6 May
1997
6 May
'97
1:48 p.m.
In the movie _Sneakers_, Ben Kingsley plays an ex-hacker who is now the
financial data processing administrator for the Mob. He has a large
complex of systems including a very Cray-like central processor and all
sorts of fancy accessories. He's extolling the virtues of mob money to
Robert Redford's character, and to illustrate his point he turns on the
Cray's terminal... lo and behold, the Cray runs Microsoft Excel!
Since we were in a theater about 6 blocks from Microsoft corporate
campus, that scene was the biggest laugh of the film.
Kai
----------
From: Brian L. Stuart[SMTP:stuart@colossus.mathcs.rhodes.edu]
Reply To: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 1997 3:32 PM
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
Subject: Re: The List!
Doug Spencer asks:
Actually, the III was visible for a second or so
in Tron, wasn't it?
I don't remember seeing an Apple III, but there was a glimps of
a Cray 1. It wasn't in focus though )-:
Brian L. Stuart
Math/CS Dept, Rhodes College, Memphis, TN
stuartb(a)acm.org
http://www.mathcs.rhodes.edu/~stuart/
6 May
6 May
2:56 p.m.
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2:38 p.m.
I recently found out that _Weird Science_ possibly has an Apple Lisa in
it and that some chick is named Lisa because she was designed on the
computer. Never seen the flick, but I think I might have to now...
chris *ling
lisa fanatic
4:31 p.m.
On Tue, 6 May 1997, Starling wrote:
I recently found out that _Weird Science_ possibly has
an Apple Lisa in
it and that some chick is named Lisa because she was designed on the
computer. Never seen the flick, but I think I might have to now...
I think you're right. I wouldn't mind seeing that movie again to find out.
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
11:29 p.m.
In message <199705062338.SAA11989(a)saucer.cc.umr.edu>you write:
I recently found out that _Weird Science_ possibly has an Apple Lisa in
it and that some chick is named Lisa because she was designed on the
computer. Never seen the flick, but I think I might have to now...
Actually the computer used in Weird Science to create Lisa was a
Memotech MTX512 plus the FDX unit. I remember this because I had one.
Kevan
7 May
7 May
5:52 a.m.
New subject: Memotech (was: Re: movie computers (The List! )
On Wed, 7 May 1997, Kevan Heydon wrote:
Actually the computer used in Weird Science to create Lisa was a
Memotech MTX512 plus the FDX unit. I remember this because I had one.
Memotech! I remember reading about this computer back in 1984, and was
impressed. (Remember the "Noddy" operating system?)
Did any of these make it to the US?
7:01 a.m.
New subject: Memotech (was: Re: movie computers (The List! )
In message <Pine.BSI.3.95.970507075145.7396B-100000(a)usr05.primenet.com>you writ
e:
On Wed, 7 May 1997, Kevan Heydon wrote:
I was too. At the time we had a Video Genie but I wanted a color
machine that was Z80 based. I wanted a real keyboard so that cut out
the Spectrum so it was a toss up between the Lynx and the Memotech.
Thankfully the Memotech won. I still have this machine, along with another
my younger brother bought, and an RS128 that I picked up last year.
The Noddy system was designed to allow you to create simple menu based
systems. I can't remember if it allowed you to do anything of any real
use as I never used it at the time. I either used BASIC plus in the
inbuilt assembler/debugger or Pascal on the Highsoft Pascal ROM board I
had.
Actually the computer used in Weird Science to create Lisa was a
Memotech MTX512 plus the FDX unit. I remember this because I had one.
Memotech! I remember reading about this computer back in 1984, and was
impressed. (Remember the "Noddy" operating system?) Did any of these make it to the US?
One must have to make the Movie. I really don't know why they choose to
use this machine when there were so many US machines. I guess it could
be because the graphics you see on the screen in the movie are far
superior to the capabilities of the machine, and if they had used a
popular US machine the audience would have seen right through it.
Kevan
6 May
6 May
4:22 p.m.
