While not a movie, a bunch of NeXT Cubes (at least the monitors) were used in a Madonna video --- apparently some production company got a good deal on machines intended for Japan (hence the katakana interface)
What timing. I was just preparing my Sony Vaio PCT-C1MHP only yesterday to try and sell. I remember seeing this in a movie around 2000 (probably Charlies Angels) and got one.
That seems like an odd distinction if it's clearly portraying a Cray. It's not like we have any proof that e.g. the Commodore 64 used in Mr. Robot was the real deal.
It looks spiritually similar to a CM-1 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connection_Machine), but I think WOPR predates the Connection Machine. Still, watching Wargames and seeing WOPR always reminds me of a story my college hardware prof told about one of the early Connection Machines - that the LEDs were a busy signal, one for each processor. Supposedly there wasn’t enough power to have them all on at the same time, and they discovered it debugging someone’s parallel algorithm that appeared to crash the machine when, as they finally figured out, the algorithm at one point used all the processors simultaneously.
Love sites like this, has all the goodness from the early Internet days:
One nerdy hobby-type subject with a clear passion behind it, appreciable by anyone, and a simple yet effective design that works without Javascript (hey look at that, a website that doesn't go BLANK PAGE on first visit!)
Fun Fact: in king of queens, most of the pcs (for example airport episode with doug's parents) are just RCT tvs with paper printout of a screen taped over it.
PCs (and screens in general, particularly old CRTs) are a b*tch and a half to film.
You typically film at E.G. 21 FPS, while your PC runs at 50 / 60 (which isn't an integer multiple of 21), so you get Vsyncs somewhere during each frame, making each filmed frame a superposition of two frames onscreen. You also have to be careful about how long the film is exposed for, as, on a CRT screen, the electron gun goes left-to-right, top-to-bottom, and the top-left corner of the frame is no longer visible when the gun reaches bottom-right. If your film isn't exposed for the entire duration of the frame, parts of it may never be visible.
This is why there was a cottage industry of PCs and PC monitors designed to run at Hollywood frame rates. Cathode Ray Dude has an excellent video on why this was a problem and how the problem was solved[1].
IBM's AN-FSQ-7 panels from 1950s SAGE have shown up in a huge number of movies. They are still showing up in new movies. Woody's Electrical Props in LA rents them out.[1]
Those slanted panels aren't the computer. Those are the modems.
This is a really impressive amount of effort. Every entry has a fairly even quality to it...screen grabs and contextual descriptions of even one-off episodes of television shows, yet alone decades worth of movies.
Ha! A couple decades ago I saw the original Westworld, spotted some assembly, and thought it looked like 6502/Apple II code, so I assumed that was “probably” it and thought I was a clever nerd. Now I check this list and discovered it wasn’t 6502, and then realized the 6502 (1975) didn’t exist at the time the movie was shot (1973). Reviewed some scenes just now on YouTube and I can see it doesn’t look like 6502 code at all. It does look like the assembly might be the code behind some of the animated displays that look like old screen savers that you see on the other monitors in the film, perhaps, based on a few comments & variables in the code. (For example: https://youtu.be/Luo3uEVOahw?t=2645)
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[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 52.4 ms ] threadhttps://www.starringthecomputer.com/computer.html?c=64
https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/95izj7/sneake...
https://www.starringthecomputer.com/help.html
From the site:
> The following films do not appear on the site because I believe the computers they feature are mock ups and therefore do not qualify.
https://www.starringthecomputer.com/computer.html?c=15
"The lights flash just like they do normally, although it's hard to understand why a theme park needs a supercomputer."
:D
One nerdy hobby-type subject with a clear passion behind it, appreciable by anyone, and a simple yet effective design that works without Javascript (hey look at that, a website that doesn't go BLANK PAGE on first visit!)
According to this list, there was a TRS-80 Model III in the Star Wars TV series Andor:
Andor - Season 1, Episode 1, "Kassa" (2022)
You typically film at E.G. 21 FPS, while your PC runs at 50 / 60 (which isn't an integer multiple of 21), so you get Vsyncs somewhere during each frame, making each filmed frame a superposition of two frames onscreen. You also have to be careful about how long the film is exposed for, as, on a CRT screen, the electron gun goes left-to-right, top-to-bottom, and the top-left corner of the frame is no longer visible when the gun reaches bottom-right. If your film isn't exposed for the entire duration of the frame, parts of it may never be visible.
This is why there was a cottage industry of PCs and PC monitors designed to run at Hollywood frame rates. Cathode Ray Dude has an excellent video on why this was a problem and how the problem was solved[1].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qicQUvSUbPM
* CDC 6600
* DEC VAX 11/780 (IIRC)
* Honeywell H200, did not expect to see this on the list
* IBM S/370 (IIRC)
* Lenovo Thinkpads - 760, T43, T420, T61, W500
* Wang Professional Computer - these were bomb proof. I had a 16 bit Unix running on this.
* Wang WLTC
(Still got my Oric Atmos though, still using it..)
there should also be a “you can spot the villain early since they’re the only one not using Apple” sub-list
Those slanted panels aren't the computer. Those are the modems.
[1] https://woodysprops.com/item.php?uid=122&page=4