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Halt and Catch Fire

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I just finished watching the first episode of the new AMC show called Halt and Catch Fire.  The name comes from an old computer instruction which would stop the machine immediately.  The show follows a small Texas company trying to build IBM PC Clones.  The company and the people are fictitious, but it seems to parallel a lot of what Compaq went through in the early 80s.

I’ve always been a sucker for computing history.  I enjoy movies like Pirates of Silicon Valley and The Social Network.  I like Triumph of the Nerds.  I am happy to say that I really enjoyed the pilot episode.  It does a good job with the technical aspects of the show.  There is a scene where they are reverse engineering the ROM chip and it appears quite authentic to the way this work would be done.  They do a good job explaining things without getting dull.  They went out of their way to be accurate.  This article in Wired points out the lengths they went to in order to be period authentic.  It shows. 

If you have any interest in computing history or just like techy tv shows, give Halt and Catch Fire a try.

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  • Anonymous
    June 12, 2014
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