-and-catch-fire-mad-men-003116173.html

And that's on the first page of my Google search.


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

You can find anything you want with the proper key words...doesn't prove anything.


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## Gerryex (Apr 24, 2004)

Church AV Guy said:


> I certainly remember playing ADVENTURE. The "terms" fe fi fo fu, and Plugh were a blast form the past. I remember decrypting the data file to read the text.


The best part of this episode was loading Colossal Cave onto their mainframe computer and then a whole bunch of people playing it at the same time.

Around that time period a coworker handed me a computer mag tape. It was labeled: Colossal Cave - do not load onto your system or no real work will ever be done again.

This version was written in Fortran and our "mainframes" were all Digital Equip Corp PDP-11s running RSX-11M. (Anyone remember these systems?) It had a Fortran compiler but some of the syntax was a little different, but after a few days (on my own time, OF COURSE!) I got it to run. And within a few days if you went into the terminal area during lunch EVERY SINGLE terminal had someone running Colossal Cave!!! It was just like what was shown in the TV show!

No one could finish it until some enterprising person mapped out EVERY SINGLE location and item and finally finished the game.

Gerry


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## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

Well, no discussions about this week's episode yet?

So... how is it Cameron is writing ANSI C code prior to ANSI C being approved (C89 - 1989, this show places itself in the early/mid 80s)? (Nevermind that C compilers supporting it don't necessarily come right when the standard's approved).

Though, one of my friends actually had the K&R version of the K&R book. (I have the ANSI C version of the K&R)

And Gordon... oh my.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

This episode took place in August 1983 based on the fact that Hurricane Alicia was referenced on the news during the episode.

I know Cabbage Patch Kids were a huge craze at Christmas 1983, but I think it was inaccurate to show them being sold out in stores in August 1983.

With regard to Gordon being completely opposed to Cameron's idea for an OS "with a soul," why was he saying that it would take up tons of real estate and require a massive hardware redesign? Why would it matter what the OS code was? Shouldn't it have been able to run on the hardware they had already designed?


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## markp99 (Mar 21, 2002)

They're losing me; almost out. I FF'd thru most of this one.


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## betts4 (Dec 27, 2005)

I was kind of whizzing thru it and then suddenly there is Gordon soaking wet in a parking lot looking at a dead person.

Actually a lot of the show was like this - Head guy looking at billboard and changing appearance. Cameron looking frustrated and sulky then looking high. Gordon soaking wet and finding dead person. Head guy at home with Gordon's wife playing with kids the way Gordon should have been. Wife eating grapefruit with other guy because for women in the 80's there was the grapefruit diet. 

Was there something about coding in there? I don't know. The drama is supposed to hold me since I know nothing of coding. It is failing. Yet, I don't have much else on my TiVo to watch so I keep going.


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## ellinj (Feb 26, 2002)

you all just need to relax. The show is FICTION, its not meant to be historically accurate. I am sure if we all worked for the DEA we would think that Breaking Bad was a pile of horse manure riddled with factual errors.


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

ellinj said:


> you all just need to relax. The show is FICTION, its not meant to be historically accurate. I am sure if we all worked for the DEA we would think that Breaking Bad was a pile of horse manure riddled with factual errors.


Pinpoint. While the complainers in this thread say they FF thru portions of the show and ***** about the tech inaccuracies, I FF thru the complaining in this thread and just enjoy the show.


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## Martha (Oct 6, 2002)

Was the dead person supposed to be the store owner? Most of this episode made very little sense to me. And up to now, I've enjoyed the show.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

Martha said:


> Was the dead person supposed to be the store owner? Most of this episode made very little sense to me. And up to now, I've enjoyed the show.


No. I don't think we were supposed to know who it was. Just someone who got electrocuted when the power lines came down. And because Gordon had just committed a crime, he couldn't call the police or do anything to help.


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## BluesFools (Apr 5, 2000)

DevdogAZ said:


> With regard to Gordon being completely opposed to Cameron's idea for an OS "with a soul," why was he saying that it would take up tons of real estate and require a massive hardware redesign? Why would it matter what the OS code was? Shouldn't it have been able to run on the hardware they had already designed?


Gordon would have to redesign the h/w because Cameron said her changes would require more memory. An extra 384k means more chips and redoing PD. This is in the days where "640k should be enough for anybody".

And C++ style comments in 1983 C... no.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Worf said:


> So... how is it Cameron is writing ANSI C code prior to ANSI C being approved (C89 - 1989, this show places itself in the early/mid 80s)?





BluesFools said:


> And C++ style comments in 1983 C... no.


Darn, you guys brought up the two main issues that TOTALLY jumped out at me during the show.

Heck, were there even *C COMPILERS* for personal computers at that point in time? This show is what, 1981-2 or so? e.g. the original Mac interfaces were assembly or Pascal, and that's 1984 (shipping to people).


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

mattack said:


> Darn, you guys brought up the two main issues that TOTALLY jumped out at me during the show. Heck, were there even *C COMPILERS* for personal computers at that point in time? This show is what, 1981-2 or so? e.g. the original Mac interfaces were assembly or Pascal, and that's 1984 (shipping to people).


 There was Lattice C available in the early 80s. A lot of funkiness in that version, but there were a lot of CPM programs ported to DOS using that. Heck, there was C++ around then, too (someplace I've got a really, really old version of Cfront, the C++' 'compiler' that was really a preprocessor, and did some gnarly name mangling to make all the C++ stuff work)

Although it's distinctly too early for // comments. Those showed up sometime after the first edition of Stroustrup, IIRC.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

I hate you people. I just spent about an hour trying to hunt down the earliest C compiler I remember (well, "remember" was a bit incorrect till now) using; and surprisingly it's not in Wikipedia*.

It was DeSmet-C from C-Ware Corporation. I found a site dedicated to it, that offers many of the versions for download as well as source code of the compiler itself (the guy tracked down the owners and got permission, believe it or not, since they were long out of business).

The earliest version they have on the site has files dated near the end of 1983. It's version 2.40, so I'd sort of guess it was out earlier in 1.0 and pre-1.0 forms.

http://www.desmet-c.com/
http://www.desmet-c.com/ver_240.shtml

*And now my first Wikipedia edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compilers#C_compilers


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

A couple times in this show they've made comments about what a huge, successful company Apple is. I can't remember if it was this episode or a previous one, but someone mentioned that Apple spends millions each day just on catering, or something like that. Was Apple really all that successful in 1983?

Also, with regard to the coding comments, did we actually see any code with comments, or are we just talking about that scene where Cameron was looking at the screen and laughing at the comments Yo-Yo had put in the code?


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## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

The first C compiler was written in 1979. By K&R (you know, of C and Unix fame?). So yes, there were C compilers back then. They were nowhere near as sophisticated as today's compilers, though. In fact, I think when you bought the IBM PC, you could buy a development kit that included C compilers and all that. 

"//" style comments didn't make it in ANSI C until C99 (although most compilers accepted them before then). ANSI C didn't come into play until 1989 (aka C89), so the code that Cameron wrote would NOT look like what she wrote - K&R is distinctly different.

The code we're talking about was getToken() that Cameron wrote on her Zenith computer. In fact, compilers of back then were often limiting identifiers to 8 characters or less.

As for Apple, yes, they were really successful. The Apple II, II+, IIe, etc. were wildly successful computers (1977, 1979, 1983), so back then, Apple was flush with cash.

A little history. I believe the original C compilers were quite a bear to use - prior to hard drives, when you wrote your code, you then invoked the compiler. The compiler ground for minutes loading stuff off disk, your source code, then running it through the compilation process. The compiler was too big to fit on a floppy disk, and midway through, you had to eject the disk, swap it with the second stage compiler, and resume the compiling process. Then you had to swap disks again to run the linker and finally you had a binary. (You had to have two floppy drives - your code was on the second drive, the compiler parts and DOS used the first floppy drive).

This was such a pain. Back in 1983, a little upstart called Borland released Turbo Pascal. What made it "Turbo" was that it provided an editor, compiler and linker on *one* disk, and compiled in RAM. When you finished coding and hit compile, it would take the code, run the compiler on the code and store the object code in RAM. It then linked the code in RAM (pascal at the time made it really easy to do a single-pass compilation). This made the Borland tools MUCH faster - "lines/sec" was proudly displayed during compilation, but the need to not swap floppies and suspend/resume compiling meant you were running in under a minute, versus ten minutes or more.

Turbo C accomplished similar things as well, but this was back in 1989 or so.


----------



## Johncv (Jun 11, 2002)

Church AV Guy said:


> I certainly remember playing ADVENTURE. The "terms" fe fi fo fu, and Plugh were a blast form the past. I remember decrypting the data file to read the text.


Whatever happen to all the Infocom games? They were fun. Can they be download from somewhere. Don't think anyone own them anymore.


----------



## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

here you go.requires Java http://pot.home.xs4all.nl/infocom/


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## Johncv (Jun 11, 2002)

betts4 said:


> I was kind of whizzing thru it and then suddenly there is Gordon soaking wet in a parking lot looking at a dead person.
> 
> Actually a lot of the show was like this - Head guy looking at billboard and changing appearance. Cameron looking frustrated and sulky then looking high. Gordon soaking wet and finding dead person. Head guy at home with Gordon's wife playing with kids the way Gordon should have been. Wife eating grapefruit with other guy because for women in the 80's there was the grapefruit diet.
> 
> Was there something about coding in there? I don't know. The drama is supposed to hold me since I know nothing of coding. It is failing. Yet, I don't have much else on my TiVo to watch so I keep going.


There a lot of "karma" going on the dead person who was electrocuted was the same person who sold Gordon the empty box for $80.00 so he could buy a Cabbage Patch doll for his kid. The entire episode was a game of "Adventure".


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## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

Johncv said:


> There a lot of "karma" going on the dead person who was electrocuted was the same person who sold Gordon the empty box for $80.00 so he could buy a Cabbage Patch doll for his kid. The entire episode was a game of "Adventure".


I thought the electrocuted person was a woman.


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

Gunnyman said:


> here you go.requires Java http://pot.home.xs4all.nl/infocom/


I installed Frotz on my ipad and play my old Infocom favorites that way.

(A few weeks ago someone mentioned HHGTTG, and I mentioned that I could play through the entire game in 15 minutes since I remembered the steps. Indeed, fired up Frotz and gave him a demo)


----------



## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

cheesesteak said:


> I thought the electrocuted person was a woman.


It was. He's hallucinating....


----------



## voripteth (Apr 9, 2003)

Cameron's suggestion of having the computer ask the user what they wanted to do gave me flashbacks to Clippy the paperclip from Office.


----------



## zalusky (Apr 5, 2002)

I remember in the 70s interacting with a program called Eliza. at the University of Minnesota. There was also a primitive talk program allowing multi user chatting. We had a lot of fun when we connected the two up and essentially had a virtual chatter. Many live people did not know they were talking to a phony person.


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## gschrock (Dec 28, 2001)

Worf said:


> A little history. I believe the original C compilers were quite a bear to use - prior to hard drives, when you wrote your code, you then invoked the compiler. The compiler ground for minutes loading stuff off disk, your source code, then running it through the compilation process. The compiler was too big to fit on a floppy disk, and midway through, you had to eject the disk, swap it with the second stage compiler, and resume the compiling process. Then you had to swap disks again to run the linker and finally you had a binary. (You had to have two floppy drives - your code was on the second drive, the compiler parts and DOS used the first floppy drive).
> 
> This was such a pain. Back in 1983, a little upstart called Borland released Turbo Pascal. What made it "Turbo" was that it provided an editor, compiler and linker on *one* disk, and compiled in RAM. When you finished coding and hit compile, it would take the code, run the compiler on the code and store the object code in RAM. It then linked the code in RAM (pascal at the time made it really easy to do a single-pass compilation). This made the Borland tools MUCH faster - "lines/sec" was proudly displayed during compilation, but the need to not swap floppies and suspend/resume compiling meant you were running in under a minute, versus ten minutes or more.
> 
> Turbo C accomplished similar things as well, but this was back in 1989 or so.


I remember as late as sometime in the late 80's my high school had a, hmm, Honeywell? mainframe machine that we used. We had about 12-16 terminals for it as I recall, but when we were compiling C code, you could only have one person in each phase of the compiling at a time (I think specifically, the compiling phase caused the problem, once you got to linking, it was ok for someone else to start compiling). We had to have little signs to put on our terminals that indicated who was currently compiling.


----------



## Gerryex (Apr 24, 2004)

markp99 said:


> They're losing me; almost out. I FF'd thru most of this one.


Yes, I FF'd through some parts also. Some of the scenes I had to roll my eyes it was so bad, and I'm not talking about any technical errors. Just some of the drama they decided to add (like the good guy engineer breaking the store's glass window to steal two dolls) is just stupid. I realize they had to add some drama to what would have been a very boring technical story but I, for one, think they picked some lousy examples!

I'll probably stick with it but its definitely not as good as I thought it would be!!

Gerry


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

kaszeta said:


> Heck, there was C++ around then, too (someplace I've got a really, really old version of Cfront, the C++' 'compiler' that was really a preprocessor, and did some gnarly name mangling to make all the C++ stuff work)


From wikipedia, it was only called C++ in/after 1983 (along with // comments coming in then), and the book came out in 1985.

So clearly too early for this show.


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

DevdogAZ said:


> A couple times in this show they've made comments about what a huge, successful company Apple is. I can't remember if it was this episode or a previous one, but someone mentioned that Apple spends millions each day just on catering, or something like that. Was Apple really all that successful in 1983?


The catering obviously was a joke.. but from wikipedia:
On December 12, 1980, Apple went public at $22 per share,[41] generating more capital than any IPO since Ford Motor Company in 1956 and instantly creating more millionaires (about 300) than any company in history.[42]

The citation is from Michael Malone's "Infinite Loop" book. (Just found a typo in his name on the wikipedia page.)

No, I'm not trying to just spout wikipedia at you, obviously go do other research, etc...


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Worf said:


> The first C compiler was written in 1979. By K&R (you know, of C and Unix fame?). So yes, there were C compilers back then. They were nowhere near as sophisticated as today's compilers, though. In fact, I think when you bought the IBM PC, you could buy a development kit that included C compilers and all that.


I said C compilers *FOR PERSONAL COMPUTERS*. You're 7 years too late, too.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Johncv said:


> Whatever happen to all the Infocom games? They were fun. Can they be download from somewhere. Don't think anyone own them anymore.


If you are just "downloading" them, you are pirating them.

There are several Infocom collections of games that you can buy.. You can play them with interpreters on practically any computer ever made..

People write new games with the 'Inform' compiler that produces games in the same format (Z-code) that Infocom games ended up in. Infocom games use a virtual machine.


----------



## Church AV Guy (Jan 19, 2005)

Church AV Guy said:


> I certainly remember playing ADVENTURE. The "terms" fee fie foe fu, and Plugh were a blast form the past. I remember decrypting the data file to read the text.





Johncv said:


> Whatever happen to all the Infocom games? They were fun. Can they be download from somewhere. Don't think anyone own them anymore.





Gunnyman said:


> here you go.requires Java http://pot.home.xs4all.nl/infocom/





kaszeta said:


> I installed Frotz on my ipad and play my old Infocom favorites that way.
> 
> (A few weeks ago someone mentioned HHGTTG, and I mentioned that I could play through the entire game in 15 minutes since I remembered the steps. Indeed, fired up Frotz and gave him a demo)





mattack said:


> If you are just "downloading" them, you are pirating them.
> 
> There are several Infocom collections of games that you can buy.. You can play them with interpreters on practically any computer ever made..
> 
> People write new games with the 'Inform' compiler that produces games in the same format (Z-code) that Infocom games ended up in. Infocom games use a virtual machine.


You could try this site:

http://www.web-adventures.org/


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## wouldworker (Sep 7, 2004)

Nobody caught the bug in her C code? The function declaration was something like:

char *getToken(char *str, char *endToken)

The function is supposed to return a pointer to the first character of the token and store a pointer to the last character of the token in endToken, which it does with the following line:

endToken = p;

This won't return the value to the caller. The function declaration should be:

char *getToken(char *str, char **endToken)

And the line that sets endToken should be:

*endToken = p;

I'm still watching for the computer stuff, but this show is really bad.


----------



## BluesFools (Apr 5, 2000)

You're assuming that the language she's using is the C we all know and love. But we've already decided it wasn't any version of C which existed in our world in 1983. It's some magical language that uses yet-to-be-invented ANSI syntax, along with bits of Bjarne Stroustrup's personal pre-C++, BCPL/"C with classes" imaginings. Who knows what the frood any of the syntax actually means or how it works.

Anyway, she deleted it all (using the backspace key all the way!) probably because she couldn't get it to work due to the bug you spotted.


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## gchance (Dec 6, 2002)

wouldworker said:


> Nobody caught the bug in her C code? The function declaration was something like:
> 
> char *getToken(char *str, char *endToken)
> 
> I'm still watching for the computer stuff, but this show is really bad.


With a nitpick this tiny, what would you consider good?

Greg


----------



## brianric (Aug 29, 2002)

gchance said:


> With a nitpick this tiny, what would you consider good?
> 
> Greg


Agree.


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

gchance said:


> With a nitpick this tiny, what would you consider good?


This reminds me somewhat of the sorts of things producers could get away with before HD, but after HD they were blindsided for a time. Like how they rarely had to worry about folks reading papers being handled by a character, but now since you can often read what's on them if you pause, nowadays they actually have to write relevant info for those papers casually being carried by a character instead of it being the days production notes or script pages, or gibberish.


----------



## wouldworker (Sep 7, 2004)

gchance said:


> With a nitpick this tiny, what would you consider good?


I didn't mean to imply that the show is bad because it got something like that wrong. It's bad because it's poorly written and mostly poorly acted. I like the computer stuff and there's not much else on so I watch anyway.


----------



## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

Hrm, no one's submitted it to the Source Code on TV and Films site yet?

(It's a site that tracks down where source code that appears in movies and TV actually came from.)


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Had only one "technical" nitpick I noticed in the 7/13 episode. She said "dee eee see", rather than "deck" for DEC. (The captions got it right.)

