You're taking me back. I remember we used velcro on top of the Rhodes to hold a Minimoog or something.

There were a few synthesizers that came out around that time that sounded like real pianos, especially the Yamaha DX-7, but they did not look like the piano used in this show. Further, the DX-7 cost about $2000 new at that time.

Exactly the two I was thinking of. Around that time they did come out with synthesizers that sounder close to real pianos (Yamaha DX7 comes to mind) but of course they did not look like the piano being played.

I didn't get a good look at that piano but it doesn't seem to me that any piano that looked like that at the time would have sounded like a real piano. Would have been more bell-like in tone.

Joe on the one hand was eager to obtain Japanese technology LCD screens to the point of being well informed about Japanese customs; but ended the episode violently destroying a Japanese car in one of those crazy "Buy American" campaigns they had back then. (Another thing I remember they did in a few places associated…

Well, certainly for the premise of the show I think we have to accept that. As far as stealing the manual, yeah, that would have been actionable - if he had been caught. And copying the chip directly would have been actionable as well. The reverse engineering in this case was done to generate source code, but then…

Not sure if it would be legal today but I don't think at that time there was any law against it.

It was 1983, probably just before this manual became available for purchase, but I'm sure that a guy who had worked at IBM would have been able to get one from somewhere. In any case, Phoenix did something very similar creating their BIOS

But Bert didn't really sing him that song, did he? He is dead.

I don't think so. Don has become aware of who he is for all intents and purposes and is moving forward.

We had them too, in two rooms in my parents' house. They became more popular after 1973 when the price of energy increased dramatically, and dropping the ceiling reduced the room size and thus the cost of heating/cooling.

I guess so. The company I worked for, by the way, did the same thing that SCDP is doing - made the computer room into a giant fishbowl so everyone walking by would see these big machines and tape drives and other stuff that they thought looked state-of-the-art. They built up the floor so they would have the wires…

Yep, I remember those as well.

By the way, I remember when timesharing a mainframe meant communicating with a big terminal over a telephone modem, where you would dial the number and stick the handset into the modem, which was about 150 baud if I recall correctly.

I have a couple of those mugs! Never really gave them much thought, they've been in the cabinet for years.

And they had to air condition the room at great cost because those things would really heat up the place. (Some companies I have heard actually would recycle the heat generated from their computers to help heat their buildings in winter).

They had a lot of great innovations that were all basically stolen by other fast food chains. The charcoal broiler, the milk shake machine, the "Fun Meal" (which was their version of the "Happy Meal", but BC had it first), they were the first fast food joint to have combo meals (a burger, coke, and fries for 45…

And I'm going to bet that just leasing costs for this computer were upwards of $3.5K per month even from a 3rd party company like "Lease Tec". Not counting power consumption cost, and the space it takes up in a good NYC location.

The IBM "monolith" is going to take up lots of real estate and cost a lot to lease and maintain but what will be its main benefit? They don't really need it for anything, other than a show piece to show their clients that they are "state of the art".

Actually, that is realism. I can't tell you how many times I worked for or with companies that shot themselves in the foot.