Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

Fabien Sanglard - WEBSITE

Jul 13, 2026

Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail

After I mentioned a Jurassic Park anecdote the other day, I watched the movie again. I must have seen it at least ten times now. This time, I researched every computer/software I spotted.

EDIT: Just when I was putting the final touches on this article, I read the sad news that Sam Neill, who played paleontologist Alan Grant in JP, has passed away today. R.I.P Sam.

Apple Powerbook 100<br>Surprisingly, the first computer visible is not on the island Isla Nublar but in Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler's mobile trailer. It is an Apple Powerbook 100, visible in the image below on the left side.

Apple Powerbook 100

It had a Motorola 68000 processor at 16 MHz, 2–8 megabytes (MB) of RAM, a 9-inch (23 cm) monochrome backlit liquid-crystal display (LCD) with 640 × 400 pixel resolution, and the System 7.0.1 operating system.<br>Wikipedia

This machine specs reminds me of how awful '90s laptop screens, based on a passive matrix, were. Definitely something I don't miss from that era.

Jurassic Park Control Room

All computers and software are located in the Control Room on the desks of two engineers, Dennis Nedry and Ray Arnold.

Dennis Nedry's desk is an indescribable mess with three machines (two macs, one SGI), three monitors, one PDA, and storage devices.

Dennis Nedry's chaotic desk<br>Ray Arnold's desk is much tidier. It features a CCTV screen, storage devices, two computers (a Mac and a SGI), and two monitors.

Ray Arnold's desk with supercomputers in the background

In the back of the Control Room, we can make out a giant screen and a supercomputer with tall panels and blinking red lights.

The book The Making Of Jurassic Park has interesting details about how they designed the Control Room.

Everything in the set was real. We couldn't fake any of it, because audiences are so sophisticated now in their knowledge of computers. All told, $875,000 worth of computer hardware loaned by Silicon Graphics, $350,000 worth from Apple and some $500,000 in additional hardware and software went into equipping both the set and off-stage control room.<br>Cory Faucher (Special Effects Coordinator)

This means, adjusted for inflation, Apple and SGI loaned roughly $4,000,000 of 2026 dollars for the production of Jurassic Park.

SGI R4000 Indigo<br>Ray Arnold's workstation is a SGI R4000 Indigo. It is barely visible in two shots. Blink and you will miss it at 54:48 .

SGI R4000 Indigo (Hardly visible)<br>We get a somewhat better view of it towards the end of the movie thanks to a Velociraptor that never skips leg-day.

SGI R4000 Indigo (Better view)<br>For the needs of the movie, that SGIs came in handy to run real-time 3D animation of the Hurricane. Or did they?

SGI R4000 Indigo running 3D hurricane animation

A dynamic and interactive method was employed to create the graphics, both on the big screen and on the computer monitors at each individual station. A makeshift room was built adjacent to the set, then equipped with a battery of Silicon Graphics and Apple Macintosh computer systems. Stored on computer disks were animations generated over a period of six months by a four-man computer graphics team headed by Michael Backes.

Responding to cues received via radio from the set, Backes and his team were able to feed their graphics directly to the appropriate monitors on stage, making it seem as though the actors involved were actually calling up the imagery.

The Making Of Jurassic Park

SGI IRIS Crimson<br>Dennis Nedry's powerhouse workstation is an SGI IRIS Crimson. It is such a beast that it won't fit on his desk. It is on the floor on the right of his desk (red box).

SGI Crimson (red box on the right)Most of the time it is used to display a 3D chess game (monitor the right end of Dennis desk).

Chess, running on SGI IRIX Crimson (right screen)<br>The SGI Crimson is rarely visible on screen. It is briefly visible after Dennis's "white rabbit" lockdown brings Samuel Jackson into a depression.

Crimson (also red box on the right)<br>The SGI Crimson was a very powerful workstation released in 1992. Its main appeal was its panel of real-time 3D graphics cards. The CPU was also very powerful with hardware Floating-Point Unit, a luxury for 3D graphics.

One MIPS 100 MHz R4000 or 150 MHz R4400 processor<br>Choice of seven high-performance 3D graphics subsystems (Entry, XS, XS24, Elan, Extreme, Reality Engine, VGXT)<br>Up to 256 MB memory and internal disk capacity of up to 7.2 GB, expandable to more than 72 GB using additional enclosures<br>I/O subsystem includes four VMEbus expansion slots, Ethernet and two SCSI channels with disk striping support

Wikipedia

PLI, Mini Arrays<br>Both Dennis and Ray use PLI Mini Arrays for their backup. Dennis has an impressive stack of five on the left-end of his desk.

A stack of five PLI Mini Arrays on Dennis's deskThere is a continuity error in the movie. See how the stack of PLI is facing left in...