43

This is a grab from a 1988 movie called Vampire's Kiss.

It has twin disk drives (5.25" from the looks) and what looks like a built-in printer?

still of movie

Raffzahn
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Jonathan Potter
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  • @njuffa It could be a workstation built for a particular profession, e.g. a lawyer's office, but as you say, we need more context. – Mick Oct 10 '21 at 02:29
  • I think there are two units on the desk, butted up against each other. – dave Oct 10 '21 at 02:41
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    I'm guessing it's a dedicated word processing system, rather than a generic computer. – Will Hartung Oct 10 '21 at 03:42
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    There seems to be a manufacturer's logo on the front of the printer, but we need to see a close-up to make it out. – Mick Oct 10 '21 at 03:43
  • It looks surprisingly similar (but not quite like) to Toshiba's 1982 TOSWORD desktop word processing system (https://etzone.org/2018/06/12/tosword/) – tofro Oct 10 '21 at 09:12
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    How well can you actually read a 12" screen from like 4 feet away? That desk was definitely arranged by Hollywood. – 640KB Oct 10 '21 at 13:22
  • @640KB You actually can - the machine has an excellent amber text screen which is super-sharp. – tofro Oct 10 '21 at 18:39
  • This kind of question is usually answered on starringthecomputer.com. But apparently it's only in this list so far: http://www.starringthecomputer.com/movies.txt – Lars Brinkhoff Oct 11 '21 at 07:30
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    @640KB Those monochrome monitors are also very low resolution by modern standards, about 720x350 (Yeah, they weren't square pixels). And with only 2 colors, amber/green/blue/white and black (this one appears to be amber), it's not at all hard to read from a distance. – Darrel Hoffman Oct 11 '21 at 13:24
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    @640KB With binoculars!? In the 1980s, I worked on a remote sensing satellite system. "Control points" were distinctive points on the ground with known locations; small images (aerial photographs?) of control points could be registered to similar objects in the satellite imagery to provide more accurate geometric correction. Quality maps were put on a large digitizer board so as to precisely determine control point locations. Doug aligned/tuned the digitizer, but his VT100 terminal was about 30 feet away, so he used a pair of binoculars to see what coordinates the digitizer was reporting! – Alex Measday Oct 11 '21 at 14:55
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    @640KB has a point though. The ergonomics of that work station are appalling, and it's not just the placement of the monitor. Look at how she's reaching up to the keyboard, and how the keyboard is so close, it's practically touching her solar plexus. – Solomon Slow Oct 11 '21 at 15:17
  • Screens were typically 80x25 or 40x25 text, quite readable from that distance even on a 12" ... – rackandboneman Nov 18 '22 at 00:34

1 Answers1

82

That's a Minolta PCW1 Word processor of Minolta Camera Co. Ltd

The "computer part" is in fact a PC with 512kBytes memory and a 80186 CPU running DOS 2.11 and proprietary word processing (or, rather: typewriter emulation) software written by a company named Carlisle Systems. The printer part apparently is a NEC daisy-wheel OEM module. The two modules came separately and can/must be bolted together.

It's relatively rare, as apparently only 10.000 units have been built.

tofro
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    It's super beautiful. – JRN Oct 10 '21 at 14:50
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    IIRC MSDOS needed to be a special version to run on 80186 machines, since they were never truly IBM PC compatible due to the 80186 having built in peripherals that conflicted with the IBM PC memory map standard. – rackandboneman Oct 10 '21 at 16:58
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    @rackandboneman Probably not a spacific DOS version, but certainly a specific BIOS to handle the on-board timer, interrupt and DMA controllers. DOS doesn't do much with them, but still, the Minolta DOS for the PCW1 apparently was a proprietary version. – tofro Oct 10 '21 at 18:09
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    It's made for exactly one function and I have to assume it fulfils it nicely. – Janka Oct 10 '21 at 20:56
  • @JoelReyesNoche I agree! My first thought was that looks like a Mac SE and an ImageWriter mashed together, they have that same aesthetic. Perhaps it's an ultrawide edition of the Lisa ? ;-) – noughtnaut Oct 11 '21 at 12:25
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    "10.000 units" .. guessing you mean ten thousand? – Boann Oct 11 '21 at 14:00
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    @boann Yes - a European number ;) – tofro Oct 11 '21 at 14:01
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    @tofro The thousands separator in English is a comma. – Boann Oct 11 '21 at 14:29
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    @Boann - no, the mistake is that it should be in kilounits... – Jon Custer Oct 11 '21 at 16:29
  • @JonCuster If it were in kilounits I'd doubt the number of significant digits there... – called2voyage Oct 12 '21 at 17:32
  • @called2voyage - sure, but 10.0000 kilounits would be even more in doubt... Tongue was firmly in cheek, that doesn't come across well in comments... – Jon Custer Oct 12 '21 at 17:32
  • @JonCuster Oh, I got it, I was just playing along, lol. – called2voyage Oct 12 '21 at 17:53
  • This dedicated word processor would have been beautiful on my desk, as I typed with the wonderful sounds coming from my BeoCenter 9000 on the cabinet next to me. – davidbak Mar 05 '24 at 23:24