Starring the Computer
95 points
2 hours ago
| 16 comments
| starringthecomputer.com
| HN
Animats
1 hour ago
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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.

[1] https://woodysprops.com/item.php?uid=122&page=4

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ssenssei
1 hour ago
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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.
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piratejon
36 minutes ago
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Pairs nicely with https://accessmaincomputerfile.net/ (although that site might not be working any longer).
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roughly
1 hour ago
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Similar: https://www.imcdb.org/ IMCDB, the Internet Movie Car Database
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WillAdams
2 hours ago
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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)
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emchammer
2 hours ago
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Cool, what video?
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svantana
1 hour ago
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pieterr
1 hour ago
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With Ryûichi Sakamoto as The Director.
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wgx
1 hour ago
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He’s the reason Mogwai have a track called “Ritchie Sacramento”
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ChuckMcM
27 minutes ago
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Its kinda sad that I've owned 26 of them. :-)
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martin-adams
2 hours ago
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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.

https://www.starringthecomputer.com/computer.html?c=64

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spankibalt
1 hour ago
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"A machine of this make was Yelena's choice to confirm Xander's car payment and facilitate image uploads of Yorgi's safe!"
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jim_lawless
1 hour ago
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I remember seeing the TRS-80's in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou but I didn't know that they were Model IV's.

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)

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hamburglar
2 hours ago
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No Cray appearances? Surprising.
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pieterr
1 hour ago
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st_goliath
1 hour ago
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On the 'help' page, the Cray-like machine from the film Sneakers is listed under "Honourable mentions":

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.

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hamburglar
40 minutes ago
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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.
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andrehacker
1 hour ago
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baal80spam
40 minutes ago
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Huh. I always thought that there was a Cray in Wargames.
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timdellinger
1 hour ago
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“sort by year” is buried on the site, but definitely a fun way to sort

there should also be a “you can spot the villain early since they’re the only one not using Apple” sub-list

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hackyhacky
55 minutes ago
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The sort by year option, since it took me a while to find it: https://www.starringthecomputer.com/featuresyear.html
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purplezooey
1 hour ago
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My fav. so far is the IMSAI 8080 in "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" (2007).
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gitowiec
2 hours ago
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I found ZX Spectrum! And it was not popular in movies
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petra303
1 hour ago
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I feel like the movie Hackers should have more entries.
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afterburner
1 hour ago
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No listing for Wargames?
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spankibalt
1 hour ago
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andrea76
2 hours ago
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Commodore 64 film list is really impressive.. .
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jmclnx
1 hour ago
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Ones in the List I have used :)

* CDC 6600

* DEC VAX 11/780 (IIRC)

* Honeywell H200, did not expect to see this on the list

* IBM S/370 (IIRC)

* IBM/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

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