Halt and Catch Fire is a fictionalization inspired by Compaq. Compaq was created in 1982 by three guys who were dissatisfied with their jobs at Texas Instruments, so they made the first IBM PC clones. Famously, Compaq used a ?clean room reverse-engineering? ? that is, they spent $1 million dollars on talented engineers to write code to mimic the IBM PC BIOS, and they did it in such a way that they could prove the engineers never looked at the original source code. Since they could prove they hadn?t seen the source, they couldn?t be sued for ripping off the code. Compaq then offered PCs that were not only cheaper, but that often had even more features than other PCs. Almost overnight, Compaq revolutionized the PC market, and they would be a major player in personal computing for the next twenty years.
In Halt and Catch Fire, it?s mid to late 1983, and disgruntled IBM salesman Joe MacMillian (Lee Pace) wanders off one day to get himself a job at the (fictional) Cardiff Electric, a Texas-based software company. The salesman finds out that another employee at Cardiff, an engineer named Gordon Clark (Scoot McNairy) wrote an article in BYTE magazine about ?The Future of Open Architecture?. MacMillian ? a guy in expensive business suits who drives a sports car ? convinces Clark to spend his own money on thousands of dollars of computer and engineering equipment, so they both can read the thousands of addresses on the IBM BIOS and write down what its assembly code is, something they both know would be a violation of copyright. Clark?s wife finds out about this, and is understandably pissed.
Then, IBM finds out about the reading of their code, because ? get this ? the salesman calls up IBM to tell them he?s doing this illegal thing that violates IBM copyright. Because both the salesman and the engineer were employed by Cardiff Electric, IBM threatens legal action against Cardiff. For some reason, the Cardiff managers aren?t able to simply fire the salesman & engineer for ?acting alone?. So Cardiff now have to enter the PC business. And to make their clones, Clark recruits spunky genius Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis) to head a new engineering team to write a new BIOS from scratch.
The major problem I have with the show is that the main characters are already demonstrated to be idiots with unclear motivations. Is MacMillian mad at Big Blue for refusing to innovate? We don?t know, because there?s no time spent in this pilot addressing any of that. Also, if MacMillian knows that simply decrypting the IBM BIOS is illegal, why does he call up his former boss to tell them he?s doing that, when he?s years away from a working clone? And how did MacMillian think he was going to make these clones in the first place? Unless his plan was to ?get caught? and thus force Cardiff to make the PCs, in which case he?s a big fat jerk, risking other people?s jobs. (Remember, the true story of Compaq was three sensible, smart investors.)
Clark is a guy with problems, as he?s shown being picked up from a bar for alcoholism, which has him fighting with his engineer wife. Clark spends an entire weekend doing something he knows is illegal, and then gets caught, and again, the reason why isn?t really clear. Clark is supposedly mad over a software project from the past called ?Symphonic?, which everyone talks about having been a brilliant project, but no one ever explains what it was.
Watching Halt and Catch Fire made me want to see a show that followed Compaq?s origin more closely. The idea of three underdogs taking on Big Blue, by risking their personal fortunes to make smart business decisions and clever moves, sounds like something I could get behind. HCF wants me to root for a selfish businessman who?s willing to put other people?s livelihoods at risk for some vaguely-defined goal of maybe-possibly ruining IBM. MacMillian isn?t clever, and he sure isn?t likeable. Clark has no reason to be a regular on the show ? since he reverse-engineered the BIOS, he knows what it is, and thus he can?t be a part of the project or the Chinese wall comes right down. And Cameron?s presence is bizarre ? it?s nice that the show is forward-thinking enough to have a woman engineer, but if this is supposed to be a period piece, the presence of a punk college kid whose only credentials is that she?s a know-it-all needs to be explained, in a world where there were already many hungry software engineers already available.
It looks like AMC is hoping that Halt and Catch Fire will be to 1980s computers what Mad Men is to 1960s advertising. But HCF is baffling in how it takes a time and place that was already brimming with colorful, complex characters of history... and then just invents boring clichés out of whole cloth. What could?ve been a story about the triumph of creative capitalism instead looks like it will be selfish idiots who triumph because the script is on their side. When a show that wants to capture the fast-changing world of computing screws up its chronology, that's a warning message. When it makes its characters into selfish fools, that's the cue to shut down.
