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Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

fabiensanglard.net

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Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#231

Post by gdubs »

pnw wrote: post #216
gdubs wrote: post #36

It 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…

Great video. I visited Brewster Kahle at Thinking Machines back when I was in college and that visit ended up being one of the major influences in my career. The CM was way ahead of it's time. Thinking Machines also pioneered WAIS which was a precursor to modern search engines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Area_Information_Server

Thank you! My biggest regret in the video is I didn't get to touch on Brewster Kahle's involvement – especially given what he's gone on to do with Internet Archive. Would love to do a followup.

Re: Search Engines, I think I mention this in the video but apparently Sergey Brin was part of the Connection Machine user community, and had that experience on his resume. (A copy of that is still floating around.)

Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#232

Post by gdubs »

Kye wrote: post #222
gdubs wrote: post #36

It 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…

Do you think it's coincidence the chip for Skynet looks so much like the Connection Machine? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UZeHJyiMG8

Probably not! I'd imagine that whoever did production design for the movie would have visited some of the labs of the time, or talked to people involved in AI – and the CM-1 / CM-2 were very much at the forefront of that type of computing back then.

But that's such a great find – I've seen T2 many times, but that visual of the black hypercube-looking design really is strikingly similar!

Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#233

Post by kraquepype »

dhosek wrote: post #217
pivo wrote: post #174

My wife worked for Thinking Machines back then. I remember that they'd asked Cray to loan them a supercomputer for the film because that's the computer used in the book. Cray brushed them off, so they turned to Thinking Machines who were happy to do it. To thank them, the producers rented a theater in Cambridge, MA to screen the film just for Thinking Machines and I was also able to attend. By far the biggest reactio…

“It’s a Unix system. I know this.” was definitely the line from the movie most quoted in online spaces in the 90s.

I wonder how many sysadmin or adjacent careers that scene helped to foster.

As a kid JP was a favorite of mine, and eventually I got into Linux as an older teen.

That sequence cemented Unix as this mythical thing in my mind and I knew I had to know more. I eventually got to work on AIX in my first sysadmin role which was great. I leaned more into Linux, but it had a positive effect on my IT career.

Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#234

Post by fabiensanglard »

pivo wrote: post #174

My wife worked for Thinking Machines back then. I remember that they'd asked Cray to loan them a supercomputer for the film because that's the computer used in the book. Cray brushed them off, so they turned to Thinking Machines who were happy to do it. To thank them, the producers rented a theater in Cambridge, MA to screen the film just for Thinking Machines and I was also able to attend. By far the biggest reactio…

This is such a cool anecdote. I have added it to the page!

Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#236

Post by fabiensanglard »

BearOso wrote: post #188

I think Fabien is misinterpreting the part which he sees as "video conferencing." Nedry is talking to a guy on a regular phone line. He's just watching a security camera feed from the dock where the guy is.

I am ambivalent about this. When I watch the sequence it looks like the guy in the harbor looks at the camera?

Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#237

Post by fabiensanglard »

danielvaughn wrote: post #191

According to the post, the first computer was in their trailer, but there's an earlier scene where they're using a monitor to view the raptor bones in a tent at the dig site. Not sure if that counts but I'd like to have learned more about that device.

I noticed that too but elected to not make it count.

Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#238

Post by fabiensanglard »

amccollum wrote: post #104

My uncle (John Monsour) worked on this movie as the “24 Frame Computer Sync Engineer”. Because film cameras and CRT monitors have different frame rates, you needed to use specialized electronics to synchronize them with the camera frame rate otherwise you would have banding and weird moving artifacts on all the screens. It’s crazy to imagine needing to do this for all the screens visible in these shots. Later monitor…

What a cool anecdote. I have added it to the article!

Re: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

#240

Post by sillywalk »

fleeno wrote: post #187
aa-jv wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er, yes. Many media companies onboarded to the web in the early 90's using SGI machines. The Indy was a very popular multi-host system for such things. It was not a graphics powerhouse and in many low-end configurations its primary function was web serving. (Disclaimer: I helped build the early web using SGI systems, with many major media companies as clients..)

They even had the "WebFORCE" branding with the "to author and serve" tagline! I also did a lot of early web work on an Indy, and we hosted on a Challenge! I have a Challenge S right now, and when I got it the drive had web hosting setup for a car dealer.

There's a good series of articles on WebForce by the person at SGI who had the idea.

Starts here:

https://therealmccrea.com/2014/01/09/january-1994-a-very-goo...

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