Control: Resonant continues the weird computer choice of the FBC: HP-85's with a white-phosphor IBM-5151 monitor on top.
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@foone is link in John wick where they use some vic 20 with some ibm 5151 as monitor.
@foone Control's choice of PDP-11 and DECtape units are also excellent reliable computers
@foone I used to have an amber then a green clone of that IBM monitor for my XT. I loved the way phospor faded as 1200-baud modem output scrolled up.
@foone Wait but... why is it all white? The colour white wasn't invented until about 2006.
Compare with the HP-85 on wikipedia and you can tell they copied it pretty exactly, except they whitened it up and added a big clunky IBM-style power switch on the left of the screen. Also added a few bonus knobs and such, including ANOTHER brightness dial, which presumably is for the internal CRT? the one they aren't using?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Series_80#/media/File:Running_HP_85_with_BASIC_listing,_2012.jpg
(By Wolfgang Stief from Tittmoning, Germany - HP 85 (1980), CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36105715)
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@foone the screen sitting on top is....questionable, but I don't hate the white case, I mean you're talking basically lab conditions you could definitely explain bromine in the case not having 40 years of normal UV exposure/atmospheric cycling to break down the polymer bonds and leech out the bromine. If it was just a tiny touch gray it would look pretty much like they looked new. I have a bunch of old systems in airtight plastic containers that haven't really yellowed much from just that.
It's weird because there is another model, the HP-86, which is basically an HP-85 without the internal monitor. They could have modeled it after that, then having the external monitor would have made sense.
almost. The HP-86 couldn't drive THAT monitor, only a retrotech nerd like me would point out that small of a nitpick
The HP-85 also could not draw the high-res graphics we see on screen in the game, but ya'know... Basically every game does that.
It was limited to 256×192.
Though maybe they build their own add-in graphics card to drive an external IBM 5151 monitor, which also added high-res graphics modes? Like a Hercules for HP Series-80?
The fun the Control does is make it canon that The Oldest House has some weird-tech-field going on which makes older computers more reliable for that situation and DAMN is that a good excuse to throw beautiful old computers into your setting.
@foone i put a monitor under your monitor so you could etc
@foone As I’ve learned when showing my teletypes, people just can’t conceive of a computer without a conventional screen.