Compaq, every mention

Microsoft Volume I: The Complete History and Strategy of founding through Windows 95 (Audio) · Acquired Apr 22, 2024 · 18 mentions

• ▶ 1:57:57 David Rosenthal Ooh, well, I know the Compaq story, but I don't know the story of the BIOS specifically, enlighten us.
• ▶ 1:58:02 Ben Gilbert It is basically why Compaq worked, is what it comes down to.
• ▶ 1:58:05 Ben Gilbert So, Compaq was formed basically to clone the IBM PC.
• ▶ 1:58:10 Ben Gilbert They saw the market opportunity, and they realized they could buy from all the same equipment vendors,
• ▶ 1:58:35 Ben Gilbert So, Compaq reverse-engineered the BIOS, and the way that they did it
• ▶ 1:58:51 Ben Gilbert So, Compaq had two engineers, and one engineer went in and fully dissected the code for the IBM PC BIOS, and basically saw all the proprietary calls that it made, and documented each of those calls without
• ▶ 1:59:53 Ben Gilbert Compaq was the fastest startup to ever hit a hundred million in revenue, then the youngest firm to break into the Fortune 500, then the fastest company to hit a billion in revenue, and by 1994, Compaq was the largest PC maker in the world.
• ▶ 2:00:07 David Rosenthal The Compaq story is amazing.
• ▶ 2:00:10 David Rosenthal So the three people who start Compaq in 1982 are actually Texas Instruments engineers who left and they wanted to start a company.
• ▶ 2:00:40 David Rosenthal They start the company in 1982, and within the first year, they do a hundred and eleven million dollars of revenue of selling IBM PC clone hardware.
• ▶ 2:01:05 David Rosenthal Compaq went public the very next year in 1983, well before Microsoft, which is funny.
• ▶ 2:01:10 David Rosenthal But yeah, Compaq, all these other clone companies that get started, Microsoft licenses DOS to all of them, importantly, critically, on a per machine sold basis.
• ▶ 2:02:45 David Rosenthal And unlike Compaq that, you know, yeah, they did a hundred and eleven million of revenue their first year, they're selling hardware, which has serious cogs associated with it.
• ▶ 2:46:04 David Rosenthal And so a big part of actually the compact story about how compact and the clones leap ahead of IBM is
• ▶ 2:46:38 David Rosenthal But really, they're like, no, no, Compact, go do the .
• ▶ 3:47:31 Ben Gilbert They sold some retail, but the team was just about, hey, make sure HP and… Compaq and Dell and Gateway.
• ▶ 3:57:07 David Rosenthal But Microsoft could make Compaq successful.
• ▶ 4:09:31 David Rosenthal The YouTube channel is all, like, unboxing, uh, Compaq PC from-