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Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

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Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#131

Post by buescher »

kragen wrote: post #100

article says > With her friend Carole Ely, she grew their company, Vector Graphic, into a major manufacturer of microcomputers wikipedia says > Vector Graphic sales peaked in 1982, by which time the company was publicly traded, at $36 million. It faltered soon after... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_Graphic taking a microcomputer company from nothing to a near-billion-dollar market cap on the public markets is…

The rather balanced 1985 LA Times article posted by lr1970 ought to be instructive for the folks here that think the year zero was sometime in their late adolescence or early adulthood. There has been a hunger for the "women beating all odds" story for a long time now. From it:

>Remember Lore Harp? The housewife-turned-MBA who was splashed on the cover of Inc. magazine, lionized in Savvy and interviewed at reverent length by the Harvard Business Review?

>If you have forgotten, it’s not surprising. Vector Graphic, the company Lore and Bob Harp founded nine years ago on their kitchen table in Westlake Village, was ambushed a few years back by management blunders and a good-sized competitor by the name of IBM.

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#132

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

buescher wrote: post #125
PlunderBunny wrote: post #109

It's like a story from an alternate version of reality - I think of all the articles I've read touting 'the two Steves', and this is the first time I've read about Lore Harp McGovern.

It's almost as if Apple went under in 1982 and all Steve Jobs ever did after that was remarry well.

... and yet you've heard of Adam Osborne.

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#133

Post by DontchaKnowit »

worik wrote: post #88
DontchaKnowit wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Every tech company on the planet is tripping over themselves to hire/promote more minorities That is because of the problems than have been mounting in tech because people only hired people that looked like them. I do not understand what the problem is with DEI. (I am not in the USA, perhaps I am missing out). Making sure that no one is left behind, because they were over looked, seems like a good thing to me.

Yeah, I absolutely agree. The problem is that DEI programs are actually just hiring speakers 40 grand a pop to come tell me about all the ways I am racist without even realizing it just for being white. Literally skipping a meeting about microaggressions as we speak.

It is useless marketing bullshit that serves only to enrich the race grifters that plague our society.

(I will say this is a bit of an extreme take, there are definitely genuine DEI people, probably some effective DEI programs, etc, but by and large, as an industry [which it is] it is completely shiesty)

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#134

Post by ejona86 »

> ... CP/M for the in-development Vector 4. Switching would potentially mean redesigning the next line of machines.

The Vector 4 and 4-S did receive MS-DOS 2.0 support at some point. I have a working Vector 4 with MS-DOS, and this floppy[1] looks to be for the 4-S. Although larger changes would have been needed to become more "IBM compatible" (of which 4-S was a step).

> They rejected her plan to develop a new machine that would focus on networking and telecommunications, which she saw as the future of computing.

Vector was one of the first shipping a product using twisted-pair networking[2]. It seems that didn't make much of a splash; very little information is available. It was a S-100 board, which maybe limited market appeal by that time.

1. https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29115 2. https://groups.google.com/g/s100computers/c/Q8BUj8xHp5E/ (my post)

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#135

Post by DontchaKnowit »

px43 wrote: post #106
userbinator wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you start hiring people because of who they are, and not what they can do, it won't be long before that shows in the results you get. DEI has effectively replaced competence with identity politics.

DEI is a counterweight to unconscious bias, which, as far as I've seen, is still way more of a factor in hiring than DEI.

Well "unconscious bias" is a vapid meaningless term with no real concrete definition. It is essentially a political cudgel used to accuse someone of racism for which there is no evidence.

To be fair I have never seen a hiring decision made on DEI grounds. its always talent/skill first. So I am not complaining about bullshit DEI hiring, I am complaining about programs where companies hire speakers for absurd fees to come give lipservice to cool black culture is and how shitty white people are. Its such an obvious scam and its painful to watch everyone get brow beaten into public self flagellation.

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#136

Post by buescher »

valley_guy_12 wrote: post #40

I remember seeing a Vector Graphics computer at a computer store around 1978, when I was shopping for my first computer. I was excited by the name Vector Graphics, only to be disappointed to learn that it was a meaningless name, and their computers had nothing to do with vectors or graphics. I vaguely remember that it was a generic business machine (maybe with a 16 bit version?) with nothing to recommend it to a hobb…

Yeah, the small business system integrator business was really different back then. Especially before Visicalc (1979), which opened a lot of doors for Apple. A profile of that segment of the pre-IBM-PC industry would be fascinating and would put Vector in the right context.

To be fair, CP/M machines had much better software tooling available than the hobbyist 6502 computers for a long time - compare MBASIC or CBASIC to what shipped with your favorite home computer. And S-100 systems like the Vector had a tremendous ecosystem of cards but my recollection from reading BYTE as a kid was it was not a plug-and-play matter to get them working in your system.

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#137

Post by buescher »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #132
buescher wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost as if Apple went under in 1982 and all Steve Jobs ever did after that was remarry well.

... and yet you've heard of Adam Osborne.

Does he have a building at MIT named after him?

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#138

Post by rubylark »

0xEF wrote: post #118
ThomPete wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are no odds as a woman in the tech business. The tech industry is on of the most inclusive industries because it measures talent and value creation not features no one can do anything about

ITT: likely male HN users weighing in on how difficult or not difficult it is to be a woman in the tech industry. I'd love to hear thoughts on this take about just how inclusive the tech industry from women, or LGBTA or BiPoC individuals.

I'm a third generation "woman in tech" (grandma did punch cards, mom did COBOL) and I haven't had any problems that I keep being told I'm supposed to have. I suspect discrimination is location specific. The most I get is the annoying "you guys..." pause to think "...and gal".

(PSA: "you guys" is gender neutral)

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#139

Post by nashashmi »

nashashmi wrote: post #73
nashashmi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can go into a tirade of how women when achieving the same role as men are treated differently. But then you would be ignoring the underlying roles both were MEANT to play. The man is meant to play the role of breadwinner. If he can’t do that, he is not seen as worthy. The women is meant to play the role of housemaker. If she can’t do that, she is seen as incompetent. But if the other outshines the one at their me…

You can go into a tirade of how women when achieving the same role as men are treated differently. But then you would be ignoring the underlying roles both were MEANT to play. The man is meant to play the role of breadwinner. If he can’t do that, he is not seen as worthy. The women is meant to play the role of housemaker. If she can’t do that, she is seen as incompetent. But if the other outshines the one at their me…

To the people who keep downvoting this, you should explain why.

Re: Lore Harp McGovern built a microcomputer empire from her suburban home

#140

Post by garius »

ejona86 wrote: post #134

> ... CP/M for the in-development Vector 4. Switching would potentially mean redesigning the next line of machines. The Vector 4 and 4-S did receive MS-DOS 2.0 support at some point. I have a working Vector 4 with MS-DOS, and this floppy[1] looks to be for the 4-S. Although larger changes would have been needed to become more "IBM compatible" (of which 4-S was a step). > They rejected her plan to develop a new machin…

You have a 4?! I'm jealous!

Yeah, I think like everything their issue (with hindsight) was mostly that they needed to be faster on the changes across the board to survive.

I don't really blame them for missing that window. It was so small to begin with thanks to IBM.

I'll be covering IBM and Don Estridge next.

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