On Tue, 6 May 1997, Kai Kaltenbach wrote:
In the movie _Sneakers_, Ben Kingsley plays an
ex-hacker who is now the
financial data processing administrator for the Mob. He has a large
complex of systems including a very Cray-like central processor and all
sorts of fancy accessories. He's extolling the virtues of mob money to
Robert Redford's character, and to illustrate his point he turns on the
Cray's terminal... lo and behold, the Cray runs Microsoft Excel!
Since we were in a theater about 6 blocks from Microsoft corporate
campus, that scene was the biggest laugh of the film.
I thought it was simply amazing how that blind guy could figure out what
an electronic device did by simply rubbing his fingers over the
components. THAT'S INCREDIBLE! But I digress.
I thought the most realistic computer scenes in terms of relevance to
reality were in War Games.
I think the stupidest were in The Net.
I have mixed feelings about Disclosure.
But of course, I digress.
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
9:05 p.m.
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8:26 p.m.
Speaking of computers in movies, anyone remember a late-1981(?) flick
called "Evilspeak" where the nerdy kid uses his computer to cast
Satanic spells (the commercial showed an Apple II with a pentagram on
the screen!)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles P. Hobbs __ __ ____ ___ ___ ____
transit(a)primenet.com /__)/__) / / / / /_ /\ / /_ /
/ / \ / / / / /__ / \/ /___ /
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9 p.m.
On Tue, 6 May 1997, Charles P. Hobbs wrote:
Speaking of computers in movies, anyone remember a late-1981(?) flick
called "Evilspeak" where the nerdy kid uses his computer to cast
Satanic spells (the commercial showed an Apple II with a pentagram on
the screen!)
Actually, one of the best (in terms of sillyness) was this movie called
DemonSeed where this super-computer becomes sentient, kills its creator,
then creates a metallic penis (I am NOT making this up) that it uses to
impregnant the creator's wife, whom he is holding captive. She has a 30
day (or so) gestation period and gives birth to the computer's child who
grows up to around age 8 or so in about 3 days. I forget what happens
after that. I think the kid just babbles about some philosophical crap
and the movie ends. I recommend it.
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
9:40 p.m.
The computer's name was Proteus. The book from which Demonseed was made was
written by a guy named Dean R. Koonts. I've been looking for a copy ever
since my parents got wind of what the book was about and it disappeared one
day... It's very much a psychodrama.
--
Jim Strickland
jim(a)calico.litterbox.com
--
By Caffeine alone my mind is set in motion.
Through beans of java thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes.
The shakes become a warning - I am in control of my addiction!
By Caffeine alone my mind is set in motion.
Adapted from the Mentat chant of _Dune_
8:57 p.m.
On Tue, 6 May 1997, Tim Shoppa wrote:
A voice-activated IMSAI? The horrible corruption of
the term "hacker"
to mean "cracker", all due to the cluelessness of the screenplay
writers? War Games is/was an incredible insult to the true
switch-flipping hacker community.
Look at it relative to the other hacker drivel that's made its way to the
theaters since War Games. Okay, yeah, aside from the speech-recognition
(forgot about that) and a couple other things, there were many instances
of realism in the movie, eg. when what's-his-face (Borderick's character)
shorts out the microphone on the old payphone to get a dialtone (factual,
back then one had to insert a coin which shorted the tip to ground and
signalled the CO to provide dialtone).
Now switch to something like Sneakers. The most appalling thing about
Sneakers was that they supposedly had actual computer security consultants
providing the computer tech. So yeah, its real fucken believable that
some guy creates a chip that breaks every conceivable encryption
scheme...and oh yeah, when it decodes the info, it happens to come out as
a hi-res graphic showing detailed plans/schematics/maps/etc on your
screen. Sure, ok.
Anyway, I don't know why I'm getting so worked up about this. Who
cares. Movies with computer plots are invariably lame and an insult to
techie intelligence. Probably the most realistic hacking/phreaking
scenes overall was in Three Days of the Condor (or was it five days?)
Anyway, never saw the whole movie but of the parts I did see I was
impressed, especially when Redford was using a butt-set to tap into phone
calls and all that stuff. Very real.
