4 ms·

It's not really the exact era you're thinking of, but I think AMC's Halt and Catch Fire is really what you're after here. The first season, about the creation

It's not really the exact era you're thinking of, but I think AMC's Halt and Catch Fire is really what you're after here. The first season, about the creation of a new PC, seems to more or less fit the timeframe and aesthetic. The show's intro certainly has a strong 80's cyberpunk/blinkenlights vibe. At one point, IIRC, there are even actual blinkenlights.

ghaff 4y ago
HaCF was a very good (if a bit uneven) TV series. I totally thought S1 was going to go off in a different direction, maybe creating something like the Mac rather than a PC clone though. The depiction of Comdex of the era was fantastic.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  To me it was so obvious they were supposed to be Compaq that S1 was pretty clear.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    There was definitely the Silicon Prairie angle but there was at least the ambition to do something radically different. Compaq was obviously a great success (for a time) but really as a business success as opposed to exciting engineering.
    - marshray 4y ago
      Clean-room engineering a compatible BIOS? Reverse-engineering the unknown bits of hardware? Troubleshooting compatibility bugs in common software packages and fixing them in hardware? Putting a PC into a luggable case with a small display and carry handle? All that was exciting engineering!
      - aidenn0 4y ago
        HaCF did spice the engineering up from reality by using an LCD screen instead of a CRT. I don't think contemporary LCDs were up to the task, but I could be wrong. Luggable microcomputers were not new at this point, both Osborne and Kaypro had z80 CP/M systems that were luggable. Compaq definitely had the most compatible BIOS until Phoenix released theirs for OEMs to use (AMI was probably more popular in the 80s, but was a relative late-comer).