ThisisBigBrother.com - UK TV Forums - 'Halt and Catch Fire'

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Originally Posted by arista (Post 6919110)

What Ch?

It's on AMC on a Sunday night in the US. I 'think' it's been sold to a UK Channel but there's no confirmation or details as of yet.

It's very easily found on t'internet though. If you ever need a good link feel free to PM me and i can hook you up.

I think it's supposed to be 'based' on some actual events but how closely i wouldn't like to guess. I watched episode 2 last night and it's definitely caught my interest. I would imagine it will be even more enjoyable for people who are familiar with the whole IBM/Cardiff Electric thing. I'm not one of those people but i'm still enjoying it.

An explanation of the show's title;

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'Halt and Catch Fire', known by the mnemonic 'HCF', refers to several computer machine code instructions that cause a computer's CPU to cease meaningful operation. The expression "catch fire" is intended as a joke; the CPU does not literally catch fire, but it does stop functioning. It is also occasionally referred to as "SDI" for "Self Destruct Immediate".

Here's a little synopsis/write-up type of thing that explains the whole premise of the show far better than i have;

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With Mad Men on its mid season hiatus, AMC has given us a new period drama in its time slot, Halt and Catch Fire. It’s early 1980s computer building nerd porn, and it’s freaking amazing.

The show’s main man is Joe Macmillan, a former IBM employee who just started a new job in sales at Cardiff Electric in Texas. He has a crazy idea to reverse engineer an IBM pc and build a brand new type of computer that nobody has the balls to build, and he’s on the hunt for the right people to help him build it. But apparently, reverse engineering or even disassembling a computer made by the big computer companies, like Apple or IBM, was kind of illegal. Minor technicality.

Joe meets Gordon Clark at Cardiff. Gordon is a computer virtuoso and innovator, but he’s so depressed with his home life that he’s drinking his life away. Gordon’s wife is Donna Clark who is quite the tech genius herself and works at Texas Instruments, the fine people who made our high school calculators. Apparently once upon a time, Gordon and Donna tried to build a computer called Symphonic that they thought was going to be revolutionary, but it was a massive disaster. Ever since then, Gordon has been pretty checked out in all aspects of his life.

When Joe first approaches Gordon about his idea to take apart an IBM pc and essentially hack its inner workings, Gordon thinks he’s insane. He eventually comes around and the two men stay up for days running tests on chips and codes and doing other crazy genius things to figure out how IBM has made this super computer, but all in secret.

The boss man at Cardiff, John Bosworth, gets a call from the boss man at IBM and catches wind of what Joe and Gordon are up to…because Joe called IBM and confessed to everything he doing. WHAT? Basically by IBM finding out what the Cardiff employees are doing, they threatened a multimillion dollar lawsuit for potential theft of their technology. So to avoid that lawsuit, Cardiff has to pretend like they’ve been intending to build a pc clone even before Joe was hired, thus giving Joe free reign to work on his project out in the open and now with a budget. Confusing, but genius.

Joe also found a female computer prodigy named Cameron Howe at a computer college. She has a very Girl With the Dragon Tattoo vibe. After screwing her in the back of an arcade, he ultimately convinces her to join his team. But this chick is bad ass and demands double the pay he was offering her, which he agrees to.

Halt and Catch Fire airs Sunday nights on AMC.