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Lee Pace
At Cardiff Electric, a Dallas-based mainframe software company, SVP John Bosworth hires Joe as a sales executive. Joe came to Cardiff to recruit Gordon Clark, a sales engineer and former system builder, into reverse
engineering an IBM PC with him. Gordon is initially reluctant to do the project, telling Joe that he has a family to consider; Gordon had also suffered a public humiliation when the Symphonic, a microcomputer he and his wife
Donna created, failed to boot at COMDEX in 1981. However, Gordon reconsiders Joe's proposal and is able to reconstruct the assembly language code of the IBM
PC BIOS. Bosworth and company owner Nathan Cardiff confront Joe and Gordon, informing them that IBM knows about their renegade project and that Cardiff Electric
In 1983, Joe MacMillan, a key player in the debut of the IBM Personal Computer, questions college students about their knowledge of several computing categories. One of the students, Cameron Howe, challenges him, and the two later meet at a bar to discuss her future
Joe reveals that he deliberately told IBM about the project, Cardiff and Bosworth are forced to enter the PC business. Needing a programmer with no prior connections to Cardiff or IBM, Joe and Gordon recruit Cameron for the project.
After IBM leaves, Joe reveals his plans for the new Cardiff PC: building it with twice the speed at half the cost of the IBM PC; Gordon states that the idea is impossible while Cameron dismisses it as boring. Joe is then introduced as "Senior Product Manager" of Cardiff Electric's new PC division. Joe sets up a "clean room" office so Cameron can write the BIOS code for the Cardiff PC; however, she relocates to a basement storeroom. Gordon is promoted to head hardware engineer of the PC project. Gordon shows concern about Cameron writing the BIOS code, and Joe tells him that they will fire her once the BIOS code is complete and successfully tested