When I watched Jurassic Park when it came out, I got so enamored with the computers in the movie, especially the SGI, that I adjusted the looks of our DOS GUI library[1] so it would look more like it. (I had already a liking to OSF/Motif then)
Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail
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Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail
#52Im curious how they got the digital version of Jaws to play on a computer in... 1992?
Well, you know, a computer had to have been involved in that digital version of Jaws ..
Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Macs won't old school at the time. They were high-end workstations for anyone who didn't need Unix and wanted a GUI that worked.
Right. I just mean that macs running pre-Darwin Mac OS seem an odd choice.
They’re an odd choice now. Back then they would have made sense as a UI to the Unix machines.
Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail
#54Im curious how they got the digital version of Jaws to play on a computer in... 1992?
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Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail
#55Generally full marks on realism, but I have to ask: Is a combination of SGI and old school macs a sensible platform for running a park? I guess if the macs can get on an appropriate network then they could at least send control commands, but they feel like an odd fit compared to the UNIX™ boxes.
Canonically, John Hammond spared no expense.
SGI and Apple computers didn't provide the most bang for the buck, or even the most bang, but they sure did use up the most bucks. Other than high prices, and the target market that goes with it, they couldn't have been more different.
The SGI systems were 3D rendering beasts, with a significant portion of their hardware dedicated to the task, making them fast machines for any task, because of the underlying capabilities needed to support that 3D hardware, and they were stable because of the robust Unix operating system. The Apple computers ran on commodity 68040 and an OS that couldn't preempt the software running on it, so a crashed application would take down the whole system.
A stock Amigo computer, at half the price of the Apple system, was just as capable, but supported better upgrades for live video processing. An IBM PS/2 computer running OS/2 would have had the stability of a Unix system, on lower-priced commodity hardware.
If they needed the 3D capabilities of the SGI systems, that was the only option, but if they otherwise only wanted to mess around with video, Amiga computers would have been better than the Apple ones, at a lower price. If they needed something robust, where a user process couldn't crash the system, other Unix workstations would have worked just as well, at a lower price, and an OS/2 workstation would have also worked, at a much, much lower price. Also, there's a rational to having a video-capable Amiga computer along with a robust network-focused Unix or OS/2 workstation, but if you already have an SGI workstation at your desk, you wouldn't really need another computer.
The computers make more sense for someone making movies than someone running an elaborate zoo, but considering how often characters in Michael Crichton's books are authors themselves, it makes sense that characters in his movies to have an affinity toward making movies, and buying the computers that would be used to do so.
Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail
#56And yet again I am reminded of how SGI was so far ahead of the graphics game and yet was absolutely demolished because others could see the potential for domestic add-on cards when SGI was focusing on entire work stations. 3DFX and Nvidia ultimately put them out of business.
I’m not a scholar of the fall of SGI. But, I’m sure it has been documented in detail. AFAICT, SGI was a textbook Innovator’s Dilemma case with an expensive enterprise product that’s hard to give up in the face of cheap, low-margin competition.
This is true. I was at SGI, and their entire business was optimized to serving the needs of very sophisticated customers who were themselves pushing the envelope. Absolutely great customers to work with. But SGI’s DNA couldn’t adjust to the low margin high volume consumer space.
They built an incredible Windows NT system (for the time) but couldn’t keep up with the 6 month release cycle their competitors were on.
SGI was an incredible place to work while it lasted.
Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail
#57Another good Jurassic Park content is this filming locations video. Almost everything can still be visited today https://youtu.be/34r8Ypxzkk4
Not movie related, but this let’s play of the JP game Trespasser also goes into a lot of detail and is generally super interesting
Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail
#58In the 2nd image (clearest) and other images, there appears to be some binary encoding in red. It must encode something!
Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail
#59It was indeed a Thinking Machines CM-5 — Nedry actually mentioned them in his line about how Hammond wouldn't be able to find anyone "anybody who can network 8 connection machines". An actual assembled CM-5 actually cost closer to a million dollars. But, from what I remember the one in the control room is a shell. In the CM-1 and CM-2, the LEDs were actual status indicators on the processors, which Tamiko Theil and t…
It’s so lame they changed the LEDs to meaning nothing.
On the upside, this means you can run the LED boards without the rest of the CM-5. Have one panel that still works.
Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail
#60It had a Motorola 68000 processor at 16 MHz, 2–8 megabytes (MB) of RAM, a 9-inch (23 cm) monochrome backlit liquid-crystal display (LCD) with 640 × 400 pixel resolution, and the System 7.0.1 operating system. A single mp3 would be more than the entire memory, let that sink in :)
You'll find plenty of people on HN who grew up with Commodore 64s, thus named for having 64 kilobytes of memory, the approximate size of a website favicon in 2026.
But of course real hackers chiseled their own 0s and 1s out of rock by hand.