[dead]
Halt and Catch Fire
51–60 of 117 posts
Re: Halt and Catch Fire
#52I enjoyed it a lot - certainly there's a lot of creative license and there's a slight irony in a show that's trying to portray historical events to have things like Windows 3.1 running on a Sparcstation 5 or countless others. But as someone who was of this era (maybe not so much season 1), I did love it. I actually only just got to watching it this year (and actually just started Season 4 this week).
Re: Halt and Catch Fire
#53It was a fun show. I really enjoyed it, a fictional run through the 80s and 90s computing industries.
It's a shame that it is such a niche show in practice. The acting of Lee Pace and Mackenzie Davis in particular are so good across all 4 seasons. I recommend it at every chance I get, but few people ever watch it. They're more likely to give Silicon Valley a try.
Lee Pace is just bigger than life, and Mackenzie Davis is electric in every scene, but my favourite on the show was Scoot McNairy's character. A very specific type of nerd that's rarely written with such depth and nuance. Although I guess that could be said of all the main (and not so main) characters in the show.
If anyone else loved these actors watching HACF, I would recommend watching The Fall (Pace), Fargo S3 (McNairy) and Station Eleven (Davis).
Re: Halt and Catch Fire
#54The Commodore PET 4032 video system was generated by a 6545 (6845 equivalent) cathode ray tube controller, which generated the video buffer addresses and the HS and VS sync pulses. This was memory mapped and if one was not careful with POKE commands, you could effectively stop the CRT raster scan, leaving the beam parked at the center of the screen. This could burn the phosphors off that spot in a matter of minutes.…
In 1978 I built a single board computer with a 6800 uP and a 6845 to drive the display. Made a keyboard for it, and it worked.
Unfortunately, in my many moves it has disappeared, though I still have the schematics for it.
Somehow I missed the boat on being a billionaire!
Re: Halt and Catch Fire
#55So many AI comments. Spamming every post. Backed by AI accounts all with blogs that are less than a year old with 3-6 banal programming projects. WTF man.
Have they been removed? I’m mostly seeing comments from established accounts.
No they are absolutely everywhere. Most people here don’t even know what HCF. This article is nonsense and paints it like some euphemism applied to modern coding. HCF was a joke and no actual implementation was proven. Fucking bots.
Re: Halt and Catch Fire
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have they been removed? I’m mostly seeing comments from established accounts.
No they are absolutely everywhere. Most people here don’t even know what HCF. This article is nonsense and paints it like some euphemism applied to modern coding. HCF was a joke and no actual implementation was proven. Fucking bots.
Author here. I wasn't trying to imply that this is a commonly used phrase nowadays. You can see from the sources I linked, there is definitely history to HCF and even some truth to its phrase. But yes, it was mostly a joke
Re: Halt and Catch Fire
#57It was a fun show. I really enjoyed it, a fictional run through the 80s and 90s computing industries.
Agreed. This was one of the few shows that advanced the storyline quite a bit threw the seasons without jumping the shark.
Re: Halt and Catch Fire
#58The Commodore PET 4032 video system was generated by a 6545 (6845 equivalent) cathode ray tube controller, which generated the video buffer addresses and the HS and VS sync pulses. This was memory mapped and if one was not careful with POKE commands, you could effectively stop the CRT raster scan, leaving the beam parked at the center of the screen. This could burn the phosphors off that spot in a matter of minutes.…
The IBM MDA also had a 6845, and since it was driving a fixed-frequency monitor of extremely simple design, any deviation from the standard timings could definitely let the magic smoke out of the flyback transformer.
Re: Halt and Catch Fire
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah a truly fantastic show all the way through the end. One of my favorites by far.
I have to admit, when a specific person died I was feeling so bad about it I never watched the last episode. I still have it on the drive how many years later.
Yeah, that was a rough bit. I’ve rewatched the show and I know it’s coming and it still gets me.
Re: Halt and Catch Fire
#60This show captures much of what I miss about computing in the 80s and 90s. You could get your hands on hardware, be able to largely understand what all the hardware and software was doing. You mostly used computers as tools, which only accepted commands and didn't try to affect your decisions or workflow (yes, there was Clippy). The leaps forward in computing power, memory and storage were more impactful to the everyday user. There was a sense of wonder, and it didn't envelop your and everyone's life. Most of all, we weren't yet slaves to our computers, and they weren't devices crafted to endlessly grab your attention by any means necessary.