I viewed the first episode on YouTube.
Yes, there were cliches that just didn't ring true and were tailored to a
modern audience. The punk in-your-face, anti-everything, kick-ass (but
brilliant programmer and stunning to boot) girl for example. Pure
hollywood, drawing on Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Tank Girl. Maybe I
had a sheltered life but I never met anyone like that in the early 80s.
One the other hand, some things struck a chord. The reluctant engineer who
had tried to introduce his own computer and failed yet still had that
dream. He was very reluctant to risk all and put his family through all
that again. He was believable. The early 80s was a time of incredible
opportunity in personal computing and also a period of incredible change.
Small companies were going bust all the time. I bet there was a lot of
people who were just like him. As a character then he seemed believable
(although I'm not sure I would put up with the way he was bullied by the
main protagonist).
As to our main guy, well...Steve Jobs seemed to be someone with the same
kind of determination, arrogance and self-belief. So maybe these
characters were around.
Some details were fiction...like the necessity of bios detection and
decoding as others have said. Also, I too heard a hard disk drive spin up
on that floppies only TRS-80 Model 4.
However, on balance I enjoyed it. If you take it for what it is...a
fictional drama for 2014 audiences, about opportunities in those turbulent
years when personal computers went mainstream, then comes near the mark.
I particularly enjoyed the ending when that army of IBM suits filed in.
Sure, it may have been Hollywood license on a perception but it did create
that David and Goliath tension that drama so loves.
I'm looking forward to when the series plays here.
Terry (Tez)