On Sep 30, 2006, at 2:30 PM, Jay West wrote:
Ok, I went there and took a picture, you can see it at
http://
www.ezwind.net/jwest/whatsit/09300001.JPG
The "aspect ratio" in the picture is misleading. While the front of
the cpu isn't perfectly square, it is more square than the picture
would lead you to believe. In the 3rd party floppy boxes are loads
of WANG label software, as well as customer disks. In the brown box
is about a 1.5 foot long stretch of silver padded WANG binders/
manuals, many with original software disks. I noticed some stuff
mentioning 2780/3780 communications software which grabbed my
attention. The monitor hooks up to the cpu with an odd "dual din
cable". Two din connectors on each end, one has about 9 pins the
other has about 5 pins. The monitor obviously gets both power and
data on this dual cable.
The CPU appears to be something called a "Wang Professional
Computer" from what I can glean from the docs. The model tag on the
back is extremely faded black print on silver so it's just a
shadow. It seems to say the model is something vaguely like PM-XC1.
There is an IBM mono "module" which has a part number something
like PM101 and a "winchester controller module" which has a part
number like PM029.
From just a 30 second skim of some of the manuals
it appears to be
running a
very customized version of DOS. The proprietary changes to the OS
appear to be more than just cosmetic.
Ahh yes, I used to service those. They run DOS but they're not
*quite* PC compatible. I LOVE the video on those machines...those
little monitors are so wonderfully sharp!
They use a proprietary bus, and Wang had quite a few options
available for them. They even had the BNC/TNC cable-based interface
to connect to the larger Wang OIS and VS systems.
Fun machines. Built like tanks.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Cape Coral, FL