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Imasi 8080?

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squirrel-steam

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I just got done watching wargames, and it the movie mathew brodrick has a computer in his room called and IMSAI 8080, now i know there are IMSAI's, but was there ever a model 8080? It has two 8" floppies on the bottom, and lots of switches and lights on the front, and apparently a modem because he could connect to other computers and stuff.
 
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Well the first (was their ever a 2nd?) IMSAI was indeed the 8080. You might want to watch the movie again. The disk drives were a totally seperate enclosure and were likely sold seperately. The modem was a totally different unit as well, and IIRC was to the left of the monitor and right of the telephone at the very right end of the desk.

--Jack
 
Well I just had the misfortune to sit through Wargames: The Dead Code ( 2008 )

The plot was awful, the new updated, menacing and paranoid comptuer RIPLEY was not a patch on WOPR. Worse Mr WOPR seems to have gotten an upgrade with what looked like some 5.25" drive upgrades

I waited for a re-appearance of Mr IMSAI 8080 but sadly it did not come.

wopr.jpg
 
As someone previously posted, yes the Imsai 8080 is a real system. The floppy drive unit is an external box the same size (and much heavier as I recently found out) than the computer. Due to the weight they were sometimes installed in a rack beside the desk,although they could be stacked like the movie or a hobbiest would likely do. The modems then were usually a rubber speaker and microphone that you would put the receiver of your telephone onto and it would interpret the modulation of sound to a byte and make the tones back to talk.

Yeah, old stuff, sorta before my time (by the time I got online we had 2400baud modems which seemed great except on large listings of data) and I never knew anyone that had the receiver type modem. I have one or two for some systems.. was thinking about modding one to work on a cell phone just for shiggles.
 
squirrel-steam said:
I just got done watching wargames, and it the movie mathew brodrick has a computer in his room called and IMSAI 8080, now i know there are IMSAI's, but was there ever a model 8080? It has two 8" floppies on the bottom, and lots of switches and lights on the front, and apparently a modem because he could connect to other computers and stuff.
Click to expand...

I just looked at my new 25th aniversary edition DVD of Wargames. Someone on the VCFs said that they had sent a picture of an IMSAI to the producers of the DVD for inclusion on it. However, there was no picture of an IMSAI amongst the supplamental materials.

Sean
 
barythrin said:
As someone previously posted, yes the Imsai 8080 is a real system. The floppy drive unit is an external box the same size (and much heavier as I recently found out) than the computer. Due to the weight they were sometimes installed in a rack beside the desk,although they could be stacked like the movie or a hobbiest would likely do. The modems then were usually a rubber speaker and microphone that you would put the receiver of your telephone onto and it would interpret the modulation of sound to a byte and make the tones back to talk.

Yeah, old stuff, sorta before my time (by the time I got online we had 2400baud modems which seemed great except on large listings of data) and I never knew anyone that had the receiver type modem. I have one or two for some systems.. was thinking about modding one to work on a cell phone just for shiggles.
Click to expand...

Hi
My IMSAI 8080 has a disk drive system made by "Digital Systems". It has
two 8 inch drives , that are mounted horizontally. These are in a box that
is the same foot print as the IMSAI. I stack the two, just like in the movie.
Dwight
 
The narration track has several misstatements by the producer or director. For example, the IMSAI is called a TRS-80, and the 8" floppy diskettes are referred to as "those huge 5-1/4 inch discs". I have an older DVD. They may have made corrections for the latest 25th anniversary release.
 
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