Also, the kids mentioned something like "cut up and bake cookies". Were they maybe talking about the Pillsbury cookie 'loaf' thing? At first I thought they maybe were talking about the _even lazier_ version nowadays where you AFAIK don't even have to cut them up, they're little lumps already.. (Yes, I'm not sure I remembered exactly what they said.) I'm very very nitpicking, just wondering if they had something out of the wrong time.

Not sure what exactly the guy was doing at the very end.. is he literally starting to go crazy?

BTW, the Cardiff Giant story:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_Giant


----------



## Family (Jul 23, 2001)

Forget the technical inconsistencies. Since when is blond girl & Joe in a tight enough relationship that she'd be crying over losing him? And that was totally out of character for her.


----------



## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

Family said:


> Forget the technical inconsistencies. Since when is blond girl & Joe in a tight enough relationship that she'd be crying over losing him? And that was totally out of character for her.


It's called "character development"....


----------



## ellinj (Feb 26, 2002)

According to Wikipedia this show is set in 1983, The ford taxi they took had a third brake light. They didn't start appearing till mandated in 1986.


----------



## SeanC (Dec 30, 2003)

mattack said:


> Not sure what exactly the guy was doing at the very end.. is he literally starting to go crazy?


I wasn't sure what was going on there they did seem to imply that he was either having a breakdown or was very VERY drunk.

The only other thing that it made me think of was Seymour Cray. He used to dig a hole in his back yard when working on problems, but it wasn't about him being crazy or having a breakdown it was just something he did to clear his mind.


----------



## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

ellinj said:


> According to Wikipedia this show is set in 1983, The ford taxi they took had a third brake light. They didn't start appearing till mandated in 1986.











1974 Valiant


----------



## markp99 (Mar 21, 2002)

That looks like the KIT 3rd break light I added to my wife's car, prior to the mandate on new vehicles


----------



## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

Yeah, I think some were showing up before the mandate, but certainly not many. For sure, the show made a boo-boo...I don't think cabs were using them before the mandate in '86...


----------



## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

Bierboy said:


> Yeah, I think some were showing up before the mandate, but certainly not many. For sure, the show made a boo-boo...I don't think cabs were using them before the mandate in '86...


IIRC taxis were the test bed for the third brake light (in NYC?) and it was the reduction in rear-end collisions from that test that got them mandated.

But I agree it was a goof in the show.


----------



## DeDondeEs (Feb 20, 2004)

I was thinking to myself a few episodes ago that this show was going to end with everyone having HIV. I am glad they are giving Cameron a more personable personality and business like look. The angst-ridden, punk-rock listening, messy hair, t-shirt wearing thing was getting very old.


----------



## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

Family said:


> Forget the technical inconsistencies. Since when is blond girl & Joe in a tight enough relationship that she'd be crying over losing him? And that was totally out of character for her.





Bierboy said:


> It's called "character development"....


Bingo, and Cameron is an odd bird for lots of reasons, so I wouldn't say she'd get attached in the usual ways, she has no set path.


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

Wasn't it just last episode (or maybe two episodes ago) when Cameron was cleaning her stuff out of Joe's apartment and wanted nothing to do with him? I'm actually a little confused about how close they seemed in this episode, given how rocky things were so recently. And so that makes it all the more strange that Cameron would seem to get emotional over the fact that Joe was (presumably) trying to get back with the designer guy.


----------



## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

DevdogAZ said:


> Wasn't it just last episode (or maybe two episodes ago) when Cameron was cleaning her stuff out of Joe's apartment and wanted nothing to do with him? I'm actually a little confused about how close they seemed in this episode, given how rocky things were so recently. And so that makes it all the more strange that Cameron would seem to get emotional over the fact that Joe was (presumably) trying to get back with the designer guy.


But that happened right before she talked to Joe's father. I think that chat changed her opinion of Joe to some extent....


----------



## Mr. Soze (Nov 2, 2002)

Cameron looked pretty good at the photo exhibit. Version 1.0, meh.


----------



## MPSAN (Jun 20, 2009)

I do not know why, but I am still watching. Will this end, or are they going to go after a 2nd season?!!


----------



## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

2 more eps in season one, then we'll have to wait and see. the ratings are lower than amc's last two cancellations.

it's not looking good:


----------



## vman41 (Jun 18, 2002)

They did it again with spelling out DEC instead of saying deck. Maybe it's some sort of inside joke with the director, or was one character mocking another getting it wrong?


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Hmm, I didn't notice the DEC thing this time.

I think this show is enjoyable.. The salesman guy is still a total scumbag, but once in a while he seems to infinitesimally redeem himself. (Can't you tell, Cameron is the only one whose name I remember.)

To misquote French Stewart's character on 3rd rock -- the guy's wife would be hotter if she didn't have the mole.


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

MPSAN said:


> I do not know why, but I am still watching. Will this end, or are they going to go after a 2nd season?!!


Me too. And honestly, I have no idea why.


----------



## SeanC (Dec 30, 2003)

I'm watching it because of the machine they built.


----------



## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

I love the show, but I'm preparing for the worst from AMC. I find Donna very appealing both in appearance and character. Caught me by surprise when she told Gordon


Spoiler



she was coming with him; I thought for sure she was leaving him....


----------



## SeanC (Dec 30, 2003)

In response to Bierboy's spoiler



Spoiler



I thought the same and was thrilled they didn't do that, I was surprised that she recommitted to the relationship.  I can't wait to see the 4 of them at COMDEX.


----------



## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

SeanC said:


> In response to Bierboy's spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> ...


In response to SeanC's spoiler



Spoiler



me, too! Looking forward to the final two episodes...


----------



## AeneaGames (May 2, 2009)

Bierboy said:


> I love the show, but I'm preparing for the worst from AMC. I find Donna very appealing both in appearance and character. Caught me by surprise when she told Gordon
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> ...





Spoiler



she found the ring he had bought for her which he told Cameron about, that made her change her mind...


----------



## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

AeneaGames said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> she found the ring he had bought for her which he told Cameron about, that made her change her mind...


But


Spoiler



that was years ago wasn't it? I wouldn't think that would change her mind now. Ack, I just read an ep review that reminded me Gordon had a new one made and gave it to her....


----------



## brianric (Aug 29, 2002)

Bierboy said:


> But
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> ...





Spoiler



She found the new ring that Gordon was planing on giving her after COMDEX.


----------



## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

brianric said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> She found the new ring that Gordon was planing on giving her after COMDEX.


Yeah that's what I remembered after reading an ep synopsis...


----------



## vman41 (Jun 18, 2002)

mattack said:


> Hmm, I didn't notice the DEC thing this time.


It was in minute 57 when John Bosworth was responding to Cameron's assertion that he lacked the technical prowess to hack into the bank.


----------



## SeanC (Dec 30, 2003)

vman41 said:


> It was in minute 57 when John Bosworth was responding to Cameron's assertion that he lacked the technical prowess to hack into the bank.





Spoiler



I think that was my favorite moment of the show so far actually. That the boss has come to believe in the project so much he is willing to break the law see it to fruition, and enlist the help of an underling, then when everything goes to ****, take the fall for the underling, and believably so. So it got dusty in here when she was hugging him... so what?


----------



## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

Now, was that printer demo the best or what?

I mean, a fruit company would rip it off a couple of years later with a very similar design.


----------



## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

did Apple really demo the Macinstosh in a hotel suite at Comdex prior to Steve Jobs doing a large public demo?

I just knew the young guy Cameron was talking to worked for Apple. And I was wondering when we would see something from them.


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

jsmeeker said:


> did Apple really demo the Macinstosh in a hotel suite at Comdex prior to Steve Jobs doing a large public demo?
> 
> I just knew the young guy Cameron was talking to worked for Apple. And I was wondering when we would see something from them.


The young guy Cameron was talking to worked for Xerox. He was just attending the Mac demo just like he'd attended the Cardiff demo the previous night.

Interesting how Cameron had spent so much time trying to develop an OS with a "soul" and then Joe and Gordon had to strip it in order to sell the product. Meanwhile, the Mac is introduced and has a "soul" and a graphical interface. Joe suddenly realizes how right Cameron was.

How stupid was Joe for telling the ComputerLand guy that he didn't want to negotiate until tomorrow? 70k units at $900 each is $63 million in revenue. And that's just from one customer and that's just his opening offer. For all we know, ComputerLand won't be interested in buying by tomorrow.


----------



## DeDondeEs (Feb 20, 2004)

DevdogAZ said:


> The young guy Cameron was talking to worked for Xerox. He was just attending the Mac demo just like he'd attended the Cardiff demo the previous night.


Yeah shouldn't that Xerox guy have been all PO'd when he saw the Mac and the mouse? 

I like all of the hippies they had standing around at the Mac demo including some Andy Warhol look alike.


----------



## desulliv (Aug 22, 2003)

Watching the Mac demo made me want to fire up my Macintosh SE collecting dust the corner. I wonder where I put those system disks?


Sent from my iPhone


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Worf said:


> I mean, a fruit company would rip it off a couple of years later with a very similar design.


rip it off?? It did remind me of the imagewriter, but heck, weren't a ton of printers like that back then?



jsmeeker said:


> did Apple really demo the Macinstosh in a hotel suite at Comdex prior to Steve Jobs doing a large public demo?