Not recommended.
AMC is hosting a sneak preview of "Halt and Catch Fire" on its website until June 1st, on their own website: http://www.amctv.com/full-episodes/halt-and-catch-fire/3571290828001/i-o-full-episode
In Halt and Catch Fire, it?s mid to late 1983, and disgruntled IBM salesman Joe MacMillian (Lee Pace) wanders off one day to get himself a job at the (fictional) Cardiff Electric, a Texas-based software company. The salesman finds out that another employee at Cardiff, an engineer named Gordon Clark (Scoot McNairy) wrote an article in BYTE magazine about ?The Future of Open Architecture?. MacMillian ? a guy in expensive business suits who drives a sports car ? convinces Clark to spend his own money on thousands of dollars of computer and engineering equipment, so they both can read the thousands of addresses on the IBM BIOS and write down what its assembly code is, something they both know would be a violation of copyright. Clark?s wife finds out about this, and is understandably pissed.
Then, IBM finds out about the reading of their code, because ? get this ? the salesman calls up IBM to tell them he?s doing this illegal thing that violates IBM copyright. Because both the salesman and the engineer were employed by Cardiff Electric, IBM threatens legal action against Cardiff. For some reason, the Cardiff managers aren?t able to simply fire the salesman & engineer for ?acting alone?. So Cardiff now have to enter the PC business. And to make their clones, Clark recruits spunky genius Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis) to head a new engineering team to write a new BIOS from scratch.
The major problem I have with the show is that the main characters are already demonstrated to be idiots with unclear motivations. Is MacMillian mad at Big Blue for refusing to innovate? We don?t know, because there?s no time spent in this pilot addressing any of that. Also, if MacMillian knows that simply decrypting the IBM BIOS is illegal, why does he call up his former boss to tell them he?s doing that, when he?s years away from a working clone? And how did MacMillian think he was going to make these clones in the first place? Unless his plan was to ?get caught? and thus force Cardiff to make the PCs, in which case he?s a big fat jerk, risking other people?s jobs. (Remember, the true story of Compaq was three sensible, smart investors.)
Clark is a guy with problems, as he?s shown being picked up from a bar for alcoholism, which has him fighting with his engineer wife. Clark spends an entire weekend doing something he knows is illegal, and then gets caught, and again, the reason why isn?t really clear. Clark is supposedly mad over a software project from the past called ?Symphonic?, which everyone talks about having been a brilliant project, but no one ever explains what it was.
Watching Halt and Catch Fire made me want to see a show that followed Compaq?s origin more closely. The idea of three underdogs taking on Big Blue, by risking their personal fortunes to make smart business decisions and clever moves, sounds like something I could get behind. HCF wants me to root for a selfish businessman who?s willing to put other people?s livelihoods at risk for some vaguely-defined goal of maybe-possibly ruining IBM. MacMillian isn?t clever, and he sure isn?t likeable. Clark has no reason to be a regular on the show ? since he reverse-engineered the BIOS, he knows what it is, and thus he can?t be a part of the project or the Chinese wall comes right down. And Cameron?s presence is bizarre ? it?s nice that the show is forward-thinking enough to have a woman engineer, but if this is supposed to be a period piece, the presence of a punk college kid whose only credentials is that she?s a know-it-all needs to be explained, in a world where there were already many hungry software engineers already available.
It looks like AMC is hoping that Halt and Catch Fire will be to 1980s computers what Mad Men is to 1960s advertising. But HCF is baffling in how it takes a time and place that was already brimming with colorful, complex characters of history... and then just invents boring clichés out of whole cloth. What could?ve been a story about the triumph of creative capitalism instead looks like it will be selfish idiots who triumph because the script is on their side. When a show that wants to capture the fast-changing world of computing screws up its chronology, that's a warning message. When it makes its characters into selfish fools, that's the cue to shut down.
Not recommended.
AMC is hosting a sneak preview of "Halt and Catch Fire" on its website until June 1st, on their own website: http://www.amctv.com/full-episodes/halt-and-catch-fire/3571290828001/i-o-full-episode