wild.
"I told you, Suzie. I don't go in for any bullshit. This is who I am."
"If you want to do business with my father, you'll have to learn to compromise."
"No!" He spoke the word so loudly that even in the chaos of the Homebrew Computer Club, people turned to look. "No. I don't make compromises."
"Please, not so loud."
He grabbed her arm, his fingers digging through her sleeve. "No compromises. Don't you see, Suzie? That's why people fail. It's why this country is so fucked up—why businesses are so fucked up. That's what I love about computers. They're as close as we can get to a perfect world. There aren't any compromises with computers. Something is either black or white. Octal code is absolute order. Three bits of ones or zeros. Either a bit is or it isn't ."
"Life's not like that," she replied softly, thinking of all the compromises she had to make.
"That's because you won't let it be. You're a chickenshit, Suzie, you know that? You're afraid to get passionate about anything."
"That's not true."
"You pull this class A con job trying to keep anybody from seeing how scared you really are. Well, it's a waste of time when you're with me, so don't bother."
He glared at her for a moment, and then his expression softened. "Look, stop worrying about business suits and haircuts. Just get your old man to talk to me. He was a pioneer in the fifties when he whipped up those early computer patents. I know I can make him understand. I'll make him see the magic. Damn, I'll make him understand if it's the last thing I do!"
As Susannah watched the fire of his vision burn in Sam Gamble's young eyes, she almost thought he would succeed.
Chapter 6
As Sam drove north toward the FBT Castle, he didn't need to remind himself how important today's interview was. For months, doors had been closing all over Silicon Valley.
At Hewlett-Packard Steve Wozniak had shown his bosses the Apple motherboard he had designed and asked if they were interested. Hewlett-Packard had said no.
At Sam's insistence Yank had approached Nolan Bushnell at Atari with his board, but the company was too busy trying to stay on top of the video-game market. Atari had passed.
On the East Coast Kenneth Olsen, president of Digital Equipment Corporation, the leading minicomputer company in the world, couldn't understand why anyone would want a computer at home. DEC had passed.
And in Armonk, New York, mighty IBM dismissed the microcomputer as a toy with no business application. IBM saw no market. IBM passed.
One by one, all of the Big Boys had shaken their heads. All but FBT. Today, Sam was determined to make certain recent history didn't repeat itself.
The engine was pinging on the Plymouth Duster he had borrowed from Yank, and the muffler needed to be replaced, resulting in a combination of noises that was driving Sam crazy. How could Yank tolerate owning a car that was such a total piece of garbage? Sam hated the way Detroit had given up quality for the fast buck.
The upholstery on the seat next to him was torn, fast-food wrappers were scattered everywhere, and several old motors were tossed in the backseat, along with the guts from a Zenith television set. Most mysterious of all, a shoe box full of vacuum tubes lay like excavated dinosaur bones on the floor next to him. Sam couldn't imagine why Yank was carrying around a box of vacuum tubes. They'd been obsolete for two decades, ever since Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley had taken advantage of the semiconducting qualities of silicon and invented the transistor. That invention had changed both the history of the Santa Clara Valley and Sam's life forever.
By the sixties, electronic circuits microscopically etched on tiny chips of silicon had pushed the cattle and the fruit orchards out of one of the most perfect agricultural climates in the world. Now electronics was the cash crop. Sam frequently heard the adults clucking their tongues over how the Valley used to be, but he liked living in a place that
"I told you, Suzie. I don't go in for any bullshit. This is who I am."
"If you want to do business with my father, you'll have to learn to compromise."
"No!" He spoke the word so loudly that even in the chaos of the Homebrew Computer Club, people turned to look. "No. I don't make compromises."
"Please, not so loud."
He grabbed her arm, his fingers digging through her sleeve. "No compromises. Don't you see, Suzie? That's why people fail. It's why this country is so fucked up—why businesses are so fucked up. That's what I love about computers. They're as close as we can get to a perfect world. There aren't any compromises with computers. Something is either black or white. Octal code is absolute order. Three bits of ones or zeros. Either a bit is or it isn't ."
"Life's not like that," she replied softly, thinking of all the compromises she had to make.
"That's because you won't let it be. You're a chickenshit, Suzie, you know that? You're afraid to get passionate about anything."
"That's not true."
"You pull this class A con job trying to keep anybody from seeing how scared you really are. Well, it's a waste of time when you're with me, so don't bother."
He glared at her for a moment, and then his expression softened. "Look, stop worrying about business suits and haircuts. Just get your old man to talk to me. He was a pioneer in the fifties when he whipped up those early computer patents. I know I can make him understand. I'll make him see the magic. Damn, I'll make him understand if it's the last thing I do!"
As Susannah watched the fire of his vision burn in Sam Gamble's young eyes, she almost thought he would succeed.
Chapter 6
As Sam drove north toward the FBT Castle, he didn't need to remind himself how important today's interview was. For months, doors had been closing all over Silicon Valley.
At Hewlett-Packard Steve Wozniak had shown his bosses the Apple motherboard he had designed and asked if they were interested. Hewlett-Packard had said no.
At Sam's insistence Yank had approached Nolan Bushnell at Atari with his board, but the company was too busy trying to stay on top of the video-game market. Atari had passed.
On the East Coast Kenneth Olsen, president of Digital Equipment Corporation, the leading minicomputer company in the world, couldn't understand why anyone would want a computer at home. DEC had passed.
And in Armonk, New York, mighty IBM dismissed the microcomputer as a toy with no business application. IBM saw no market. IBM passed.
One by one, all of the Big Boys had shaken their heads. All but FBT. Today, Sam was determined to make certain recent history didn't repeat itself.
The engine was pinging on the Plymouth Duster he had borrowed from Yank, and the muffler needed to be replaced, resulting in a combination of noises that was driving Sam crazy. How could Yank tolerate owning a car that was such a total piece of garbage? Sam hated the way Detroit had given up quality for the fast buck.
The upholstery on the seat next to him was torn, fast-food wrappers were scattered everywhere, and several old motors were tossed in the backseat, along with the guts from a Zenith television set. Most mysterious of all, a shoe box full of vacuum tubes lay like excavated dinosaur bones on the floor next to him. Sam couldn't imagine why Yank was carrying around a box of vacuum tubes. They'd been obsolete for two decades, ever since Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley had taken advantage of the semiconducting qualities of silicon and invented the transistor. That invention had changed both the history of the Santa Clara Valley and Sam's life forever.
By the sixties, electronic circuits microscopically etched on tiny chips of silicon had pushed the cattle and the fruit orchards out of one of the most perfect agricultural climates in the world. Now electronics was the cash crop. Sam frequently heard the adults clucking their tongues over how the Valley used to be, but he liked living in a place that
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