Hacker Cinema
Silicon Cowboys
2016 · Film · documentary · 77 min
Directed by Jason Cohen
Launched in 1982 by three friends in a Houston diner, Compaq Computer set out to build a portable PC to take on IBM, the world’s most powerful tech company. Many had tried cloning the industry leader’s code, only to be trounced by IBM and its high-priced lawyers. Explore the remarkable David vs. Goliath story, and eventual demise, of Compaq, an unlikely upstart who altered the future of computing and helped shape the world as we know it today.
9 positive2 neutralfrom 11 commenters
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11 comments on Hacker News
Silicon Cowboys[1] came out roughly the same time, and it always struck me how similar the first season of HCF was to the actual documentary of Compaq's rise
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4938484/
i just watched Silicon Cowboys the other Day. Great documentary.
If you want to watch a documentary about the forming of Compaq and its rise, Silicon Cowboys is not bad.
Trailer is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wjJYqUkHd8
You can watch the documentary on Tubi https://tubitv.com/movies/559438/silicon-cowboys
It's weirder than that; I watched the Silicon Cowboys documentary about compaq, and the archived footage quality takes a sharp dive from the 70s to the 80s as they switched from recording on film to videotape.
Tape quality was good and a lot cheaper, but it doesn't last as long before the video signal gets munged
Was just showing the subject to a youngster recently. Other folks mentioned the Code book, I liked that one. The MMM by Brooks of course. We also looked at the following videos on youtube/Kanopy and other places:
- The Story of Math(s) by Marcus du Sautoy to set the stage... school and taxes in ancient Sumeria, Fibonacci bringing Indian numbers to Europe, and other fascinating subjects.
- We watched short biographies of Babbage and Lovelace, full-length ones of Turing and Von Neumann. The "code breakers" of WWII.
- Top Secret Rosies: The Female "Computers" of WWII, another good one.
- There's more history in PBS' Crash Course Computer science, than you might expect. It is great although so peppy we had to watch at .9x with newpipe. Shows relays, vacuum tubes, to ICs, to the Raspberry Pi. As well as the logic gates they model.
- "The Professor" at Computerphile is a great story teller about the early days.
- There are great videos about CTSS being developed at MIT I think, where they are designing an operating system via paper terminal and trying to decide on how to partition the memory/storage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q07PhW5sCEk
- The Introducing Unix videos by ATT are straight from the source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc4ROCJYbm0
- The movie/book "Hidden Figures" touches on this time as well. Facing obsolescence by IBM, one of the characters teaches herself Fortran.
- The Pirates of Silicon Valley is a fun dramatization of the late 70s to 80s PC industry. It specifically calls out the meeting between MS and IBM as the deal of the century. We also watched a "Berkeley in '68" doc on Kanopy to set the stage before this one. Interesting, but a tangent.
- The "8-bit Guy" is also great, he dissects and rebuilds old home computer hardware from the same era, and teaches their history as he does it. Even his tangential videos on why there are no more electronics stores (besides Apple) in malls is great.
- There are good docs on the "dead ends" of the industry as well, such as "General Magic" and "Silicon Cowboys."
- "Revolution OS" a doc about the beginnings of FLOSS and Linux.
I got you
Documentaries
- The Airbnb Story[1] <-- Start here
- High Score (A netflix series on the history of games, the first episode has a part where some college guys had to change hardware to make games harder)
- The Pirate Bay, Away from Keyboard
- Silicon Cowboys; highly recommend this one, I believe we wouldn't have the industry as it is today, if it weren't for Compaq.
Movies
- Who Am I, No System is safe (Look for one with English Subtitles)
- Echelon Conspiracy
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XicLf8cyh5E
Also Valley of the Boom [0] by National Geographic focusing on Netscape, Pixelon, and a couple others.
And General Magic [1] - a documentary about the startup General Magic with interviews with early employees who went on to Apple, Google, etc
And Silicon Cowboys [2] - documentary about Compaq in the early days, pretty much the real story version of Season 1
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_of_the_Boom
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6849786/
[2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4938484/
Theres a great movie on the topic.
Silicon Cowboys (2016) [1]
Just putting it out there: I really loved working a Compaq, as do most people I knew.
[1] https://m.imdb.com/title/tt4938484/
Just watched it last night, it's pretty good. Though does anyone have any context for the scene with Sinclair and the 3 women in the convention? It seemed a bit out of place in the whole doc.
BTW, Silicon Cowboys is another film I'd recommend. It's about the history of Compaq.
There’s a ton of great suggestions here. Here are a couple I haven’t seen mentioned.
Documentaries:
- Silicon Cowboys - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4938484/ It covers the creation of Compaq
- American Experience: Silicon Velley - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/ About how Silicon Valley came to be.
- Naughty Dog 30th Anniversary - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cdr7THH0zo8 Kind of a PR video, but interesting and free. Covers the history of Naughty Dog games.
Books:
- Cukoo’s Egg - https://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espionage/dp/1416507787 Has some interesting technical detail, and gives perspective on a very different time on the internet.
- Revolution in the Valley - https://www.amazon.com/Revolution-Valley-Insanely-Great-Story/dp/1449316247 You can read these stories on folklore.org, but I enjoyed the collected book. Covers the creation of the Macintosh.
Interesting I had no idea about this passage:
>"In September of 1975 the company introduced the IBM 5100, their first “portable” computer. (“Portable” meant that it weighed just 55 pounds and you could buy a special travel case to lug it around in.)"
6 years later the "luggable" from Compaq became a real thorn in IBMs side. If you enjoy this type of computer history I highly recommend watching "Silicon Cowboys" a documentary about the rise of Compaq but also a bit about the history of the IBM PC and "clones". It's pretty fascinating and it's available on Netflix as well as free on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oylmFdZswCM