Of course, I digress (again).
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
7 May
7 May
2:05 a.m.
On Tue, 6 May 1997, Tim Shoppa wrote:
A voice-activated IMSAI?
It's been a while, but IIRC the IMSAI didn't do speech recognition. It did
speech synthesis. It was the big blinkenlight-class Pentagon machine that
did speech recognition.
You're too right about War Games (and other, more recent films) giving
hackers a bad name. It seems extremely unlikely to ever see a film about the
adventures of a (real) hacker trying to toggle an Intercal compiler into his
PDP-8. Somehow, mainstream people won't see the point. :-|
--------------------------- ,o88,o888o,,o888o. -------------------------------
Alexios Chouchoulas '88 ,88' ,88'
alexios(a)vennea.demon.co.uk
The Unpronouncable One ,o88oooo88ooooo88oo, axc(a)dcs.ed.ac.uk
7:25 a.m.
It was thus said that the Great Kai Kaltenbach once stated:
In the movie _Sneakers_, Ben Kingsley plays an ex-hacker who is now the
financial data processing administrator for the Mob. He has a large
complex of systems including a very Cray-like central processor and all
sorts of fancy accessories. He's extolling the virtues of mob money to
Robert Redford's character, and to illustrate his point he turns on the
Cray's terminal... lo and behold, the Cray runs Microsoft Excel!
I didn't make the connection that it was the Cray's terminal; I thought it
was a Window's box.
Now, to turn this back to an on-topic thread, the microcomputer used in
"War Games" was one of the last IMSAI's if I recall correctly. And does
anyone know what computers where used for the graphics in "Tron" and "The
Last Starfighter"?
-spc (And Lazlo's computer in "Real Genius" looked like a Sun)
7:48 a.m.
I'm pretty sure Tron was done on a Cray of some kind. I don't know what kind
of machine Last Starfighter was done on, but I'll find out.
--
Jim Strickland
jim(a)calico.litterbox.com
--
By Caffeine alone my mind is set in motion.
Through beans of java thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes.
The shakes become a warning - I am in control of my addiction!
By Caffeine alone my mind is set in motion.
Adapted from the Mentat chant of _Dune_
8:19 a.m.
I think that the "last starfighter" movie graphics were done on a XMP cray
supercomputer. I'd love to have one these machines but the power
consumptioon would probably kill me financially.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
David Vincent, MUN Student davidv(a)ganymede.cs.mun.ca
-----------------------------------------------------------------
On Wed, 7 May 1997, Jim wrote:
I'm pretty sure Tron was done on a Cray of some
kind. I don't know what kind
of machine Last Starfighter was done on, but I'll find out.
--
Jim Strickland
jim(a)calico.litterbox.com
--
By Caffeine alone my mind is set in motion.
Through beans of java thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes.
The shakes become a warning - I am in control of my addiction!
By Caffeine alone my mind is set in motion.
Adapted from the Mentat chant of _Dune_
8:45 a.m.
I asked a friend of mine who worked for the company that did the graphics
for Starfighter about the computers used in the process.
Her reply was as follows:
They were done on a Ramtek 2020, with the images
stored and
manipulated using a VAX mainframe. There were a number of things
that people thought were models which were really images done with
the Ramtek.
As I understand it, the 2020 was capable of doing
certain kinds of
transforms on the images, but that sometimes the VAX was used for
other kinds of transforms, and then the images piped back to the
2020 for final display/debugging before going to film.
How, exactly, the images got from the VAX to film, I
don't know,
I'm afraid.
--
Jim Strickland
jim(a)calico.litterbox.com
--
By Caffeine alone my mind is set in motion.
Through beans of java thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes.
The shakes become a warning - I am in control of my addiction!
By Caffeine alone my mind is set in motion.
Adapted from the Mentat chant of _Dune_
--
Jim Strickland
jim(a)calico.litterbox.com
--
By Caffeine alone my mind is set in motion.
Through beans of java thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes.
The shakes become a warning - I am in control of my addiction!