I *highly* doubt that. Was there ANY info about the Mac publicly before the Jan 23, 1984 demo? Sure, the Lisa had already shipped..

Even though that was kind of a "cool" scene, I think it jumps to the top of the annoying things about this show.

Sure, it's fiction, but if you take out their company and the product they made, it _seemed_ to be trying to be really close to our real history.. Alternate history but only slightly tweaked from real history.

Plus, I am pretty darn sure they were working on the ROMs pretty much down to the deadline, so a FALL 1983 demo with the fully bootable disk would have been WAY too early..

Also, the scummy salesman guy (I still don't remember any names besides Cameron) didn't realize that was just digitized audio? Even though there were some kinds of speaking programs at least vaguely in that era (I remember 'parrot' on Apple ][s, from a couple of years later).. I suspect that was digitized audio. I haven't tried to find proof at folklore.org though.



DevdogAZ said:


> Interesting how Cameron had spent so much time trying to develop an OS with a "soul" and then Joe and Gordon had to strip it in order to sell the product. Meanwhile, the Mac is introduced and has a "soul" and a graphical interface. Joe suddenly realizes how right Cameron was.
> 
> How stupid was Joe for telling the ComputerLand guy that he didn't want to negotiate until tomorrow? 70k units at $900 each is $63 million in revenue. And that's just from one customer and that's just his opening offer. For all we know, ComputerLand won't be interested in buying by tomorrow.


Yeah, that 'soul' stuff seemed so Jobs-ian.

I don't remember what the retail price they quoted, but could they (in the context of the show) even make the computer that cheap to sell wholesale? That sounded WAY too cheap to me.

Oh, I forgot one more thing -- I know I'm being far too practical, but I wish they had realized they could sell BOTH the stripped down/cheaper version and the higher end one with the amazing OS. That would even fit the "sports car" guy's comment about car sales.


----------



## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

mattack said:


> Also, the scummy salesman guy (I still don't remember any names besides Cameron) didn't realize that was just digitized audio? Even though there were some kinds of speaking programs at least vaguely in that era (I remember 'parrot' on Apple ][s, from a couple of years later).. I suspect that was digitized audio. I haven't tried to find proof at folklore.org though.


No, it wasn't digitized audio in the recorded-WAV sense... It was synthetic speech, which was available (Votrax) in the early 80's. A software version was part of the Macintosh launch demo (a cheat since it required more RAM than the first Mac could support):

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Intro_Demo.txt

(since you mentioned folklore.org...  )



> I don't remember what the retail price they quoted, but could they (in the context of the show) even make the computer that cheap to sell wholesale? That sounded WAY too cheap to me.


I think they said $900?!?! Yeah, way below cost...


----------



## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

No, the first demo of the Mac happened in January 1984, prior to that there was no demo. And it was held twice - the later one at a board meeting at a computer club. There's a video on YouTube where they go through the regular board agenda, then Jobs demos it for the second time followed by lots of other demos and other stuff that were part of the computer club meeting.

Apple didn't show it off at Comdex, and certainly not at Comdex 83. In fact, it wasn't even ready then.

It was digitized voice - Jobs nearly tossed the audio part out - they had a weekend to demonstrate something "cool" or Jobs to deep-six the DAC and amplifier.

And yes, it was real generated speech - it actually ran on a 512k Mac just for the demo.

Oh, and no way the Mac was that fast.


----------



## AeneaGames (May 2, 2009)

jautor said:


> No, it wasn't digitized audio in the recorded-WAV sense... It was synthetic speech, which was available (Votrax) in the early 80's. A software version was part of the Macintosh launch demo (a cheat since it required more RAM than the first Mac could support):
> 
> http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Intro_Demo.txt
> 
> (since you mentioned folklore.org...  )


Ahh yes, I remember SAM on the Atari XL! Fun times...


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

jautor said:


> I think they said $900?!?! Yeah, way below cost...


IBM introduced the Personal Computer on August 12, 1981. Pricing started at $1,565 for a configuration with 16K RAM, Color Graphics Adapter, and no disk drives.

So a $900 wholesale price was probably reasonable for how they're portraying everything. (An aside... by inflation, that $900 in 1983 represents about $2,100 today... so the price difference is like we might today feel about saving $1,000 on a purchase.)


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

mattack said:


> Oh, I forgot one more thing -- I know I'm being far too practical, but I wish they had realized they could sell BOTH the stripped down/cheaper version and the higher end one with the amazing OS. That would even fit the "sports car" guy's comment about car sales.


This. When the crowd asked the question about that, my first thought was to say, we will have both versions available. Since they know both work, why not?


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

Steveknj said:


> This. When the crowd asked the question about that, my first thought was to say, we will have both versions available. Since they know both work, why not?


Of course it's possible to sell two different models, but I think they made the right call. As the slimy thief guy said, they're in the compatible business. So the only specs that matter are compatibility, speed, and price. That's what will get them orders and move units. Adding in a premium version with the custom OS would just complicate and confuse things, and might actually jeopardize sales of the basic model.


----------



## tlc (May 30, 2002)

NorthAlabama said:


> 2 more eps in season one, then we'll have to wait and see. the ratings are lower than amc's last two cancellations.
> 
> it's not looking good:


Too bad about the ratings, I'm enjoying it. Screw historical inaccuracies. The COMDEX episode was great. Everyone had a role and a trick up their sleeve. Gordon telling (Salesguy) to put on his blue suit then taking on the printer guys... (Salesguy) getting the demo delayed... It was a really good hour of TV.

I can't guess where they'd take it with another season, though. The season finale should have the company revived and the boss reinstated with charges dropped. Then what?


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

Steveknj said:


> This. When the crowd asked the question about that, my first thought was to say, we will have both versions available. Since they know both work, why not?


Even crazier is that even this, what supposedly is the version that'll be manufactured (remember, it's a many, many moths thing to design and prototype a new system board based on what we were previously told), used a card for the additional memory -- and was apparently even completely removable. The whole thing screams to most anyone that it can be an option; it can even be an aftermarket add-on. And neither require most any sort of additional engineering work.


----------



## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

DevdogAZ said:


> Of course it's possible to sell two different models, but I think they made the right call. As the slimy thief guy said, they're in the compatible business. So the only specs that matter are compatibility, speed, and price.


But that's short term thinking... Yeah, you could argue it's taken a couple of decades for HUUUGE #s of people to agree, but people are finally wising up that "the clones" aren't where it's at. The OS and user interface were ways they were trying to go BEYOND just being a clone.



tlc said:


> Screw historical inaccuracies. The COMDEX episode was great.


Well, like I said, I call it slightly alternate history. So things can be somewhat fake in the story but still should hopefully *mostly* be true to the technology of the time.

...and even the wonderful OS really wasn't THAT advanced in some ways, since after they lobotomized the machine, it was "just" looking for a program with that name. (Also, there were programs, at least in the mid-late 1980s, BESIDES text adventures, that did try to use that kind of interface. My favorite was "Q&A", which I always called "The Infocom database program", since it would let you type whole sentences, and Infocom games was my point of reference.)


----------



## weaver (Feb 27, 2004)

The machine wasn't just "lobotomized," it was running a borrowed copy of MS-DOS.


----------



## Johncv (Jun 11, 2002)

AeneaGames said:


> Ahh yes, I remember SAM on the Atari XL! Fun times...


I remember my Amiga 1000 and the 2000, too bad Commodore f**k it up.


----------



## AeneaGames (May 2, 2009)

Johncv said:


> I remember my Amiga 1000 and the 2000, too bad Commodore f**k it up.


I've often wondered what if Atari and Commodore had merged instead of fighting each other...

Always found it funny that the people who designed the Atari 8-bit (400/800/XL/etc.) machine also designed the Amiga and the people who did the Commodore 64 also did the Atari ST


----------



## Johncv (Jun 11, 2002)

AeneaGames said:


> I've often wondered what if Atari and Commodore had merged instead of fighting each other...
> 
> Always found it funny that the people who designed the Atari 8-bit (400/800/XL/etc.) machine also designed the Amiga and the people who did the Commodore 64 also did the Atari ST


Not only that, Microsoft BASIC ended up on the Amiga because Jack Trimmilli (not sure of the spelling) CEO of Atari broke his contract with Bill Gates to install the "new" Windows OS on the Atari ST, would have been the first computer to have it. Also, Word, later to become Microsoft Word was an Amiga word processor.


----------



## AeneaGames (May 2, 2009)

Johncv said:


> Not only that, Microsoft BASIC ended up on the Amiga because Jack Trimmilli (not sure of the spelling) CEO of Atari broke his contract with Bill Gates to install the "new" Windows OS on the Atari ST, would have been the first computer to have it. Also, Word, later to become Microsoft Word was an Amiga word processor.


The reason Jack Tramiel (founder of Commodore and later CEO of Atari) didn't want to have Windows on the Atari ST is because MS had said it would take them 3 years to do so and they couldn't wait that long.

Am glad they went with GEM from Digital Research though...

