fluffycow333 Wrote:I hope this is the right place to post this. In the story I'm writing, I need some sort of communication device, like a phone or something used on the Grid. I have not seen the first Tron so I don't know if there is something mentioned or I just need to make something up. Thanks!

In the first TRON, if a program wanted to communicate or recieve files from his User, he needed to go to a dedicated I/O Tower. There a tower guardian would query the program to prove it had security clearance and if it passed, it was allowed access to the center. The scene with TRON holding his disc over his head is from that place, the programs must insert their disc into the IO stream to communicate with their user and recieve new data to the disc. After the MCP was destroyed and the system became free, those same towers were much less restricted and any and all programs could commune with their users freely. In TRON 2.0 the I/O towers were replaced with I/O nodes that were about the size of a basketball. Programs would use them like telephone booths to communicate with their users.

fluffycow333 Wrote:Thank you! Is there a way that a program can communicate with another program?

Well if they are in the same system, I imagine they just talk to each other face to face much like we do when we have a conversation with another person in the same room. If they were in another part of the same domain or an entirely different system all together I gather they would have to use I/O towers / I/O nodes, much like having a phone conversation.

tronprogram Wrote:I would say programs can communicate with each other over some kind of video link. Case in point being when Flynn was screaming NO! at Sark when he was on the Ring Game, Sark was on his carrier at the time. Although we didn't see it in the movie, the shooting script does call for an image of Sark to appear for Flynn to see and communicate with. And of course not forgetting when Sark talked to the MCP he never acually had to go to the location to do it. They communicated on the carrier.

Well, I didn't know about the first one. However when Sark told the new recruits about their conscription and the identity disc he was doing it face to face, albeit he was in the carrier and they were on a ledge. As for the second part that is true, Sark and the MCP had a direct link via the chamber, however the MCP put restrictions on the system by taking over the I/O towers (remember the beams were red). All the tower guardians had to answer to the MCP (though Dumont disobeyed those orders). So any programs wishing to contact their users was highly regulated if not forbidden as the MCP was taking over programs left and right and keeping a tight watch on data flow.