By Caffeine alone my mind is set in motion.
Adapted from the Mentat chant of _Dune_
3:06 p.m.
I asked a friend of mine who worked for the company that did the graphics
for Starfighter about the computers used in the process.
Her reply was as follows:
> They were done on a Ramtek 2020, with the images stored and
> manipulated using a VAX mainframe. There were a number of things
> that people thought were models which were really images done with
> the Ramtek.
I'm not familiar with that model of Ramtek, but I can talk about a couple
of related things that may be of interest.
The first is that Ramtek also made lower-end (and I guess cheaper) units,
like the RM-9460. This used a 68000 as the main CPU, along with a couple
of Z80's for I/O (serial port handling,etc) and some AMD2900 stuff for
panning/zooming/window control. The basic design was roughly what you'd
expect.
A more interesting machine was the I2S model 70 series. I2S are/were
International Imaging Systems, who split off (?) from Stanford Technology
Corp. The model 70 was a work of art. The basic idea was a 'byteplane' - a
raster-scanned area of memory with one byte per pixel. There were a number
of these (6-12 was typical), and the outputs of each one went to 3 look up
tables, which defined the RGB values for each of the 256 possible bytes.
The outputs of all 'Red' lookup tables were then added together (there was
a 14-input full adder board!), and the output of that went to another
lookup table, and then to a DAC. Repeat all that for the other 2 colours.
So far I've described an interesting graphics display, but there was more.
There was a thing called the 'feedback ALU' which used 2 of the byteplanes
as a 16 bit accumulator. You defined a region on the screen (using a
bitplane - this region did not have to be rectangular, or even
contiguous), and then defined a function (one of the standard ones
provided by the 74181 ALU chip) to be used inside the region, and a
different one outside. The thing then performed the function between the
displayed image (I _think_ one colour at a time) and the accumulator, and
put the result in the accumulator. Oh, you could shift the byteplanes
arround, so that you could combine the values from neighbouring pixels.
There was also a programable cursor (trackball or tablet-controlled), a
histogram board, and even (on some model 75's) a hardware sequencer board
(using a 2910 and some RAM) that would run a sequence of operations again
and again.
I don't know if one was ever used for the special effects in a film, but
I'm almost _sure_ one was used to process the weather satellite pictures
for the BBC television broadcasts in the UK.
Oh, and if you think minicomputers are complex, try one of these. Some
early model 70's used 4K DRAMs for the byteplanes. There were typically
3-6 _thousand_ RAM chips, along with a lot of TTL logic....
--
-tony
ard12(a)eng.cam.ac.uk
The gates in my computer are AND,OR and NOT, not Bill
9:33 a.m.
On Wed, 7 May 1997, Captain Napalm wrote:
... And does
anyone know what computers where used for the graphics in "Tron" and "The
Last Starfighter"?
Have to think about 'Tron', but the Cray Y-MP was credited for the
graphics for 'Last Starfighter'.
-jim
---
jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com
The Computer Garage - http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw
Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174
7:57 a.m.
One of those portable Apple II's was in "The Man Who Fell To
Earth", used by the English Language lecturer, not Bowie.
Incidentally (and also certainly off-topic), in the same movie a
rocket was launched (after a lengthy countdown sequence) by punching the
"TALK-TO-STUDIO" button on an SSL mixing console.
Strange how other things are sometimes used to simulate
computers in movies - like all those huge-with-lots-of-pretty-lights
mimic panels in every James Bond movie, even the later ones. They all
blew up, of course, with huge showers of sparks.
The best was HAL - all those perspex memory banks.
--
Martin Evans
11:13 a.m.
On Wed, 7 May 1997, Martin Evans wrote:
One of those portable Apple II's was in
"The Man Who Fell To
Earth", used by the English Language lecturer, not Bowie.
I find that rather hard to believe, since that movie was released in
1976. The Apple II was still being designed at the time, and IIRC the
portable was quite some time later.
--
Ward Griffiths
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within
the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." --Claire Wolfe
12:29 p.m.
