Subj : HCF Halt and Catch Fire
To   : AUGUST ABOLINS
From : Mike Powell
Date : Thu May 14 2020 17:16:00

>I dragged myself through episode 3 (1st season).  There was stuff in there that
>seemed unnecessary and a bit of a distraction.

There is a lot of stuff like, too.  IIRC, it almost did not come back for a
second season.

>I think it was in episode 2 that the ex-IBM guy convinces the engineer to use h
>s own money to buy the computer equipment for reverse engineering. I found that
>unrealistic.  The ex-IBM guy is surely still quite wealthy (fancy car, fancy ap
>rtment, fancy clothes, etc..) Yet, it is the family-man who has to come up with
>the money for the computer equipment? That made little sense.

If I remember right, it makes sense later.

>The production values feel like a low-budget Canadian series.  I can look past
>hat and focus on the tech/engineering elements.  I read that things pick up nic
>ly in ep 4 and onward.

Yes, it does do that.  It may have been a partially Canadian production,
come to think of it.  A lot of the US cable shows are.

>Except for using the early unix-based networked computers on campus, my first u
>e of a PC was a genuine IBM PC in my first professional job in 1993.  But even
>here, I primarily worked with a DEC VAX 11 machine.  I had a shared terminal pa
>ked just outside my cubicle intended to be split between 5 people.  Honestly, I
>can't remember what I needed to use it for except to lookup or print some basic
>reports based on parts inventory.  Boring!  But I did help some people "fix" th
>ir report programs when they needed a special feature.

I got an 8088 XT clone around Christmas, 1987.  My first on the job
experience with computers would have come about a year later, working in a
library, with some terminal system that ran on who knows what. :)

>A couple years later, I had a 286/AT AMD based.  I started goofing around with
>RBBS BBS software on that.

RBBS is supposedly open source now (may have been then, too).  I have
thought about playing around with it some one day, but never seem to get
around to it.

Mike

 * SLMR 2.1a * My wife made me join a bridge club...I jump next week.
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