As for Word being on the Amiga: I had never heard of it and can't find any evidence of it ever existing for the Amiga. The first version of MS Word was released in 1983 for Xenix. Later versions were released for MS DOS, Mac OS, Windows and even Atari ST...


----------



## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

dswallow said:


> IBM introduced the Personal Computer on August 12, 1981. Pricing started at $1,565 for a configuration with 16K RAM, Color Graphics Adapter, and no disk drives.
> 
> So a $900 wholesale price was probably reasonable for how they're portraying everything.


Not with a (however-big-it-is) LCD screen in those days...


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

jautor said:


> Not with a (however-big-it-is) LCD screen in those days...


The Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 had a 240x64 addressable pixel LCD screen, was introduced in 1983, and started around $1,000.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100

The TRS-80 Model 200 was introduced in 1984, had a 240x128 addressable pixel LCD display, and was priced at $999.

http://oldcomputers.net/trs200.html


----------



## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

dswallow said:


> The Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 had a 240x64 addressable pixel LCD screen, was introduced in 1983, and started around $1,000.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100
> 
> ...


I really wasn't trying to get into an argument about a fictional design in a fictional show... But comparing a PC-compatible (portable, even) real world unit of those days, which retailed ~$3500 (so let's give it a wholesale cost half that), and adding the cost of of large-ish, backlit LCD (not the calculator-style displays), and I don't think you get there...

But obviously technical / historical accuracy was lost long ago on the show - and I'm sorry I brought any of those topics up. And I wouldn't have if there hadn't been so much chatter about "how accurate" the show was at the open.

I mean, if their writers don't catch even simple things like the pronunciation of 
DEC (twice!), fact-checking anything else is pointless.


----------



## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

Well, the Toshiba T1100 (pretty much the first laptop, not luggable) cost $1900 at launch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_T1100

No, it's not a Giant. It's just an IBM PC XT clone with the same speed. And also released 3 years later in 1986. (Giant was "released" in 1983 since it was NOvember 1983 for Comdex).


----------



## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

Well, it's too bad the last two episodes were the best of the bunch - unless the ratings picked up it doesn't sound promising for another season.

I wonder if enough viewers were able to make the leap that they were talking about the Macintosh ad during the Super Bowl? They mentioned it as a game (Redskins vs. Raiders), but not as the Super Bowl(tm) - probably for the same reason! I guess the assumption is that the viewers all know that bit of history... 

And I figured something bad was going to happen to that first shipment - but I rolled my eyes at Joe burning it - really? At least that wasn't the final scene (it made me check the clock as I kinda expected that given the writing...)


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

I found it very odd that the burned shipment was never mentioned. No dealing with the fallout. No irate ComputerLand. No insurance claim. Just Gordon continuing to lead what appears to be a successful company. 

And I wonder if the writers had a good idea that renewal was unlikely before they wrote the finale. Because if they were planning on a second season, I don't think they'd have Gordon, Joe, and Cameron all doing completely different things. Because if there is a S2 and they're not all back together a at Cardiff, that would be pretty lame.


----------



## DeDondeEs (Feb 20, 2004)

I enjoyed this show. I hope it comes back next season, or perhaps Netflix could pick it up. That is funny how Cameron looks like the lady who throws the hammer at the video screen in the Mac commercial. I wondering that was planned or if someone just made that observation later while filming the show. 

One nitpick. Joe kept using the term "Killer App". I didn't think that term existed back then. According to Merriam Webster online it wasn't first used until 1988.


----------



## SeanC (Dec 30, 2003)

I'm a bit annoyed that the idea of a next machine wouldn't be mention to Joe. Ultimately there has to be a feature freeze or your product will never ship, so take all those great ideas burning a hole in your pocket and put them into your next design, which you are working on, right.... RIGHT?


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

I'm pretty sure the extent of the advance thought put into development for this show was akin to "hey, wouldn't it be neat to have a show about the startup of the compatible PC market?" Then someone else decided it needed intrigue and hacking and sex and backroom dealing so they fired everyone and hired the latest television writers coming out of DeVry.


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

DeDondeEs said:


> I enjoyed this show. I hope it comes back next season, or perhaps Netflix could pick it up. That is funny how Cameron looks like the lady who throws the hammer at the video screen in the Mac commercial. I wondering that was planned or if someone just made that observation later while filming the show.


Or they just read their reviews. Joe Poniewozik, the TV critic for Time, has been pointing out yesterday and today on Twitter that his review of the pilot episode pointed out that Cameron looked like the girl from the Apple ad.



DeDondeEs said:


> One nitpick. Joe kept using the term "Killer App". I didn't think that term existed back then. According to Merriam Webster online it wasn't first used until 1988.


It didn't bother me so much that he used that term, but that nobody seemed to have any concept of what it meant, including Joe. It was like Joe wanted to include a more engaging OS rather than a "killer app." But he'd already killed the OS created by Cameron (no idea why he couldn't keep that around for a future release), and he wanted a GUI like the Mac, but like Cameron's OS, that would likely require much more expensive hardware.

What Joe and the developers really should have been thinking about is that the vast majority of their customers would be businesses, so what application would be most beneficial to business people. And the obvious answer is a word processor. I don't know what the status of the various other word processing programs (WordPerfect, WordStar, Word, etc.) was in early 1984, but I'd think that if Joe really wanted to bundle an app that would make his PC indispensable, that's what they should have been working on.



SeanC said:


> I'm a bit annoyed that the idea of a next machine wouldn't be mention to Joe. Ultimately there has to be a feature freeze or your product will never ship, so take all those great ideas burning a hole in your pocket and put them into your next design, which you are working on, right.... RIGHT?


I thought Gordon should have mentioned that as well. Once they already ordered the spec machines, it was too late to be thinking of adding features to that release. Joe should have been focused on Giant 2.0, and Gordon should have been guiding Joe's energies in that direction.


----------



## ellinj (Feb 26, 2002)

I think Gordon summed it up well, they already had a killer app, and that was Lotus123, since they were building an IBM compatible. Their killer app was the ability to run apps that ran on IBM at a lower cost.


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

ellinj said:


> I think Gordon summed it up well, they already had a killer app, and that was Lotus123, since they were building an IBM compatible. Their killer app was the ability to run apps that ran on IBM at a lower cost.


In Gordon's mind, that was their killer app. He understood that they were competing in a market where price is the only real differentiator. But Joe was trying to differentiate the Giant from every other PC compatible, and make the Giant somehow more preferable than other compatibles on a factor other than price. This is why he wanted to sell it with an integrated screen. This is why he wanted it to be lighter than the competition. This is why he wanted it faster than the competition. This is why he wanted Cameron's proprietary OS. But ultimately, what he was able to sell was just a "soulless" compatible that happened to be slightly cheaper than the competition. So Joe is feeling very unfulfilled and wants to figure out a way to still sneak something into the deal that will keep Giant on top, even when some other competitor comes along and undercuts their price.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Someone else mentioned it, so I won't spoiler it.

I totally don't get why Joe burned the truck..

and I presume it was his _mother_ he was going to hike up to see? It was an hour drive, but he was going to hike? Even though they said it was on dirt roads & fire trails, something like that.. that seems like it would be an AWFULLY long hike, even if he were able to walk a more direct route there.

I think there were TWO technical nitpicks I saw in this episode. (Remember, I realize it's fiction... but my take is they've been _reasonably_ consistent with real history except for their new machine/OS.)

I don't think 2400 bits/second modems were common in the timeframe of this show (1984). In my very simplistic searching of wikipedia, I couldn't find ratification dates of the standards.. But I did find this:


> Voiceband modems generally remained at 300 and 1,200 bit/s (V.21 and V.22) into the mid-1980s. A V.22bis 2,400-bit/s system similar in concept to the 1,200-bit/s Bell 212 signaling was introduced in the U.S., and a slightly different one in Europe. .... By the late 1980s, most modems could support all of these standards and 2,400-bit/s operation was becoming common.


I think it was a 2400 bits/second modem that I got as a high school graduation present in 1987.. and that was after they had become somewhat cheaper.. So MAYBE they were available before that, but I don't think so.

You did hear modem sounds in the episode, and they ALSO talked about "9600 baud" and such. I won't nitpick the bits/s vs baud technical correctness issue, but they COULD have been talking about serial port bandwidth or somesuch. (I think not, since they were basically talking about CompuServe, etc..)

That's the only one that I remember that stuck out..


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## randian (Jan 15, 2014)

Was anybody doing massively multi-player online games in 1984, like Cameron wants to do? She specifically said "game", not "chat" or "meet" like AOL and CompuServe did.


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## Johncv (Jun 11, 2002)

randian said:


> Was anybody doing massively multi-player online games in 1984, like Cameron wants to do? She specifically said "game", not "chat" or "meet" like AOL and CompuServe did.


No, I think so, but Cameron want to build a "game machine", this is why she hire Gordon's wife. Would love to see this show renew just to see where this plot line go.


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## randian (Jan 15, 2014)

Johncv said:


> No, I think so, but Cameron want to build a "game machine"


Cameron said "order modem by mail", so I assume she meant an MMO of some sort, which I don't believe existed then.


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## Johncv (Jun 11, 2002)

randian said:


> Cameron said "order modem by mail", so I assume she meant an MMO of some sort, which I don't believe existed then.


