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yjftsjthsd-h | on: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail
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.
dlcarrier | parent | next
Canonically, John Hammond spared no expense.

SGI and Apple computers didn't provide the most bang for the buck, or even the most bang, but they sure did use up the most bucks. Other than high prices, and the target market that goes with it, they couldn't have been more different.

The SGI systems were 3D rendering beasts, with a significant portion of their hardware dedicated to the task, making them fast machines for any task, because of the underlying capabilities needed to support that 3D hardware, and they were stable because of the robust Unix operating system. The Apple computers ran on commodity 68040 and an OS that couldn't preempt the software running on it, so a crashed application would take down the whole system.

A stock Amigo computer, at half the price of the Apple system, was just as capable, but supported better upgrades for live video processing. An IBM PS/2 computer running OS/2 would have had the stability of a Unix system, on lower-priced commodity hardware.

If they needed the 3D capabilities of the SGI systems, that was the only option, but if they otherwise only wanted to mess around with video, Amiga computers would have been better than the Apple ones, at a lower price. If they needed something robust, where a user process couldn't crash the system, other Unix workstations would have worked just as well, at a lower price, and an OS/2 workstation would have also worked, at a much, much lower price. Also, there's a rational to having a video-capable Amiga computer along with a robust network-focused Unix or OS/2 workstation, but if you already have an SGI workstation at your desk, you wouldn't really need another computer.

The computers make more sense for someone making movies than someone running an elaborate zoo, but considering how often characters in Michael Crichton's books are authors themselves, it makes sense that characters in his movies to have an affinity toward making movies, and buying the computers that would be used to do so.

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ColdStream | parent | next
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.

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LeoPanthera | parent | next
The Macs won't old school at the time. They were high-end workstations for anyone who didn't need Unix and wanted a GUI that worked.
yjftsjthsd-h | root | parent | next
Right. I just mean that macs running pre-Darwin Mac OS seem an odd choice.
MomsAVoxell | root | parent
They’re an odd choice now. Back then they would have made sense as a UI to the Unix machines.
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jambalaya8 | root | parent | next
true. the book was written before Windows was released.
bradyd | root | parent
The book came out in 1990, the same year Windows 3.0 was released. Windows 1.0 was released in 1985 and 2.0 was released in 1987.
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anthk | root | parent
More than high end, low-mid end for journalists, book writing and editing people, graphic designers, magazine producers and whatnot. Really high end machines were the Sun and SGI ones.
RodgerTheGreat | parent | next
A Quadra 700 could run A/UX 3.0 or higher, which would make it relatively pleasant for the macs and unix workstations to interoperate (provided you spared no expense).
kalleboo | parent | next
In addition to A/UX, there were X window servers for classic Mac OS, with the companies making them selling it as a cheaper alternative to get a graphic UNIX terminal
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yellowapple | parent | next
Macs probably would've been a reasonable choice for all the administrative/office tasks (emails, spreadsheets, presentations, all that jazz), leaving the heavy lifting to the IRIX boxen. Probably would've also been the typical first choice for GUI-driven applications (like NedryLand).

But I wasn't quite alive yet in 1991 (let alone administering IT deployments for biolabs and theme parks colocated on remote tropical islands), so what do I know lmao

bjelkeman-again | root | parent | next
The Jurassic park crew supposedly had a lot of money, and I would argue that any computer nerd, at the time depicted, would have gone with that combo. SGI for Unix and the power and Macs for admin. I would have.
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pishpash | root | parent
Macintosh and SGI (+AIX, various Unix) were in fact a common combination used as desktop and backend server respectively in many 1990's scientific labs including biology labs.
jambalaya8 | parent | next
I can see the SGI machines. Those were top of the line things (though sort of more for rendering...). The macs seem weird. I still remember wondering if he meant svr3 or svr4.
yjftsjthsd-h | root | parent
Right - if it was all SGI, or even a mix of unix workstations, I wouldn't have blinked. It's just the macs that throw me.
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