As with all things, MacGyver succumbs to the flow of history. Things that once seemed cutting edge and high tech are now commonplace.

Example: Watching "Hearts of Steel", caller ID is presented as high tech police equipment, used in special cases like tracking a call from a kidnapper.

I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, anyone got one?

Sat-nav mapping in Ugly Duckling. MacGyver has to call the military (I think it is?) and use his DXS clout to get it. These days you just plug it in on your phone and get instant satellite images and mapping to the location.

"car phone" in The Eraser episode. MacGyver gives a big speech about how a car phone is wired into the cars central "computer".....

1. Car phones aren't even used anymore - Technology has long since suppressed them.

2. "Central computer" in cars isn't even a term any more. All modern cars have various forms of processing chips in them doing various jobs to make the car safer and easier to drive.

In "Hearts of Steel" after the caller ID thing, I noticed that the kidnapper was using a briefcase phone.

Computers obviously. It's funny, seems like movies and tv always depicted them as a black screen with green text and blinking cursor. I was pretty young back then so I might be mistaken, but I thought the user interface was a bit more advanced than that. At least the computers at my school were, and I'm assuming the stuff we had wasn't even the latest technology.

Hey Drawz, we're from the same neck of the woods, do you remember the "Computers Are Coming Your Way!" public service commercials they use to run during saturday morning cartoons?

And a note on the "car phone wired to the car's central computer" thing, I think the very most it was hooked to was the car's battery! Car phones were an aftermarket accessory, nothing it did required a connection to the car's computer, it was it's own independent device, other than simply requiring a power source.

Ok now, please don't kill me for saying this, but SAKs are no longer cutting edge either compared to some of the really nice multi-tools out there. I own saks for nostalgia, and they are still very useful, but if I were in a situation where my life depended on what I was carrying, I'd have to go with a good multi-tool.

When was a SAK ever cutting edge?

Back in the 80's practically all computers started with an operating system command prompt. PC's had DOS and other computers had their own various operating systems, but they always started with a blank prompt, from which you had to know the system commands to do anything.

As far as application interfaces went, which is what you are talking about - they were all text based just as you see them in shows and movies of that era. Even after the event of color screens on personal computers, most companies still used mono-colored monitors because they were running on dumb terminals which were connected to either mainframes or Minicomputers.

Our computers at work still run on black-and-green technology...

The eldest model I have known we had back home had orange letters.

Yeah, I meant whatever the equivalent to Windows back then was, whatever kind of OS they had. I had a Commodore 64, and yeah, it was just a blinky cursor when you turned it on, but the programs had color and other stuff going on. I just assumed the computers companies used would be running something beyond the blinky cursor. How would the average office person get anything done with just that? I dunno, it just seems like there should be something more than what they typically showed.

Maybe saks weren't "cutting edge" back in the 80s, but I was thinking in terms or progression, not exactly hight tech to commonplace I guess.

The average office worked didn't use a computer back in the 80's. Office's were still mostly paper based. Even in the early 90's office PC's were limited because they had no centralization, (networking). The only way to centralize information on a computer was to use either a mainframe or minicomputer, which still used mostly dumb terminals with green or orange screens and ran mostly text based applications (such as what we see in Ugly Duckling). There were color dumb terminals around, but I think they were more expensive so weren't as prevalent as green/orange screens.

Graphic user interfaces really didn't pick up until after MacGyver was off air. There were plenty of home computers around in the 80's which were far more advanced than business machines which played catch up well into the 90's.


Text based Mainframe menu system running on a PC emulator

ISPF (Interactive System Productivity Facility) is the user interface that come with IBM's OS/390 operating system for mainframes

I think for Mac's ingenuity quotient and usage they(saks) were .... and still are 'cutting edge' in for many respects/needs. If there is another product out there with as many models and (more importantly) with the same small dimensions, compactness, pocketability ... I haven't seen it. Do spill the beans on your 'multitool' finds though? I guess, at the end of the day, 'cutting edge' can - depending on usage/need - means different things to different people/users.

