Halt And Catch Fire Series (Amazon)

[g5000]

I could have sworn I reviewed this show before.

This is the best TV show no one watched.

Halt and Catch Fire is a computing term for a set of instructions which causes a computer to seize up, requiring a restart.

This show fictionalizes the start of the personal computer industry in the 1980s.

IBM dominated the market at the time. This is about the team which breaks their monopoly. Software, hardware, nerds.

I know that might sound dull, but it isn't. Far from it.

It is difficult to explain just how good this is. I particularly liked Mackenzie Davis's acting.

Unfortunately, it did not have a wide audience. I watched this several years ago and just decided I wanted to buy the box set of all four seasons.

I discovered only the first two seasons are on DVD. I guess AMC decided the low viewership didn't warrant releasing all four seasons on DVD.

All four seasons are on Amazon Prime Video, though.

Please enjoy. You won't regret it.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

We loved the show, especially if you were a computer geek back in the day.
If not, it is still a great show.

 

[g5000]

We loved the show, especially if you were a computer geek back in the day.
If not, it is still a great show.

I was a computer geek back in the day. I was seriously addicted to Bulletin Board Systems. I had stacks and stacks of those giant floppy disks, loaded with programs I downloaded from the BBS. I had hundreds of lists of other people's phone numbers, and a huge phone bill.

Back then, you had to work exclusively with DOS and write your own .bat files. There were no Windows or internet.

Back then, a 20MB hard drive was the shit.

Good times.

So, yeah, that contributed to my love of this show.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

I was a computer geek back in the day. I was seriously addicted to Bulletin Board Systems. I had stacks and stacks of those giant floppy disks, loaded with programs I downloaded from the BBS. I had hundreds of lists of other people's phone numbers, and a huge phone bill.

Back then, you had to work exclusively with DOS and write your own .bat files. There were no Windows or internet.

Back then, a 20MB hard drive was the shit.

Good times.

So, yeah, that contributed to my love of this show.

Same here. I bought a book of simple games that you had to program in order to play.
One I remember the most was a little "canoe" that would travel down a stream that would get smaller as you went, and faster. The object was to not touch the edges. In order to do that, you had to copy like 8 pages of code. Not words, code. And, of course, zero mistakes.
it took hours. And I loved the process.
The coolest thing I did was write an "e-card". You will remember that back then you could split the screen where graphics can appear in the top half, and text in the bottom half. I wrote a program that depending on how this girl I liked answered questions - what would happen on the screen. I thought it was magnificent. She thought it was "neat" for about 2 seconds.
I broke up with her.
True story