Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

https://fabiensanglard.net/jurrasic_park_computers/index.html

41•vinhnx•1h ago

Comments

tikimcfee•19m ago

And I was worried I wasn't going to have anything to read tonight.

trimbo•17m ago

> [CM-5] With a pricetag of "only" $46,000 per machine, it is very possible these were authentic.

The base price was $750K for 32 CPUs. If Google is correct and memory serves, the one at NCSA cost around $10-15M and had 512 CPU.

I can't remember where I saw it but for the movie IIRC they just had the casing with the blinky lights.

> Ray Arnold's workstation is a SGI R4000 Indigo.

IIRC the R4000s looked identical so it could have still been an R3000. But if SGI was supplying them in September 1992 (when filming was happening), it could have been an R4000.

smaili•14m ago

It 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 :)

yjftsjthsd-h•13m ago

Generally 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.

ColdStream•2m ago

I used to work in an IT department that I called 'The Onion'. That's because the further into the room you went the older the systems got. It was a mix of almost anything you could think of in the mid 90's thru to mid 2000's. The oldest machine was some SGI thing.

So you would be surprised but also, it meant there were a lot of grey beards keeping the whole thing running.

yoyohello13•12m ago

I re-read the book recently and it was really fun to read about the tech now. The descriptions of how difficult it was to build a database that could handle storing 3bil base pairs, which is trivia now. Probably the most sci-fi part of the book, they had image recognition tech so advanced it could track individual dinosaurs from arbitrary video angles alone.

Also, Nedry got absolutely shafted by Hammond in the book. Nedry describing the difficultly in building a complex system with minimal requirements had me sympathizing, lol.

mrpippy•11m ago

Also, SGI keyboards never used ADB. Indigo-era SGIs used a mini-DIN keyboard/mouse, but it was proprietary. They were PS/2 starting with the Indigo2 and Indy.

KasianFranks•3m ago

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