Starring the Computer | Hacker News Reader

Starring the Computer

starringthecomputer.com

57 pointsLutzb16 comments

IBM AN-FSQ-7 panels from the SAGE system have been appearing in movies for half a century now, and still look futuristic.

They're still for rent as props.[1] Amusingly, none of those are part of the computer itself. Those futuristic slanted panels are modems. The other panels with all the lights are test gear. The computer itself was an entire building full of plug-in racks of tubes.

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

Some folks here know about my Tumblr: https://moviecode.tumblr.com and the related site https://behind-the-screens.tv/ which talks about the source code that appears on computer screens in TV and film.

Starring the Computer is a website dedicated to the use of computers in film and television. Each appearance is catalogued and rated on its importance (ie. how important it is to the plot), realism (how close its appearance and capabilities are to the real thing) and visibility (how good a look does one get of it). Fictional computers don't count (unless they are built out of bits of real computer), so no HAL9000 - sorry.

Did you mean to copy and paste the intro as a comment?

Yes, I meant to do that. I posted the link and wanted to give some context on what to expect on the site. (HN does that automatically when you add a description to a link)

Need more Amigas, Ataris and NeXTs in movies

I'm older than these.

Would you like to play a game?

> Would you like to play a game?

I just realized there's two ways to take that quote, with a rather stark difference between them. In one case, I would love to play a game. In the other, I would most definitely not, thank you very much.

(Wargame, and Saw, for those curious)

I think the actual quote for wargames is "shall we play a game?"

Same strategy of abstention, though!

It is, but I wanted to find the pedants, so I misquoted intentionally. ;)

Shall we play it again, Sam?

Being old, I was thinking War Games, but you make a completely valid point RE: SAW. I sit corrected.

You could probably come up with a generational demarcation between responses to the line (even if technically misquoted for one of them), if you were so inclined.

I'm GenX, so it tracks with a dataset of 1, so far. :)

Nice site,

Is there any info on how some of the UIs they make for TV or Movies are done?

For example fake search engines like or custom Operating Systems. Is it blue screened or is there actual developers throwing these mock UIs together?

As said it is the thing that you cannot see that is more frightening. How about the 6502 in terminator.

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