On Wed, 7 May 1997, Ward Griffiths and/or Lisa Rogers wrote:
On Wed, 7 May 1997, Martin Evans wrote:
On the other hand, Roy Scheider's character (Dr. Haywood Floyd) is seen
using an Apple IIc with the optional (and very expensive at the time) LCD
display while sitting on the beach in the movie "2010: The Year We Make
Contact". (or did I muck the title up?)
Did I miss the battery pack option somewhere???
-jim
---
jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com
The Computer Garage - http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw
Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174
One of those portable Apple II's was
in "The Man Who Fell To
Earth", used by the English Language lecturer, not Bowie.
I find that rather hard to believe, since that movie was released in
1976. The Apple II was still being designed at the time, and IIRC the
portable was quite some time later.
8 May
8 May
4:02 a.m.
On Wed, 7 May 1997, James Willing wrote:
On the other hand, Roy Scheider's character (Dr.
Haywood Floyd) is seen
using an Apple IIc with the optional (and very expensive at the time) LCD
display while sitting on the beach in the movie "2010: The Year We Make
Contact". (or did I muck the title up?)
Well, something tells me that the cost of the LCD display, however high
it was, would have been peanuts in the prop and special effects budget.
And apparently the idea was to use something that didn't look like it
would be obsolete the week before the movie opened. The month after --
well, that's another story.
--
Ward Griffiths
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within
the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." --Claire Wolfe
6:17 a.m.
On Thu, 8 May 1997, Ward Griffiths and/or Lisa Rogers wrote:
On Wed, 7 May 1997, James Willing wrote:
True enough with regard to movie production budgets (and probably that
Apple traded gear for screen time/credits), but it was REAL hard to sell
a 'screen' that cost nearly as much as the computer in the 'real world'.
B^}
-jim
---
jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com
The Computer Garage - http://www.rdrop..com/~jimw
Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174
On the other hand, Roy Scheider's character
(Dr. Haywood Floyd) is seen
using an Apple IIc with the optional (and very expensive at the time) LCD
display while sitting on the beach in the movie "2010: The Year We Make
Contact". (or did I muck the title up?)
Well, something tells me that the cost of the LCD display, however high
it was, would have been peanuts in the prop and special effects budget.
And apparently the idea was to use something that didn't look like it
would be obsolete the week before the movie opened. The month after --
well, that's another story.
7:08 a.m.
On Thu, 8 May 1997, James Willing wrote:
On Thu, 8 May 1997, Ward Griffiths and/or Lisa Rogers
wrote:
Yah. Priced any 21" monitors lately? [I have _got_ to get me one. And a
smart video/keyboard/mouse switch to cut down at least a little bit on the
amount of desk surface I need. Not that this applies to any of the systems
that we care about in this mailing list, except for a switch system to
select which of half a dozen or more devices want channel 3 on the TV.]
--
Ward Griffiths
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within
the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." --Claire Wolfe
On Wed, 7 May 1997, James Willing wrote:
True enough with regard to movie production budgets (and probably that
Apple traded gear for screen time/credits), but it was REAL hard to sell
a 'screen' that cost nearly as much as the computer in the 'real world'.
B^} On the other hand, Roy Scheider's character
(Dr. Haywood Floyd) is seen
using an Apple IIc with the optional (and very expensive at the time) LCD
display while sitting on the beach in the movie "2010: The Year We Make
Well,
something tells me that the cost of the LCD display, however high
it was, would have been peanuts in the prop and special effects budget.
9938
days inactive
9940
days old
25 comments
14 participants
participants (14)
-
alexios＠vennea.demon.co.uk -
ard12＠eng.cam.ac.uk -
dastar＠crl.com -
davidv＠cs.mun.ca -
gram＠cnct.com -
jim＠calico.litterbox.com -
jimw＠agora.rdrop.com -
kaikal＠MICROSOFT.com -
kevan＠motiv.co.uk -
MARTIN＠paladio.demon.co.uk -
shoppa＠alph02.triumf.ca -
spc＠armigeron.com -
starling＠umr.edu -
transit＠primenet.com