I understand what you're saying, but I think the real reason she hire Gordon wife it to build a "game machine"


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## AeneaGames (May 2, 2009)

Johncv said:


> I understand what you're saying, but I think the real reason she hire Gordon wife it to build a "game machine"


She worked at a phone company, she had ideas how to make communications faster, improve on the existing modems, etc.

I think she wants to make better modems optimised for online gaming which can connect to regular PCs.

She was talking about (text) adventures stuff (among other things) so it would need a keyboard and a proper screen and especially since she was indeed saying they would mail the modems out to their customers the conclusion that she wants to make modems for online gaming seems slightly more correct...


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## SeanC (Dec 30, 2003)

Johncv said:


> No, I think so, but Cameron want to build a "game machine", this is why she hire Gordon's wife. Would love to see this show renew just to see where this plot line go.


I concur. I would love to see where this is going.


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## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

mattack said:


> Someone else mentioned it, so I won't spoiler it.
> 
> I totally don't get why Joe burned the truck..
> 
> ...


The modem sounds were too long from what I remember about 2400 baud modems. Granted it's been a long time, but I do remember the sounds being much quicker the slower the modem was. I don't think I had 2400 until very late 80s or early 90s. My first two modems (both for my Atari 800XL) were 300 and then 1200. The 1200 had both the propitiatory Atari serial port and a standard serial port so I was able to use it on my first PC clone.

Overall the series was disappointing to me, not because of the tech aspect, but because I felt that these disfunctional people could no way do ANYTHING successful. They were ALL too strongheaded in their thoughts and they couldn't get together on ONE thing of importance. The Lee Pace character was such a jerk that there's no way I'd let him lead a kindergarten recess let alone a potentially lucrative tech company. And his actions were really disparaging. The characters were so wishy washy in their loyalties that it just didn't seem real. One minute they are working as a team, and 5 minutes later they are all undercutting each other. It didn't make sense.

I think you could have made a compelling story about the same topic without the dumb dramatics. There were some good episodes. I thought the Comdex episode was well done, then it got stupid again this week.


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## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

mattack said:


> I don't think 2400 bits/second modems were common in the timeframe of this show (1984). In my very simplistic searching of wikipedia, I couldn't find ratification dates of the standards.. But I did find this:


V22.bis (2400 bp/s) was ratified in 1984. But there were a few models on the market before the finalization of the spec. Telebit also had a proprietary modem out that was over 18000 bp/s in 1984.


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

Steveknj said:


> The modem sounds were too long from what I remember about 2400 baud modems.


i noticed this, i remember the longer handshakes with 9600 baud error correcting modems in the early 90s.


> Overall the series was disappointing to me, not because of the tech aspect, but because I felt that these disfunctional people could no way do ANYTHING successful...The characters were so wishy washy in their loyalties that it just didn't seem real. One minute they are working as a team, and 5 minutes later they are all undercutting each other...I think you could have made a compelling story about the same topic without the dumb dramatics.


this sums up the series for me - so much potential, wasted on overly dramatic backstabbing...i can't remember such an unnecessarily antagonistic cast.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

midas said:


> V22.bis (2400 bp/s) was ratified in 1984. But there were a few models on the market before the finalization of the spec. Telebit also had a proprietary modem out that was over 18000 bp/s in 1984.


I had two Telebit modems. Felt like I had to get a mortgage to pay for them. It took me years after they were basically useless old tech to be able to throw them away just because of how much they cost.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

Steveknj said:


> Overall the series was disappointing to me, not because of the tech aspect, but because I felt that these disfunctional people could no way do ANYTHING successful. They were ALL too strongheaded in their thoughts and they couldn't get together on ONE thing of importance. The Lee Pace character was such a jerk that there's no way I'd let him lead a kindergarten recess let alone a potentially lucrative tech company. And his actions were really disparaging. The characters were so wishy washy in their loyalties that it just didn't seem real. One minute they are working as a team, and 5 minutes later they are all undercutting each other. It didn't make sense.


Agreed. As I was watching this final episode, I just kept thinking to myself that something has to go wrong, the Cardiff Giant can't actually be a success. That thinking is because of how the show was built and written. You never got a real sense that these people would succeed.


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## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

DevdogAZ said:


> Agreed. As I was watching this final episode, I just kept thinking to myself that something has to go wrong, the Cardiff Giant can't actually be a success. That thinking is because of how the show was built and written. You never got a real sense that these people would succeed.


And when they did come close to succeeding, one of them just blew it up, for no reason that makes any sense. This topic could be done so much better.


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## zalusky (Apr 5, 2002)

Personally I think Joe is Manic/Depressive. He was manic during the whole build up and when the goal was finally achieved it was empty to him. He goes into destruction mode and runs away. The final scene with him appears to be some new quest.

Gordon almost in a similar fashion was frustrated with having to fight against Joe and the machine. Once he got it all at the end he looked quite empty.

The girls seemed happy because they were in the startup and not the machine.


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## Craigbob (Dec 2, 2006)

A couple of thoughts on this show now that it's over for the season. Hopefully it comes back next year.

I look upon this as a parallel universe. Having lived through the '80s and being peripherally involved in the PC world at that time and watching the evolution of the PC clones etc... I found it interesting.

The Giant reminded me of a GRID laptop: https://www.google.com/search?q=grid+laptop&es_sm=122&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=LmniU--1O9XsoAT14YCYCQ&ved=0CEgQsAQ&biw=1801&bih=943










I'm as confused as everyone as to why Joe burned up the shipment and nothing more was said about it. Unless it harkens back to the same theme that he doesn't create anything but destroys everything he touches, i.e. the IBM data center.

Those old Hayes modems brought back memories.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Did they show Hayes modems? I don't remember seeing ATDT commands either.. but I seem to remember that I didn't freeze on one of the computer screens..

One other thing I forgot to mention was that they did a couple of time jumps in this episode that weren't really obvious at first. While I agree that sometimes a show can hit you over the head too much, this jumped months (?) a few times, and was only obvious minutes later after they discussed something that happened "in the past" (that we jumped over).


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## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

mattack said:


> Did they show Hayes modems? I don't remember seeing ATDT commands either.. but I seem to remember that I didn't freeze on one of the computer screens..


They did show a Hayes modem, I believe only once. I don't remember seeing any AT commands.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

mattack said:


> One other thing I forgot to mention was that they did a couple of time jumps in this episode that weren't really obvious at first. While I agree that sometimes a show can hit you over the head too much, this jumped months (?) a few times, and was only obvious minutes later after they discussed something that happened "in the past" (that we jumped over).


Yes, this episode took place over the course of many months. The previous episode at Comdex took place in November 1983. Then this episode started in December 83 when we saw Gordon and Donna with a Christmas tree in their house. Then it jumped to January 23, 1984 when Joe had just taped the Super Bowl the night before and somebody made the comment about needing six weeks to get the shipment of prototypes. Then we saw them receive the shipment of prototypes so that was apparently six weeks later and then we saw them with the full shipment ready to go to the customer, so that was probably several weeks or even a couple months after the prototypes were received. And then the final scenes with Gordon running the company without Joe appeared to be several months after the truck was torched. So overall, this episode may have taken place over anywhere from 5 to 10 months.


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## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

DevdogAZ said:


> Yes, this episode took place over the course of many months. The previous episode at Comdex took place in November 1983. Then this episode started in December 83 when we saw Gordon and Donna with a Christmas tree in their house. Then it jumped to January 23, 1984 when Joe had just taped the Super Bowl the night before and somebody made the comment about needing six weeks to get the shipment of prototypes. Then we saw them receive the shipment of prototypes so that was apparently six weeks later and then we saw them with the full shipment ready to go to the customer, so that was probably several weeks or even a couple months after the prototypes were received. And then the final scenes with Gordon running the company without Joe appeared to be several months after the truck was torched. So overall, this episode may have taken place over anywhere from 5 to 10 months.


Speaking of taping the Super Bowl. Perhaps on not remembering the time correctly, but, he referred to taping the Super Bowl on his VHS. I thought by then VHS had pretty much won the war with betamax and we simply just referred to them as VCRs? I don't recall anyone calling it a "VHS". It was about the time I bought my first VHS VCR, maybe a few months later. I know I had it to record the 1984 Olympics (still have the tapes!).


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## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

So, what's next?


If there is a season two, do we see Cameron created "Facebook"?


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## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

Well, the video format wars were resolved by 1984, but there was still a huge installed base of Beta players and recorders so while the format was dying, it wasn't dead.

So using VHS would be appropriate - plus I think that term was used instead of VCR until the 90s or so purely because Beta stuff was still being cleared out.


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## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

Worf said:


> Well, the video format wars were resolved by 1984, but there was still a huge installed base of Beta players and recorders so while the format was dying, it wasn't dead.
> 
> So using VHS would be appropriate - plus I think that term was used instead of VCR until the 90s or so purely because Beta stuff was still being cleared out.


My memory may be fading, but I don't recall anyone saying they recorded on VHS (and make a point about it, unless it was with their snooty, early adopter friend  ) I think by that time, we just say we recorded it and didn't make the point of it being VHS. I'm thinking here, the writers were just trying to make the point that they were using VHS as opposed to how it was. (Much like saying Dee Eee Cee for DEC, which nobody said in the day.

