Subj : Re: Halt and Catch Fire
To   : Dumas Walker
From : Moondog
Date : Fri May 06 2022 10:44:00

  Re: Re: Halt and Catch Fire
  By: Dumas Walker to POINDEXTER FORTRAN on Wed May 04 2022 04:04 pm

 > > Compaq reverse engineered the PC BIOS much in the way they described in
 > > HACF, although with some theatrical license on the show. I always thought
 > > that Cardiff was supposed to be Compaq, seeing as they were both in Texas
 > > and both battling IBM in the marketplace.
 > 
 > > Compaq didn't come from a mainframe background, though.
 > 
 > IIRC, Compaq also didn't used to sell radio kits, either, but part of it
 > could have been based off of what they did.
 > 
 > 
 >  * SLMR 2.1a * She cried away her life since she fell off the cradle!!
 > 
Columbia Data Products  was the first company to use the clean room technique 
to create an IBM compatible BIOS, and they were already producing Z-80
systems that ran CP/M.  Compaq was the second company to clean room a BIOS in a 
way IBM couldn't defeat.  Cardiff is an alagam of several companies trying to
exploit the IBM compatible loophole.  Some of the Cardiff Giant's
technologies and enhacements were based on several smaller companies designs
from that period.  Mutiny was inspired by Playnet, and player avatar section
was inspired by Quantumlink and Lucasfilm's Caribe with slight changes.  

That is what made the show interesting.  The show is full of honorable
mentions and several red herrings regarding the direction the show was moving
in.  There was also the Dell inspired path which took a strange turn

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