Starring the Computer

Ha! A couple decades ago I saw the original Westworld, spotted some assembly, and thought it looked like 6502/Apple II code, so I assumed that was “probably” it and thought I was a clever nerd. Now I check this list and discovered it wasn’t 6502, and then realized the 6502 (1975) didn’t exist at the time the movie was shot (1973). Reviewed some scenes just now on YouTube and I can see it doesn’t look like 6502 code at all. It does look like the assembly might be the code behind some of the animated displays that look like old screen savers that you see on the other monitors in the film, perhaps, based on a few comments & variables in the code. (For example: https://youtu.be/Luo3uEVOahw?t=2645)

IBM's AN-FSQ-7 panels from 1950s SAGE have shown up in a huge number of movies. They are still showing up in new movies. Woody's Electrical Props in LA rents them out.[1]

Those slanted panels aren't the computer. Those are the modems.

[1] https://woodysprops.com/item.php?uid=122&page=4

Amazing how long the Apple II list is (with its variants), and how short the Dell list is!

Similar: https://www.imcdb.org/ IMCDB, the Internet Movie Car Database

Fun Fact: in king of queens, most of the pcs (for example airport episode with doug's parents) are just RCT tvs with paper printout of a screen taped over it.

This is a really impressive amount of effort. Every entry has a fairly even quality to it...screen grabs and contextual descriptions of even one-off episodes of television shows, yet alone decades worth of movies.

While not a movie, a bunch of NeXT Cubes (at least the monitors) were used in a Madonna video --- apparently some production company got a good deal on machines intended for Japan (hence the katakana interface)

My 90s Macintosh was in How to make a killing (2026). I should put it up there.

What timing. I was just preparing my Sony Vaio PCT-C1MHP only yesterday to try and sell. I remember seeing this in a movie around 2000 (probably Charlies Angels) and got one.

https://www.starringthecomputer.com/computer.html?c=64

Pairs nicely with https://accessmaincomputerfile.net/ (although that site might not be working any longer).

I remember seeing the TRS-80's in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou but I didn't know that they were Model IV's.

According to this list, there was a TRS-80 Model III in the Star Wars TV series Andor:

Andor - Season 1, Episode 1, "Kassa" (2022)

No Cray appearances? Surprising.

“sort by year” is buried on the site, but definitely a fun way to sort

there should also be a “you can spot the villain early since they’re the only one not using Apple” sub-list

I found ZX Spectrum! And it was not popular in movies

Atari ST, Jason Bourne in the hacker space

My fav. so far is the IMSAI 8080 in "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" (2007).

Its kinda sad that I've owned 26 of them. :-)

Wasn’t there a PowerBook in Blade (I)?

I feel like the movie Hackers should have more entries.

Commodore 64 film list is really impressive.. .

No listing for Wargames?

Ones in the List I have used :)

* CDC 6600

* DEC VAX 11/780 (IIRC)

* Honeywell H200, did not expect to see this on the list

* IBM S/370 (IIRC)

* IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads - 760, T43, T420, T61, W500

* Wang Professional Computer - these were bomb proof. I had a 16 bit Unix running on this.

* Wang WLTC