By the time I bought my VHS


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

Steveknj said:


> My memory may be fading, but I don't recall anyone saying they recorded on VHS (and make a point about it, unless it was with their snooty, early adopter friend  ) I think by that time, we just say we recorded it and didn't make the point of it being VHS. I'm thinking here, the writers were just trying to make the point that they were using VHS as opposed to how it was. (Much like saying Dee Eee Cee for DEC, which nobody said in the day.
> 
> By the time I bought my VHS


Gordon is a tech person, it wouldn't have been out of line for him to have a VHS and Beta VCR, I can certainly see him saying " I recorded it on the VHS" to Donna, and I can see young scriptwriters who have never owned a VCR writing the line thinking they were doing a good thing.


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## AeneaGames (May 2, 2009)

dianebrat said:


> Gordon is a tech person, it wouldn't have been out of line for him to have a VHS and Beta VCR, I can certainly see him saying " I recorded it on the VHS" to Donna, and I can see young scriptwriters who have never owned a VCR writing the line thinking they were doing a good thing.


But it was Joe who recorded it and said it to Gordon.

At least that's how I remember it, my memory isn't what it used to be so I could be mistaken.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

mattack said:


> ...I think there were TWO technical nitpicks I saw in this episode. (Remember, I realize it's fiction... but my take is they've been _reasonably_ consistent with real history except for their new machine/OS.)
> 
> I don't think 2400 bits/second modems were common in the timeframe of this show (1984). In my very simplistic searching of wikipedia, I couldn't find ratification dates of the standards.. But I did find this:
> 
> ...


You get kudos from me for the bps vd. BAUD fact. They all are 1200bps.

I bought a USR Courier 2400 around 1985, and that led to me working at USR.

2400 was pretty much a direct speed bump from 1200. 9600 was a stretch, and 56K, which never was 56K, was the mutiny from USR.

Not to mention that the modem technology came from the research and development at U.S. Robotics, Telebit and Hayes, not from such as Southwestern Bell and, and BTW, phone company supervisors don't put their desk in the NOISY data center, much less directly in front of the NOISY Liebert air conditioner.

One thrill I had was John Bosworth pretty much getting right the vector for a dial-up hack, "You could Control-C break out and be in a session in an account with all kinds of useful privileges and KERMIT..."

The show was way too much of a writing loop: "Cameron wants to innovate. Joe and/or Gordon make her back off. Joe wants to innovate. Gordon makes him back off. They innovate. They back the innovations out. They pout."


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

jsmeeker said:


> So, what's next?
> If there is a season two, do we see Cameron created "Facebook"?


Per the usual technical garf, they may be leaning for Cameron to have created CompuServe or AOL, neither of which came to be that way.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

DevdogAZ said:


> ... and somebody made the comment about needing six weeks to get the shipment of prototypes. Then we saw them receive the shipment of prototypes so that was apparently six weeks later and then we saw them with the full shipment ready to go to the customer, so that was probably several weeks or even a couple months after the prototypes were received. And then the final scenes with Gordon running the company without Joe appeared to be several months after the truck was torched. So overall, this episode may have taken place over anywhere from 5 to 10 months.


AND the shipment of 1000s of Giants to Computerland would not come from the Cardiff offices. They were made by a vendor.

At the end of my catching up binge I 30% felt I would like that time of my life back.

The show was obviously low budget - with all cheap interior sets - and and low quality writing. Only the tech nostalgia and pretty women kept me watching.


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## midas (Jun 1, 2000)

MikeAndrews said:


> You get kudos from me for the bps vd. BAUD fact. They all are 1200bps.
> 
> I bought a USR Courier 2400 around 1985, and that led to me working at USR.
> 
> 2400 was pretty much a direct speed bump from 1200. 9600 was a stretch, and 56K, which never was 56K, was the mutiny from USR.


I too worked for USR, so I need to clarify. 56K was 56K, just not for U.S. to U.S. connections. But it did work at 56K in some countries.


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## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

mattack said:


> Did they show Hayes modems? I don't remember seeing ATDT commands either.. but I seem to remember that I didn't freeze on one of the computer screens..


Hayes modem yes, lights are wrong on it since it should be online and thus have CD and possible TX/RX lights lit showing transmission in progress.

2400 sound is wrong - the actual modem negotiation you heard was a 56k modem connecting. The easy way to tell that is only 56k modems do the distinctive double ping-pong as each end tests impulse response (since the equalization is often asymmetric) followed by a level and band test to see how much pre-emphasis is needed. The goal is to basically figure out the phone line so the perfect signal arrives at the telephone company (where it's converted to digital and hauled to the other end as a pure digital signal). The other end does the same.

At 33.6k and below, the negotiations were basically just a bunch of line noise (done at 300bps - when it goes quiet is when the modems switch to higher speed modulation). 56k was the top you could have due to bit-robbing at the telephone company and to get that required the modem to precisely identify the line.

(Personally, I had a USR v.Everything Courier modem - bought it as a 28.8K modem, it retired as a 56k).


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## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

Worf said:


> Hayes modem yes, lights are wrong on it since it should be online and thus have CD and possible TX/RX lights lit showing transmission in progress.
> 
> 2400 sound is wrong - the actual modem negotiation you heard was a 56k modem connecting. The easy way to tell that is only 56k modems do the distinctive double ping-pong as each end tests impulse response (since the equalization is often asymmetric) followed by a level and band test to see how much pre-emphasis is needed. The goal is to basically figure out the phone line so the perfect signal arrives at the telephone company (where it's converted to digital and hauled to the other end as a pure digital signal). The other end does the same.
> 
> ...


I knew the modem sounds were wrong. While I've never worked for a modem company, I ran a computer BBS and used modems for other work related things and the sound of modems became second nature to me, I could tell almost immediately if the modem was having connection issues just by listening to it. 2400 modems and blow would connect within a couple of seconds, 56k which that sounded like to me as well, definitely handshaked as you described and took 5 or 6 seconds to connect.


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

Yeah, the fine art of diagnosing modem connections based upon handshake is getting to be a lost art.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Yeah, petitions (esp online ones) rarely do anything.. but heck..
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/253/...ire-the-best-new-television-show-this-season/


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## Johncv (Jun 11, 2002)

mattack said:


> Yeah, petitions (esp online ones) rarely do anything.. but heck..
> http://www.thepetitionsite.com/253/...ire-the-best-new-television-show-this-season/


I never understood how are the petitions deliver and how do petitions sites like this make any money (clearly they are doing this to make money)?


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## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

kaszeta said:


> Yeah, the fine art of diagnosing modem connections based upon handshake is getting to be a lost art.


Hell, I always knew when I had a bad phone line just from the way the modem handshake went. And over time, I knew how the phone line should perform - always funny when I saw it connect at a speed higher than what I knew it could handle (it would connect at 53k, but I knew the lines could handle maybe 46k) which would be true when I finish logging in and discover that the modem was retraining again.

Sometimes it got so bad that the modem could do nothing but give up and drop the line.

Anyhow, I think Joe is looking for a legacy. When the Giant ended up being just another PC compatible without a "killer app" or the "friendly OS", well, that's just a footnote. No one would remember it in a few years. But if it had a killer app or a friendly OS that was different, well, people would be talking about it for years down the road. I mean, think about the Mac - it didn't matter that few people owned one (only 1 in 10), but everyone knows it.

Well, same thing happens with Joe McMillan - he made a great portable computer, but in the end, it's just a PC. Nothing special. So he set fire to the truck like he set fire to the datacenter - in the end, the project was done, the product was complete, but there's nothing noteworthy. I mean, he didn't want to get rid of the friendly OS, and he wanted to ship a killer app. But neither happened.


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## Gerryex (Apr 24, 2004)

NorthAlabama said:


> this sums up the series for me - so much potential, wasted on overly dramatic backstabbing...i can't remember such an unnecessarily antagonistic cast.


I agree 100%!

Gerry


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

I'm guessing why the weirdness with "Gordon" shaving the beard.
My guess: When they knew the show wasn't going to be picked up for another season, they brought the cast back to shoot some final scenes.

"Gordon" the actor, musta shaved the beard. If you recall, it went kinda strange where a bearded Gordon asked Donna how he looked in the suit, cut to: Gordon at the dinner sans Beard. Methinks they had the first scene in the can and added the shaved version so they could shoot Gordon alone running Cardiff. This show is so low budget they probably didn't even contemplate giving Gordon a fake beard.

ALSO Gordon is the annoying neighbor on those new Don't Touch my (Dodge) Dart commercials. (HINT: He's the white guy.) And on those, has starts off with no beard in the one they set up with the Dart in the garage, but he has a beard in the _later_ commercial with the bird house!

