Computer movie Weds night "Hot Millions
William Hamblen
Bonjour, 2006 IS THE 25th YEAR OF THE ZX81 for all the ZX81 users and Timex Sinclair TS1000 users. See their web Their is also a programmer contest that will run all year...
my first programming job was to implement a 360-30 version of 1401 mpio (rather than running 360-30 in 1401 emulation mode). the 1401 was...
S P O I L E R S
I saw it last night and was kind of disappointed. Even though I like Karl Malden and Bob Newhart, I didn't find the film that funny. I'm used to Maggie Smith playing a strong authority figure rather than a bimbo secretary. Actually, I was more interested to see what kind of hardware was used and how his embezzlement scheme would work.
Louis Krupp i had some stuff from the late 60s and early 70s replicated on three different tapes (over the years copying from 800bpi to 1600bpi to 6250bpi tape) ... but all...
I presume the mainframe shown was a British computer.
The I-O terminal they used was a Teletype 33 ASR that actually worked. Nice closeup of the old keyboard with the control codes over the letters. The sound seemed authentic. Ironically, the stereotypical "sound" of a teletype is of the older models with typebars striking the paper. This sound was used long after the older machines ended service, news stations simply played a recording of it in the background. The 33 machines had a softer strike. (Indeed, I found a worn ribbon from a 33 gave plenty of more service on a regular typewriter).
They also used a CRT terminal. I wonder if the error messages displayed on the CRT were actually done on a CRT or just faked to look that way. I don't know how hard it is to film a TV screen image without distortion. It looked reasonably realistic, indeed more so than more modern TV-movie CRT images but I suspect it was faked; probably easier to film. It may have been a plain TV monitor showing the image of the letters.
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