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Let's not forget that by 1985, IBM was well into the Color Graphics game. They were already producing 16 colors in 640x350 resolution. So, one could argue that the computer 'props' used in those episodes were already getting s bit long in the tooth.

As far as GUIs are concerned, Apple's IIgs was introduced in 1986 with (gasp) 16-bit technology and with it came the Apple GS/OS operating system. The company I was employed with at the time purchase a couple of these models ... and I can remember clearly using the gui to send files between our Toronto and New York offices. Here is what it looked circa Macgyver Season 2:

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I was gonna post some examples but they make so crazy many different ones now. Then I was going to show the model I use to have but I don't see it, maybe they don't make it anymore, but it was a Gerber and that's the brand I was thinking of specifically. Having pliers is a huge asset, and that's probably the biggest advantage over a traditional sak. Pliers can be used as a wrench to loosen or tighten stuff, which just isn't possible with a sak. I know wenger made a "wrench" tool, but it was tiny and had limited use. And the tiny pliers on saks aren't that much use either, unless you working on something very small. Some of the built in tools seem a better and more innovative design in my option as well.

Wenger and Victronox were obviously feeling some pressure from multitools with some of the stuff they came out with. I think the Pocketgrip is the most screaming example, it's a sak with literally a pair of pliers hanging out of it. They don't even fold up! I've actually tried to get one of these before, it's so cheesy it's cool. lol



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I'm trying to think of times in the show when we see computers being used as green screen prompts. The only one I can think of is Ugly Duckling, where we see Kate playing with the building controls, which in itself is almost science fiction for that time. But that would have been done some sort of minicomputer, or similar medium sized central processor which would only be using text based applications.

The other times I can think of computers in the show they were all PC's or apples running color screens and mostly GUIs which would be accurate (even advanced) for the time period.

And don't forget we saw MacGyver with a PC at home connecting to the Phoenix mainframe in season 2 (1986) - which was pretty advanced for that time.

I've only been through about half of the season 2 & 3 eps, but 'Fire & Ice' also has computer monitors showing green text. At the Phoenix Foundation in Phoenix Under Siege we see colored text.

That would be fairly accurate. Green-screens where still widely used in small offices and businesses because the apps they used were still mostly text based so color wasn't really necessary to run them. Most small businesses would have only changed when they brought a new PC. And you see that in the Fire and Ice episode; all the information on screen is basically just columns of text.

On the other hand the Phoenix Foundation was suppose to be a cutting edge R&D company so you would expect them to have the latest equipment.

If I remember correctly the computers in Phoenix Under Siege were actually "dumb terminals" connected to the mainframe, which again is reflective of how computers were used at the time.

Speaking of old style computers, and not Mac related as far as I know. Remember seeing tv or movies with computers that had dial up modems that actually required you to take the handset of your telephone and put it on a contraption with two "cups" on it, one for the earpiece and one for the mouthpiece?

"Wargames" springs to mind.


Anyway, as to the multi-tool making the SAK obsolete. I disagree. Two completely different animals, IMO.

Oh it's accurate, no doubt - afterall it was a 1985+ TV series using available and within budget tech props of that era.

The debatable, nitpicky issues are whether or not the computer equipment used in the various scenes were already slightly outdated (don't forget - this can happen in the blink of an eye or a matter of months in the hi-tech industry) for their task and when the episode finally come to air.

I think we can agree in that knowing what was available in the mid 1980s - the computer equipment was, at the very least, not trendsetting given what was available on the market at the time.

And budget/cost would have definitely factored into to the techie prop decisions. For example an SGI IRIS 1000 Terminal went for over $20,000 in 1985.

MacGyver does that in Fire and Ice when he sends the information from the mason back to Dannie's office.

The contraption is called an acoustic coupler. It died out in the mid 80's with the rise of smart-modems which didn't need the coupler to operate.