Make up your mind, dude. Maybe he has the beard or not bases on auditions he's doing, but those commercials pay so well he should abide. I'll bet he makes more for those commercials than for Halt and Catch Fire season.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

MikeAndrews said:


> I'm guessing why the weirdness with "Gordon" shaving the beard.
> My guess: When they knew the show wasn't going to be picked up for another season, they brought the cast back to shoot some final scenes.
> 
> "Gordon" the actor, musta shaved the beard. If you recall, it went kinda strange where a bearded Gordon asked Donna how he looked in the suit, cut to: Gordon at the dinner sans Beard. Methinks they had the first scene in the can and added the shaved version so they could shoot Gordon alone running Cardiff. This show is so low budget they probably didn't even contemplate giving Gordon a fake beard.


No, you missed something in there. Gordon was trying to look suave and sophisticated for the party. He came out in the suit and wasn't satisfied with how he looked. For the whole season up until then, he'd been the shlubby engineer while Joe was the slick, stylish face of the company. So Gordon decided he wanted to stop being the shlubby engineer and wanted to start being the slick executive. So he tells Donna, "Give me ten minutes." Then they cut to the party where he's clean shaven.


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## leeherman (Nov 5, 2007)

MikeAndrews said:


> <SNIP>
> ALSO Gordon is the annoying neighbor on those new Don't Touch my (Dodge) Dart commercials. (HINT: He's the white guy.) And on those, has starts off with no beard in the one they set up with the Dart in the garage, but he has a beard in the _later_ commercial with the bird house!


Nope, unless there's a Dart commercial I haven't seen (possible), the annoying neighbor is one of the actors from New Girl. I've seen two or three variations and they all had the same two actors.

LH


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

leeherman said:


> Nope, unless there's a Dart commercial I haven't seen (possible), the annoying neighbor is one of the actors from New Girl. I've seen two or three variations and they all had the same two actors.
> 
> LH


Yes, if we're talking about this commercial:






then that's definitely Jake Johnson and not Scoot McNairy.


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

is the show canceled? I haven't heard either way. It finally got interesting at the end. I got really sick of the relationship stuff.


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## mwhip (Jul 22, 2002)

b_scott said:


> is the show canceled? I haven't heard either way. It finally got interesting at the end. I got really sick of the relationship stuff.


Not cancelled and not renewed....still waiting to hear.


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## betts4 (Dec 27, 2005)

How did it end?


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

betts4 said:


> How did it end?


Stupidly.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

I thought it ended entertainingly!


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## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

It ended with a bunch of unresolved threads - Cameron's company, Cameron's interactions with the phone company, Joe's trip to the mountains, what's the next product, no one wondering about the missing shipment, etc.

It ends like it was 0.75 of a season - the main thread's been resolved, but there's still so many more.


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## Hunter Green (Feb 22, 2002)

"How will this end?"
"In fire."

So that's what Kosh was talking about.


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

mattack said:


> I thought it ended entertainingly!


Agreed. Enjoyed nearly every episode...


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

Worf said:


> It ended with a bunch of unresolved threads - Cameron's company, Cameron's interactions with the phone company, Joe's trip to the mountains, what's the next product, no one wondering about the missing shipment, etc.
> 
> It ends like it was 0.75 of a season - the main thread's been resolved, but there's still so many more.


Agreed. I only really started caring in the last two eps.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Worf said:


> It ended with a bunch of unresolved threads - Cameron's company, Cameron's interactions with the phone company, Joe's trip to the mountains, what's the next product, no one wondering about the missing shipment, etc.
> 
> It ends like it was 0.75 of a season - the main thread's been resolved, but there's still so many more.


Unresolved? Umm, those are called cliffhangers, or continuing plot for (the likely nonexistent) next season?

I don't expect every season of a show to have a pat ending.


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## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

That was a cliffhanger? The main plot's been resolved, and all the loose threads are just minor threads that won't carry it for another season. I'm certainly not antsy to see another season just to have those resolved.

No, if they wanted a real cliffhanger, they could've had the shipping truck drive off, halt and catch fire (see what I did there?). The scene closes with Joe stepping out of the burning truck.

Now THAT would be a cliffhanger - WTF just happened here...?


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

They'll be back!
http://deadline.com/2014/08/halt-and-catch-fire-renewed-for-second-season-amc-822134/


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

Interesting. I wonder if Lee Pace will be back and if so, how they'll write his character back in. Since we don't know whether Gordon knows it was Joe that burned the shipment, maybe Joe could just show back up after his walkabout and would still be in good standing.


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

dianebrat said:


> They'll be back!
> http://deadline.com/2014/08/halt-and-catch-fire-renewed-for-second-season-amc-822134/


This is excellent news....


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## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

DevdogAZ said:


> Interesting. I wonder if Lee Pace will be back and if so, how they'll write his character back in. Since we don't know whether Gordon knows it was Joe that burned the shipment, maybe Joe could just show back up after his walkabout and would still be in good standing.


To me, this is a show that needs to start season two a few years after season 1. Maybe at the start of the internet age (early 90s perhaps?) I don't think there's anything interesting to talk about with clones and even that company. It could start say, in 1992, with the new software company that was started by Cameron now a successful dot com company, maybe an early ISP, or browser developer like Netscape, or an AOL type company. Lee Pace's character could still be trying to find his niche, maybe he's a recovering alcoholic trying to get back "in the game" (someone like Don Draper who I always thought the character was trying to be like). Gordon could be running Cardiff and working on some new amazing OS to compete with Windows and Mac. I think doing that would give this a fresh look instead of going back to the same stale story that's been told already.


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## brianric (Aug 29, 2002)

Bierboy said:


> This is excellent news....


:up::up::up:


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Worf said:


> That was a cliffhanger? The main plot's been resolved, and all the loose threads are just minor threads that won't carry it for another season. I'm certainly not antsy to see another season just to have those resolved.


One of the main characters at a completely different company isn't a cliffhanger?


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## Johncv (Jun 11, 2002)

dianebrat said:


> They'll be back!
> http://deadline.com/2014/08/halt-and-catch-fire-renewed-for-second-season-amc-822134/


Great, cool news.  :up::up::up:


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## Johncv (Jun 11, 2002)

DevdogAZ said:


> Interesting. I wonder if Lee Pace will be back and if so, how they'll write his character back in. Since we don't know whether Gordon knows it was Joe that burned the shipment, maybe Joe could just show back up after his walkabout and would still be in good standing.


I was under the impression that Joe is going trespass and break into someone bussiness. I think he had a map, and knew where he was going.

I think the story now is going to be about Cameron and Gordon's wife and what they develope.

They will need Gordon's company in order to sell it.

Everyone will need whatever Joe steal.

Season Two.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

Johncv said:


> I was under the impression that Joe is going trespass and break into someone bussiness. I think he had a map, and knew where he was going.
> 
> I think the story now is going to be about Cameron and Gordon's wife and what they develope.
> 
> ...


He pulled up to that gas station and asked about the Fiske Observatory (so he's in Colorado). During the conversation, they mentioned a woman who lives up there and only comes into town occasionally for supplies. We get the sense that Joe knows the woman, probably his mother or a former wife/girlfriend. He's not going there to steal something. I think he's on a bit of a walkabout to do some soul searching and figure out who he is and what he wants because clearly the track he was on leading up to that didn't accomplish what he had hoped. Clearly he thinks that visiting this woman will help him with this quest to find himself.

I'm just not sure how they re-incorporate him back into the show in S2. Gordon isn't going to want Joe anywhere near Cardiff. Cameron and Donna, assuming they know what Joe did, aren't going to want Joe anywhere near their company. So is S2 about Joe competing against Gordon and/or Cameron?


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

I thought they made it clear that it was his mother he was going to look for.


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## Squeak (May 12, 2000)

mattack said:


> I thought they made it clear that it was his mother he was going to look for.


How did they make that clear?


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

mattack said:


> I thought they made it clear that it was his mother he was going to look for.


No. They simply mentioned a woman lived at the observatory and it seemed clear that Joe knew the woman and that's why he was going to the observatory. Given all the stuff throughout the season about his relationship with his mom, I think we can speculate that he's going to see his mother. But it was never stated.


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## b_scott (Nov 27, 2006)

DevdogAZ said:


> Interesting. I wonder if Lee Pace will be back and if so, how they'll write his character back in. Since we don't know whether Gordon knows it was Joe that burned the shipment, maybe Joe could just show back up after his walkabout and would still be in good standing.


could be that he'll end up joining Cam's side and then it'll be them vs. the IBM machine, making the next "apple"


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

Squeak said:


> How did they make that clear?


Well, that's why I said I "thought". I don't have the recording anymore.. I just remembered that while watching it, it seemed _to me_ that he was going to find his mother.


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## mwhip (Jul 22, 2002)

I liked how it ended and the concept of the "girls vs. the boys" next season is a great premise to me.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

mwhip said:


> I liked how it ended and the concept of the "girls vs. the boys" next season is a great premise to me.


How would it be "girls vs. boys?" I see the "girls" part since Donna joined Cameron's company. But Joe quite literally burned his bridge with Gordon and Cardiff, so I'm not sure how they're going to get Joe and Gordon back on the same team.


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## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

I finally spun through the last four episodes. I actually liked them. I guess I'm keeping the SP through next year.


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## mrizzo80 (Apr 17, 2012)

Season 1 of this show is streaming on Netflix now. It probably just landed on Netflix since TiVo search doesn't show the Netflix icon yet.

I'm looking forward to Season 2 this summer (May 31 premiere).


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