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Configuration of the IMSAI 8080 in the movie WarGames?

JNZ

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Does anyone want to speculate on the configuration of the famous IMSAI 8080 in the movie WarGames? Is it even a realistic depiction of the computer? I'm most curious as to what the terminal interface was and if that's feasible. I was mostly under the impression that S-100 systems used a separate dumb terminal connected over serial.

Here's what I was able to find:

* IMSAI FDC-2 dual 8" floppy drive (and some kind of FDD controller card)

* Terminal software on a floppy disk, or possibly CP/M

* IMSAI IKB-1 keyboard (connected to what?)

* Electrohome 17" monitor (connected to what?)

* Cermetek 212A MODEM (connected over a serial port on an RS-232 card, presumably)

* Acoustic coupler (unnecessary for that MODEM)

For the effects in the movie, the keyboard was connected to a CompuPro System 8/16

https://www.cio.com/article/3404461/the-technology-of-wargames.html
 
Two serial boards seems likely: one for modem and the other for the terminal though other options are possible. http://www.s100computers.com/Hardware Folder/IMSAI/MIO/MIO Board.htm The keyboard is designed to attach to either parallel or serial port.

S100 machines did have more complex displays available. Compupro had a card that would mimic CGA and MDA as done by the IBM PC. But in this case, a TV typewriter style display could have sufficed.

One could get a terminal emulator running in 32K and quite possibly in 16K with CP/M. 64K should have allowed for something like QTerm with all the possible extras including higher end terminal emulation. I tried looking up minimal configurations for some of the terminal emulators but couldn't see a list of memory requirements in a quick search.

It isn't too far off what a real though nicely equipped Altair could do. The displays are a lot clearer than one would expect off the actual hardware which is a concession to the need of being readable in a movie theater. An attempt to put together the real configuration would have cost close to $10,000 which is a bit more than the cast off parts supplemented with a little spending from allowance that the movie implies.
 
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Hello JNZ, so nice to see you are still active here!
There's an archived page about the original War Games IMSAI here: https://web.archive.org/web/20050216003119/http://www.imsai.net/movies/wargames.htm

I'm still here! Sometimes read the board, but usually only when I'm in a retro computing mood. Lately I've been missing my Wimodem-connected Commodore 64, which is stuck at work. I'm not sure if you saw my posts a few months ago, but I reverted the Oaken Beast back to its original configuration, more or less, but was stuck with intermittently working disk drives. I had CP/M booting but it wasn't reliable enough to R/W from any disk.

I suspect I can use the VF-II board to continuously read track IDs as I adjust the head, based on some instructions Chuck(G) helpfully provided (http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?76674-Floppy-disk-drive-calibration)

And thanks for the link, interesting stuff! I have this prejudice that if the computer doesn't have its own video in/out and keyboard handling, it's a lesser computer. I'd like to research some S-100 configurations that can do that...the one day connect a Wimodem 232 (which I just ordered) or similar to a serial board and do some simple BBS stuff without needing a separate terminal.
 
It isn't too far off what a real though nicely equipped Altair could do. The displays are a lot clearer than one would expect off the actual hardware which is a concession to the need of being readable in a movie theater. An attempt to put together the real configuration would have cost close to $10,000 which is a bit more than the cast off parts supplemented with a little spending from allowance that the movie implies.

I always wondered that about the price tag, especially in 1984. That always struck me as an insane setup for a teenager to have. I was fortunate enough to have hand-me-down gaming PCs that my father and I built in the early 90s, going to computer fairs to assemble machines starting with 386s, probably $2k-$3k in today.

Also mysterious, those boards would've needed to have been carefully installed to work with one another, judging by my experience. With a modified version of CP/M, if he had any OS. I guess in the movie's universe, his source of help and parts were those two nerdy gurus that ran a local university system.
 
I always wondered that about the price tag, especially in 1984. That always struck me as an insane setup for a teenager to have.

By '84 an Imsai would have been nearly 10 years old. I don't find it beyond the realm of reality that a resourceful teenager could have scrounged the majority of such a system for not very much money, especially in a place like Seattle. If it helps you, draw a parallel with the value of an XT or AT clone on the day Windows 95 was released. Or a 33 MHz 386 on the day Windows XP came out. People were literally pulling Sun 3/50s out of dumpsters when I was at the University of Washington in 1995. IIRC the director is on record even as having been very careful to make it exactly that -- something a resourceful teenager could reasonably have scrounged together at that time.
 
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Interesting, I thought a system like that was still pricey back then.

Also that brings back a horror story: when I was in 6th grade I went to the parking lot and saw a dumpster literally filled with Apple IIs of various flavors, IBM Model M keyboards and probably some boxes, a PET or two, and other education-minded computers of a similar vintage. I didn't take any of them, though I had the thought. It haunts me to this day.

Also even back then I was deeply driven to accumulate gadgets. I got my father's work to give me their old IBM DisplayWriter, which absolutely dwarfed my small desk in my room, probably in 1994 or so. One day I took it apart and never managed to put it back together, so it was eventually thrown out :(
 
The Jul 19, 1982 issue of Infoworld has an ad for a Compupro 8086/8086 with two floppy drives system for $5395. Removing the 8086 card and dropping memory down to 64K would still leave a system at over $4,000 for a new S-100 system equal to the movie's suggested Altair configuration. Compupro S-100 used static RAM and even with cost reductions there, it would be a hefty investment. I tried roughly estimating the total cost of a 1976 Altair which received upgrades until 1980 to get the dual drives and 64K of SRAM*. I calculated roughly $7,000 but not every component was included. Intelligent keyboard and relatively large CRT don't have prices I could quickly locate.

Why 1980? David seemed to have a year or two of experience with the Altair but most upgrades should have been from before he obtained it.

Not impossible for someone to get such a system. University buys an Altair; takes a small part of the budget each year to add upgrades; but once the University standardizes on a new computer, the older hardware gets retired. Have to be lucky and able to nag parents to go pick the computer up on the day it is removed.

* Yes, there were DRAM cards for S-100 but early boards were unstable. If one wanted to cut the estimated costs though, having David get a failed DRAM card design that he was able to patch into working order would save $2,000 or so. Busted disk controller would do the same. Read about the Tarbell cassette controller to get an idea of how failed boards could have an easy fix.
 
Does anyone want to speculate on the configuration of the famous IMSAI 8080 in the movie WarGames? Is it even a realistic depiction of the computer? I'm most curious as to what the terminal interface was and if that's feasible. I was mostly under the impression that S-100 systems used a separate dumb terminal connected over serial.

Here's what I was able to find:

* IMSAI FDC-2 dual 8" floppy drive (and some kind of FDD controller card)

* Terminal software on a floppy disk, or possibly CP/M

* IMSAI IKB-1 keyboard (connected to what?)

* Electrohome 17" monitor (connected to what?)

* Cermetek 212A MODEM (connected over a serial port on an RS-232 card, presumably)

* Acoustic coupler (unnecessary for that MODEM)

For the effects in the movie, the keyboard was connected to a CompuPro System 8/16

https://www.cio.com/article/3404461/the-technology-of-wargames.html

Hopefully this will remove some of the need for "speculation."

https://www.imsai.net/the-wargames-imsai/
 
I just stumbled across this thread and tried to get this to run on my WSL Ubuntu, but it errored out all over the place and I don't know how to create makefiles to run that C program to save my life...
 
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