Yeah that's a fair comment. They certainly seemed to go with the common denominator for most of their computer equipment.

I would say though, that what they actually used the computers for in some of the episodes was quite forward looking. I'm thinking about things like the magic inventory system at the Phoenix Foundation that knows how many paper clips are in each office, or the computer controlled environmental system in Ugly Duckling; even MacGyver being connected to the Phoenix system from home wasn't all that common in 1986. The facial composite program MacGyver used in Blowout was pretty edgy too. Those apps would have been very new when that episode aired.


War Games is solely responsible for my addiction to computers!

Ally Sheedy is solely responsible for my addiction to internet porn!

The first computer we had was a Dragon 32 and had all it's programs stored on cassette tapes...
THAT'S something you just don't see any more!

That and Sony Walkman's.
Is it me, or is the loss of the humble cassette tape a real shame?!

I think it's you.

No it's not just you! Back in the day I despised cassettes, video tape too. I hated having to FF or rewind to find what you wanted, I hated the quality, I hated that they wore out no matter how well you treated them. I wanted a laserdisc/cd player so badly! Now 15 or so years later I'm missing that stuff out of nostalgia. I've started buying blank tapes when I find them at thrift shops and I plan on buying a vintage 80s walkman, a vcr and a top of the line tape deck sometime in the near future. There's just something charming about reels of tape turning and music coming out. lol

We had data cassette decks on the computers in my school. Geez were they slow to load! I wonder if there's a way to hook one up to a modern computer via usb or something just for fun? Hmm.

And it's good to know my memory isn't that far off on the computers back then, I was a kid so it's kinda hazy.

No it's not just you! Back in the day I despised cassettes, video tape too. I hated having to FF or rewind to find what you wanted, I hated the quality, I hated that they wore out no matter how well you treated them. I wanted a laserdisc/cd player so badly! Now 15 or so years later I'm missing that stuff out of nostalgia. I've started buying blank tapes when I find them at thrift shops and I plan on buying a vintage 80s walkman, a vcr and a top of the line tape deck sometime in the near future. There's just something charming about reels of tape turning and music coming out. lol

Recently I was going through a few old boxes and I found a TDK Low Noise High Output D90 audio cassette. IEC I/Type I Normal Position. Unused, still in the wrapper. I'll sell it to you for 50 bucks.

Don't hesitate, it's "Dynamic"!

Also, according to the label on the back it's "Compatible with virtually all cassette decks"!

Oh, and did I mention that it's made from high tech transparent plastic?

Seriously, don't let this deal pass you by!

You're not alone! Actually (not counting digital files) most of the music I own are on cassette.

See, I can understand people who cling to their vinyl as a choice for their music library. But as a person who grew up with cassettes and then CD's, I just can't see any reason why one would prefer cassette tapes.

Because my car has a cassette player and not a CD player (yes, it's pretty old!). There's also a bit of nostalgia going on there, of course

Because my car has a cassette player and not a CD player (yes, it's pretty old!). There's also a bit of nostalgia going on there, of course

That just reminded me of those portable CD players back in the day that you could get with a plug in fake cassette so that you could play CD's on your car's cassette deck.

Those used to be "cutting edge".

I still have a cassette player and radio and cd-player and some cassettes. You know, a little while back in the store where I buy my dvd's I noticed they have vinyl records.

Actually it's quite cool how Mac could log into the Phoenix database in those days. There's also that bit in Trail of Tears where Willis mentions to that guy with Phoenix Foundation actually does. Now I've got this thing that Willis says that they have access, databanks... but does he mean Access, the office programme or does he mean something else? Because if I'm not mistaken Office came along with Windows 95, supposedly Access being part of that edition.

I don't know what the exact quote is, but I'd assume that he meant that they had access to databanks.

Access wasn't released for sale until November 1992 - a year after this episode was made.

He says "We'll use the resources of the Phoenix Foundation; Access databanks, global intelligence networks, satellite telemetry..."

He means they'll access all of those things to help.