PDP's in Hollywood Film

[RSX11M+]

Thought this might be fun...

What Movies have you spotted DEC PDP computers in?


I'll start...

• 3 Days of the CONDOR (1975) - In the opening credits, a PDP-8 (8/e?) with DECTAPE and an early DECWRITER can be seen. It's in other places too, but these are the clearest images.

• TRON (1982) - In the scenes filmed at Lawrence Livermore, there's a glimpse of a computer room through glass in the far background when the actors arrive at the bottom of a stairs (26 minutes) with an 11/04 or 11/34 above 2 RL drives, and when (at 27 minutes), Flynn and Lora walk past a large set of racks with no less than 5 PDP-11's... 3 could be 11/04 or 11/34 and two have switch registers, so I'm guessing 11/40.

 

[commodorejohn]

Well, it's BBC rather than Hollywood, but it's pretty damn good anyway. The Stone Tape (1972) is a sort of science-horror TV movie written by Nigel Kneale (of Quatermass and the Pit,) in which a PDP-8/f figures prominently. Bonus points to them for showing the whole setup (add-on rack cabinets and a teletype, in addition to the front panel and tape drives that serve as movie shorthand for Computer Magic,) and for showing it being used in as close to a realistic capacity as the plot will allow.

 

[PG31]

I remember seeing an 11/03 or 11/23 in the police station in the 1993 film Falling Down starring Michael Douglas.

 

[pontus]

I suppose you have seen http://www.starringthecomputer.com

I've got some screen shots from TRON: http://www.update.uu.se/~pontus/slask/screenshots/tron/

 

[billdeg]

The TRON sequel has a DEC RL02 (or similar) in one scene. In an earlier post here I listed all of the vintage computers from that movie.

 

[RSX11M+]

Thanks pontus...




These are the ones from TRON: [from your links]

billdeg, you may have spotted something in TRON Legacy I missed. The only "PDP"-ish stuff I saw there was in Flynn's basement at the arcade - a few racks of RA series drives. :confused1:

I couldn't find a photo.

 

[RSX11M+]

There's also a rack of PDP-11 stuff in The Manhattan Project.

 

[RSX11M+]

This is the PDP-8 from 3 Days of The Condor

 

[RSX11M+]

There's a DEC Pro series PC in Creator (1985)

 

[RSX11M+]

In The Dish (2000) there's a PDP-9

 

[billdeg]

Thanks pontus...


billdeg, you may have spotted something in TRON Legacy I missed. The only "PDP"-ish stuff I saw there was in Flynn's basement at the arcade - a few racks of RA series drives. :confused1:

I couldn't find a photo.

Here is a link to my original post here in 2010, see the bottom of the 1st page - I tagged the computers (from memory)
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?23189-Tron&highlight=TRON

 

[TN-048]

In Swordfish (2001) Stanley (a hacker) access a PDP10 in the basement of his college to get some source code for a virus.

Thats all they show though..

 

[NeXT]

....and that's an IBM tape drive.

 

[TN-048]

Ok, they say it's a PDP. I don't recognize them by sight :mrgreen:

 

[DaveH]

Was there one in the film "The Dish", about the part the Parks radio Observatory played in the Apollo 11 mission. The actual Observatory had a DEC I think its a 9, it can be seen here in one of the photos here http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/news_events/apollo11/post_eva.html

 

[Qbus]

Hollywood sucks compared to what’s over on YouTube! A simple search turns up at least sixty different videos on the PDP-11 including three of my own and around fifty on the PDP-8 including the 1965 PDP-8 system at National Museum of Computing and there four part series on that machine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPioENtAHuY&list=UUq2d2c_u0Lat0SL9P4LEPlg&index=20