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Movies/Shows Involving Retro Computing

Guybrush3pwood

Experienced Member
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Jun 19, 2015
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I love Halt and Catch Fire and was wondering if anyone knew of any other movies/shows that touch on retro computing. I'd also be interested in hearing about any documentaries or books.
 
Ah, so cliche, but i had to think about "wargames" when i read the topic title. Nothing worse than a teenager close to starting world war III by his 1337 hacking skills on a C-64...


Documentaries... Well if ya watch old episodes of "Computer chronicles" they have that documentary feel... Just enter "Computer chronicles" and a year like "1988" in youtube... Sit back and enjoy....


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkfrEeJ09nE
 
I don't know about new stuff, but a number the major TV stations have added various "retro" themed sub-channels. Lots of old black and white TV shows, and some older sci-fi shows like Lost in Space and the Original Star Trek. It is interesting to see some of that old tech in the movies and shows these days.

I happened to catch this 1984 piece of cheese the other day: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088024/ Supposed to take place in the "future" (probably the 1990s) where everyone has kunky malfunctioning robots. Laughed my ass off at the beginning when they briefly showed what looked sort of like a Heathkit robot arm adjusting a lamp. Lots of office shots with very "80s" computer equipment.

Another interesting, and cheezy, TV show that comes to mind is the 1980s "Whiz Kids" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiz_Kids_(TV_series) Many different computer systems made appearances as product placement. But the day that ever re-airs will be the same day they re-air the Star Wars Christmas Special :p Although Whiz Kids was uploaded to Youtube a way while back.
 
Pirates of Silicon Valley (movie)
Triumph of the Nerds (documentary)

Kyodai - wasn't the computer used in War Games an IMSAI8080?
 
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For more modern takes:

MicroMen: the battle for supremacy in British personal computers
Jason Scott has two recent documentaries: Get Lamp (adventure game histories) and BBS the Documentary
I have seen a couple of kickstarters for system specific documentaries. I haven't followed their progress so I don't know if any are ready to ship.

Don't forget the many many podcasts covering retrocomputing issues.
 
Pirates of Silicon Valley (movie)
Revenge of the Nerds (documentary)

Kyodai - wasn't the computer used in War Games an IMSAI8080?

I think you meant "Triumph of the Nerds". I love that documentary. I've got it on VHS here somewhere, but I don't have a VHS unit to play it on!
 
Yeah. It's an IMSAI 8080.

wargames.jpg
 
The recent "Jobs vs Gates" episode of the NatGeo series "American Genius" has lots of good retro-computing in it. Interestingly, at 3:17 into the show, the "original Altair" it shows is actually the Altair 8800 Clone and not the real Altair!

Mike
 
>Last night's Mr. Robot had a flashback scene with some Retro in it during a scene at Mr Robots PC store.

>"The Americans" shows IBM XT / Commodore stuff in Season 3 episodes (C64, etc)

gwk
 
Starring the Computer is great in terms of pointing out real computers used as props but does little to show the fictional computer mockups which made interesting snapshots of how the computer industry was going. For example, "Murder, She Wrote" set the bulk of an episode in an imitation of a computer store marked with Compaq-style logos capturing the strange period of clone dominance before Windows took over.
 
I've also noticed some older machines seen in certain television shows myself; for example, I've seen the following at the very least:
- IBM System/370:
I believe that I saw this one once in an episode of Hawaii Five-O, along with the reel-to-reel tape machines.
- IBM Personal Computer (Model 5150) / IBM Personal Computer/XT (Model 5160):
I've seen one episode of Cheers which showed one of these machines running at someone's desk. She was shown typing on her keyboard at that time, and it also had an original IBM display (I think that it might have been a monochrome/MDA display monitor, which would have had the Green phosphor).
- IBM PS/2:
These were very commonly seen in episodes of Columbo from the late-1980s and early-1990s; which is not at all surprising given how many companies very likely had contracts with IBM (and which would also explain why an episode of Hawaii Five-O had an IBM System/370 in it earlier as said above). Infact, for one system, the "Starring the computer" website stated that the machine shown running in the episode "Murder, Smoke and Shadows" was either an IBM PS/2 Model 50 or an IBM PS/2 Model 70.
- COMPAQ Deskpro:
In an episode of Matlock from Season 4, the machine shown running appeared to be a COMPAQ Deskpro; possibly a Compaq Deskpro 386, judging by its case design. However, if it WAS a COMPAQ Deskpro, then it obviously didn't have the original monitor but a generic one.
- HP-86:
This machine was seen in many episodes of Quincy M.E. Season 8, however, for the last episode, they were using Apple II systems instead for some reason.
- Apple II:
As said above, in the very last episode of Quincy M.E., several Apple II machines were shown running.
- Various terminals:
There are probably too many to list here, but in the highly-controversial "kidney donor" episode of Quincy M.E. Season 4 ("A Question of Death"), a computer terminal is shown running in one scene, with either a Blue or Green phosphor display from what I remember.
 
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