My Marketing Director Bob Walker sent off the requested materials along with a brief letter extolling the virtues of an IMSAI 8080 as a prop, and that we had many other related historical items, magazines, and equipment to sweeten the pot.On July 8,1982 Bob Walker briefed me regarding a call from Cliff McMullen of Unique Products, a major pioneering product placement company in the Los Angeles area. McMullen is the guy who got the candy/major food group “Reeses Pieces” placed in the Steven Spielberg movie “ET“. The firm wanted us to provide them an IMSAI 8080 and several other props for a new MGM Studios movie starring the then-unknown Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy.Being somewhat skeptical, I told McMullen on the phone to send me a copy of the script and I’d get back to him. To my surprise, two days later a package arrived from Mandy Films containing other informational items about Unique Product Placement and a pre-shooting script of “Wargames”, typed and printed onto a photocopy-resistant green paper by a script services company in the west Los Angeles area. This early version of the script had the story line placed in the future and seemed to depend more on fantasy and conjecture rather than technical reality.Our contact person for the film was Special Effects Supervisor Mike Fink. Bob Walker, and I would be in regular contact with for him the next three or four months. The production had the backing of MGM/ United Artists and promised to have a major budget to work with. Mike told me that the screenplay writer Lawrence Lasker stipulated that an IMSAI 8080 be used as the visual prop for the central character’s computer. Still skeptical, I read the script trying to envision the equipment requirements.A few items struck me as lacking credibility.
First, the central character (Matthew Broderick) would access a military computer (the visually delightful W.O.P.R. in the movie) using his home computer connected to an acoustic coupler and his telephone handset. At that time, acoustic couplers had a maximum communications rate of 300 baud (ridiculously slow then, and now by today’s standards).The requirement of an acoustic coupler was mandated more for visual effect than for reality. I resolved the credibility issue by providing the only IMSAI 212A modem ever made (actually, a Cermetek 212A modem that I was evaluating as a possible addition to our product line). By repainting the front panel and carefully applying press-on lettering, I provided a plausible, if unstated high-speed data link (at a blazing 1200 baud!) for the movie’s plot. An acoustic coupler was still used to satisfy the visual effect in the movie.Another thing was apparently missing from the initial script. How was this young lad going to load software into his computer? I called Mike Fink to discuss this and he admitted that the issue never even came up. I suggested an IMSAI FDC-2 (the dual Calcomp 142 8″ floppies in an enclosure similar to the 8080), and he readily accepted the offer. The loading of one of those 8″ disks (about 1 meg of storage in double density format) is one of the few equipment close-ups that made the final cut of the film.Once we received the script, Bob Walker sent a full line catalogue down to Mike for review. Mike had a chance to see what other items might be of use for the film’s shooting, and selected one of our IKB-1 Intelligent keyboards as the on-screen input device. Mike acquired an Electrohome 17″ monitor because of it’s readability at distance, a camera requirement. We decided to go ahead and provide the requested equipment for nothing more than the promotional value and screen credits. The 8080 supplied has the Fischer-Freitas-era front panel featuring a layered screen-printed Mylar front mask rather than the early acrylic/photo-film sandwich style with its highly reflective and humidity-related cosmetics problems.Our engineer Glen Hoag came up with an idea to hard-wire a RESTART 7 instruction onto an old MPU-A 8080 processor board to provide a somewhat random light activity to the front panel lights, which worked out nicely. The chassis was then loaded with an assortment of junk boards to give the impression that the box was loaded with processing power! Actually, the bus fingers of all those boards were cut off to prevent the possibility of conflicts with the CP-A front panel or MPU-A processor. With flat cables attached to several of the dummy boards, it made for an impressive prop. The visual effect was so convincing that the director decided to leave the cover off during filming.I considered it a cheap shot to find that most of the “IMSAI 8080” labeling was obscured by a prop instruction label during the movie.But the IMSAI 212A modem gets a great mug shot with the talented Ally Sheedy during some critical scenes.
The IMSAI IKB-1 keyboard is prominently featured in the publicity, poster and video packaging art with an over-the-shoulder shot of Ally Sheedy and Matthew Broderick at the keyboard watching the video monitor. A few weeks later we were solicited by the film’s producer to foot the bill ($5000) for a four-color, two page advertising print for a fictional computer magazine that provides an important plot development point early in the movie. I don’t think they realized how small and financially strapped we were at that time; it simply wasn’t in our budget. I declined. I believe, after seeing the movie, that my decision proved to be a wise one.Mike, with his cohort in programming, Steve Grummette, had written some code to provide the illusion that Matthew Broderick was actually entering data and getting output on the monitor. In fact, the IKB-1 keyboard could be programmed with a few keystrokes to output an ASCII sequence whenever any key was subsequently pressed. This feature was employed to generate an interrupt in the off-screen CompuPro 8086-based system that Mike had used to develop much of the required output. It is that CompuPro that actually controlled the Electrohome monitor in the movie, but cued by Matthew Broderick‘s keystrokes on-camera!However, the plan wasn’t without flaw. We had provided several thick binders imprinted with the famous IMSAI logos to be used as additional props, and taped a typewritten programming instruction sequence on the bottom of the IKB-1 keyboard. But apparently that last item was temporarily forgotten at a very inconvenient time! Within a few days of shipping off the equipment, all was set up and apparently working fine. Matthew Broderick either observed or was instructed in the 6 keystroke programming sequence of the keyboard, a step necessary in the beginning of each shooting day.I was deeply in love with flying at this time, and was out boring holes in the sky about a week after shipping the Wargames props when we received a frantic call from Mandy Films. They had an emergency on the set! I got the messages when I arrived back the office late in the afternoon. It seems that they had forgotten the programming sequence for the keyboard and none of my people had remembered the special keyboard coding. Matthew Broderick saved the shoot by eventually recalling the sequence and experimenting with the ESCAPE key, proving his worth as a true hacker!Nancy, Bob, and I were invited to hand deliver the equipment to the film studio and observe some of the filming, meet the cast and to get some of the publicity stills being shot at the time. Sadly, we were not able to take time off since we were meeting with potential investors. The equipment was returned to us as promised at the end of the shooting schedule, but the front panel switch escutcheon on the 8080 suffered some moderate shipping damage, as did the FDC-2. No sweat. The IMSAI 212A modem still sports an odd photo-felt-and-tape pad on its top, possibly left over from the close-up scene when Ally Sheedy places a small speaker on top of it.We were requested to send the equipment back down to Mandy Films on March 3, 1983 for a publicity photo shoot in preparation for the film’s opening release. A notation on our packing invoice reads “Expected return date: 3/9/83”. The IMSAI 8080, FDC2-2 Dual Floppies, IKB-1 keyboard, two cables, and a Zenith 12″ video monitor were again sent back down to Mandy Films on March 5, 1983 for a publicity photo shoot in preparation for the film’s release.We sent our copy of the script back to the script service as requested. We still have the shipping labels and letters from the promotional placement firm and Mandy Films, as well as the 8080, keyboard, and modem. Additionally, we received a complimentary movie poster. We scrapped the FDC-2 shortly after getting it back because of shipping damage and questionable value. It was not deemed suitable as a “keeper”.Credits in the film’s end include: