Starring the Computer: A Database of Every Machine's On-Screen Cameo

Starring the Computer is a reference site that catalogs appearances of real computer hardware in film and television, indexed by machine rather than by title. Browsing it reads like a hardware museum crossed with IMDb: each entry pairs a specific model with the movies and episodes it shows up in, from an Adage AGT/30 in Dark Star (1974) to an Acorn Risc PC surfacing in a 2025 episode of Black Mirror.

The collection leans heavily on classic British and vintage American micros. Acorn’s BBC Micro alone spans decades of screen time — Electric Dreams, The IT Crowd, Micro Men, and even recent Marvel series like Loki and Secret Invasion — while the Apple II turns up everywhere from First Blood and Creepshow to The Goldbergs. Amstrad’s CPC and PCW lines, Alienware gaming rigs, and a range of Apple iBooks and iMacs round out entries that track how prop departments have chosen period-appropriate (or anachronistic) machines.

The value here is archival and cultural rather than technical: it documents how computing hardware has been used as set dressing, plot device, and shorthand for ‘high-tech’ across roughly fifty years of screen media. For anyone studying retrocomputing, prop authenticity, or the visual language filmmakers use to depict technology, it’s a searchable and unusually thorough resource.