because the ibm pc was based around the
intel chip and because it run
microsoft's operating system there was
no agreement with microsoft to actually
supply ibm
only uh so
compact went to to microsoft and said
can we buy your software yep that's fine
no problem they went to intel and said
can we buy your chip and intel said yep
that's fine
the only problem they had was the bios
the bios is the chip that links the
hardware to the low-level software so
what compact had to do is create
something that was a
i'm not going to use that word um it was
extremely similar it was very very
similar that did the same thing right
basically what they did is they they
kind of reverse engineered that chip so
they had somebody that had never seen or
used an ibm pc
and they had somebody that person create
a specification for exactly what that
chip would do and somebody else that has
also never seen those ibm machines
would then write the code based on that
specification lo and behold you end up
with something that does exactly the
same thing as the original ibm imagine
it would get it so exactly similar if
they haven't seen it hasn't it um
yes the law wasn't the same for software
as it is now i don't think this story
could be done today that created a
product and a company that was the
fastest growing company in american
business history compact grew and grew
and grew producing them desktop pcs in
the same way as ibm were and really did
make computing portable and compatible
you know everybody that was using these
could also share their data with other
people that had ibm pcs and it blew the
market open because then everybody could
produce machines that were 100
compatible as well so although the
original um
you know reverse engineer the chip might
be a little bit questionable um actually
something amazing happened we ended up
with something that was compatible
everybody was using the same system and
we could all share this data we owe it
quite a lot holton catch fire is kind of
based on the compact story isn't it yeah
yeah reverse engineer an ibm pc with me
i want to build a computer that nobody
else has the balls to build are you out
of your mind what was this machine
called then just the portable it's the
compact portable yeah i mean compact was
an unknown name so you know the the term
compact um sort of quickly becomes
synonymous with with portable computing
and and this 100 ibm compatible sort of
thing that was going on so yeah really
important and later on compact would
then merge with hp and
the rest of it's all gone a little bit
pear-shaped now but yeah great thing at
the time being pc compatible just put
the keyboard back on
it's a clever design isn't it yeah it's
really good because that's the that's
the bottom of it yeah that's the bottom
of it you would stand it up like that
but at the side then
you'd have these little trapdoors
that would reveal the power supply on
that side so you can put your cabling in
there
and then on this side
you have all your i o cars standard pc
cars that go inside there so you can
expand it more memory printer hard disk
interface whatever and i'm assuming
there would be no battery in one of
these there's no battery they would only
run off the mains um
same as the the earlier osborne's as
well battery technology was nowhere near
capable of doing that sort of thing
these are all full size components
really in these things you know although
they shrunk the screens they were using
standard floppy drives they have fairly
high current draw batteries we're not
going to cut it no i was going to say
that the screen is pretty impressive
looking in that considering yeah these
have got a decent sized screen
so so yeah in that those terms was not
bad at all certainly a step up from the
osborne but then the osborne in a
similar way although it had a very very
small screen had a composite video
output so you could also sit on top of
it a decent size composite video monitor
as well
so once in your office
you can have a bigger screen
a little bit like people do with laptops
today you just connect them to your main
screen in the office and just use your
laptop in the office as well so we have
all the variations of the the compact so
there was a compact portable which is
this then there was a compact plus
there's the compact portable two and the
three obviously developing as the pc
technology developed and then they would
later on go on to create the desk pro
and all the rest of those machines which
are more desktop oriented so that's the
plus we've got the the three and the two
and the various other ones down there
in the museum there's over a thousand
different systems different machines in
the collection um that's not multiples
of the same you know lots of bbc micros
and things it's it's actually
to begin with we need to calculate a
private key right or a private variable
i'm going to choose red for alice there
we go probably could use more food
coloring it's kind of pale red is that
red