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Jurassic Park - This Is a Unix System?
In the scene where the girl whiz kid is trying to operate the computer, she says "This is a Unix system ... I know this!" Unix is a command prompt interface, and even given that there are GUIs (Graphic user interfaces) for Unix now, I have never seen one quite like this 3-D flyover one!
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a little knowledge of computers
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Contributed By:
Anonymous on 04-02-2000
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Comments:
Mike writes:
Actually this is not a slip-up at all. The 3D gui seen in the movie is a real product made by SGI for their version of Unix (IRIX). See http://www.sgi.com/fun/freeware/3d_navigator.html for more info.
132 of 137 people found this comment helpful. Did you? Yes
Jaron writes:
I don't know how many times I've laughed when I heard Lex say "It's a UNIX system, I know this..." Whoever posted the comment about UNIX is correct. It is a command-line native operating system. Silicon Graphics (SGI) workstations run proprietary versions of UNIX called IRIX. While featuring the same characteristic command-line, it also features an advanced GUI (graphical user interface.) The 3D file navigation utility she's using does exist, and the folders and files were obviously customized to fit the needs of the film. You can check out fsn (pronounced fusion) or File System Navigator at freeware.sgi.com. But let me set some things straight from the computers used in the movie. There were 3 brands of computers represented clearly: Apple, Thinking Machines and Silicon Graphics. In addition, there were what looked like a couple pizza boxes on Dennis Nedry's desk... these are possibly Sun workstations, but I could never get a close enough look. The large, black boxes with red lights that set the background of the control room were Thinking Machines model CM-5 systems. They're obviously not real and there must be some logic controller operating the lights. The SGI machines are accurately represented in terms of visual displays on the monitors, but the systems themselves are nothing more than empty cases or were never switched on. If you look closely, you don't even see a power LED on any of them. The large Crimson series (red color) behind Dennis Nedry's desk is a good example of this. Furthermore, the scene in which the stars in the control room are trying to diagnose the problem (immediately following the T-Rex attack and final roar), you can see the rear of one of the Macintosh Quadra (700 or 840) systems. They didn't even connect a power plug! The system just sits there. All of the graphics used on the displays were piped in from workstations off-camera and the crew did their best to sync them with the actions of the cast. In the scene where the black guy is attempting to access the security interface, his dialogue is not consistent with what's being typed--oops! In that same scene, you can also see a glimpse of gr_osview, a graphical command that shows the status of the processors and memory on the SGI system(similar to System Monitor in Windows). The display indicated 4 processors -- which the Crimson (the machine the display was supposedly connected to) at that time did not support. Obviously a mistake only the trained SGI expert could catch. As for the Macs... their interactive elements were fairly advanced for the time. What I thought funny was the Mac's interaction with the Silicon Graphics systems. After an actor initiated a command on an SGI (almost always), such as the "tour" or the infamous "You didn't say the magic word", the Macs would generally respond to the command with some sort of visual display. At that time, SGI had no support for Macintosh networking. Hmm... If you have any additional questions about the computers used in the movie, drop me a line at brass_j@bellsouth.net.
83 of 90 people found this comment helpful. Did you? Yes
Mkrajenke writes:
The Macs in the movie were running the A/UX operating system. Apple's version of UNIX. It could be networked in with oher UNIX systems and was produced untill 1995. It had a Mac OS 7 GUI and could run native Mac OS application via the Finder emmulator. It came preinstalled only on one Apple model. The Apple Workgroup server 95. A/UX Info: http://www.applefritter.com/ui/aux/index.html Workgroup server 95 Info: http://www.apple-history.com/frames/body.php?page=gallery&model=95
20 of 23 people found this comment helpful. Did you? Yes
Vidar writes:
This is not an error. UNIX is BOTH an operating system AND a trademark that is licensed by a number of operating system vendors, including SGI (Silicon Graphics). IRIX is a licensed UNIX, just like IBM's AIX, SCO's Unixware, Sun's Solaris and a number of other operating systems, all of which can correctly be called UNIX. The original UNIX OS is long obsolete - all modern UNIX versions have evolved a lot since then, though a lot of them share some code with the original OS. Almost all UNIX versions have had GUI's since the early 90's (X Windows, the GUI used by UNIX operating systems, date from 1984, with the first version of the current incarnation dating from 1987), though it's certainly possible to run almost all of them without a GUI too. SGI's claim to fame was exactly the graphics capabilities of their workstations and servers, combined with high end custom graphics hardware on many of the larger systems (the graphics effects in Jurassic Park were rendered with SGI hardware, for example). They also produced a number of 3D user interfaces to show off their technology, including the file browser featured in Jurassic Park, called FSM. It was shipped with most (all?) of their workstations - I remember using it (briefly - it's a gimmick more than anything else) together with several other apps providing 3D user interfaces for various tasks back in '94.
9 of 10 people found this comment helpful. Did you? Yes
Chicane-UK writes:
Timber - it seems that MacOS wasnt used all the way through. One scene, off the top of my head, when they are trying to 'access main security' on Nedry's desk, they are typing the commands into a terminal window from Silicon Graphics native operating system, IRIX. I didnt know this till I managed to get myself an SGI workstation. And another little thing is just to the right of Nedry's desk, draped in cables and crap, there is an SGI 'Crimson' Server on the floor. At the time, it was pretty state of the art :-)
10 of 13 people found this comment helpful. Did you? Yes
Timber writes:
I'm glad someone else finally noticed this. It's been a while since I've seen the movie but I also seem to remember that the OS on the computers themselves was MacOS (7.x?) and the monitors were Silicon Graphics (the workstations were one of the Performa series of Macs). This and Independence Day explain why Jeff Goldblum was doing IMac adds when the IMac was first introduced.
7 of 12 people found this comment helpful. Did you? Yes
Syera writes:
And I've noticed that computers in movies have HUGE beeping alerts... such as a file being copied or a question asking to confirm an action.
4 of 19 people found this comment helpful. Did you? Yes
JJ writes:
In the book the computers (at least the main one) are Crays. And I suppose the only *truly* Unix environment they could use on a PC is BSD...
4 of 21 people found this comment helpful. Did you? Yes
dxdec writes:
The 3D Fly-over thing is just a standard movie cliche. All movies glorify PC interfaces with the exception of maybe 1 or 2 because it looks more interesting and lets us know what the actor is doing whether we are computer literate or not.
8 of 55 people found this comment helpful. Did you? Yes


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