[GTALUG] Netflix Recommendation - HCF

[Mel Wilson]

On Mon, 15 Jan 2018 12:08:47 -0500 (EST)
"D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk" <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:

> - the IBM PC was not a great technical step forward BUT it set a
>   template around which everyone could standardize.  The network
> effect.
> 
> - how much could you legally copy the PC?

I wound up getting a made in Canada XT(?) clone, the Exceltronics BEST.
It worked well, ran all the usual programs, and worked with all the
usual expansion cards I plugged in.  I hotrodded it eventually with a
V20 and a memory upgrade to 768K, with the expected results.

The company was terrible to deal with.  When I walked in off the
street, the salesmen were confabbing in a corner, so the one who
talked to me and got the business  was the high-school intern who was
there for the Apple IIs.  They never seemed to forgive me, never
fulfilled the software part of the deal, and I had to get a refund and
buy at one of the other stores along College.
When I went for the memory upgrade, had to go to Mississauga.  The guy
gave me the decoding PAL and a stick of ceramic DRAMs with metal tops,
and gouges and scrapes and screwdriver dings.  "These have been
through the wars", I said, and he took them and went back and brought a
stick of new plastic DRAMs.  It took me a while to reflect that it
might not be the company's fault, that the guy might have got those old
chips at a swapfest, and figured that if he could fob them off on me,
he could keep the new ones for his own account.

But the machine worked just fine.