26 Jun
1998
26 Jun
'98
12:46 p.m.
On Fri, 26 Jun 1998, Doug Spence wrote:
I finally went back to check on that "Wang PC-002" I asked about earlier.
It was a bit more scratched up, but it hadn't moved an inch in the past
two and a half(?) weeks.
I managed to locate its keyboard, as well as the keyboard for an aparently
keyboardless Tandy 1000TX that was in another part of the building, so I
decided to drag the Wang machine home.
**** Agony deleted ****
**** Begin Ecstacy ****
Anyway, it sure is a curious beast. And HUGE, to my
eyes. It's not quite
as big as I reported before, but it's BIG. The closest offhand and
possibly innacurate comparison I could make is to a friend's MicroVax, but
I don't know what kind of MicroVax that is.
If I sit it vertically (a position the box looks very comfortable in), it
measures about 15" high, by 6.5" wide, by 23" long.
It has two floppy drives mounted in the front: one half-height 5.25"
drive, and one full-hieght 5.25" drive.
In the back, I can see the backs of various cards. One of them has the
connector for the keyboard (4-pin DIN) as well as one serial and one
parallel port, so it must be the motherboard. Beside that (or above,
depending on orientation) is a board with a sticker reading "PM032-B 512K
Memory Expansion". Next to that, is what appears to be an empty slot, and
then there is what appears to be some kind of networking card. It has two
coaxial cable connectors and a toggle switch. There is another card
beside (or above) that, with no ports or labels, but I can see chips
through the air holes. Beside (or above) the mystery card is a board with
a label reading "PM101 IBM Mono Emulation". It has an 8-pin DIN connector
and a 5-pin DIN connector, which I would guess are for monitor and PC
keyboard(?).
Does anyone know the pinouts of the various ports, or anything else about
this machine? Will it read PC disks or do I need to boot it up with some
wacky Wang-format disk? Does the machine require some kind of terminal,
or will a monitor connect into the back of the IBM Emulation board and let
me see what's going on?
Cannot help on the pinouts, but I think their monitor connector was
unique. You need to boot it with Wang disks. They are in PC format,
but the DOS is different. I have a set that I can copy when you get
video going.
As I recall, the IBM Emulator board really hacks the WangDOS to be more
like PCDOS and it will then run many - but not all - PCDOS programs.
Don't believe the D-subs on the back are for monitor and keyboard, but it
may be a different board than I ever saw.
The sticker on the side (top) of the machine says
it's a PC-002, but the
sticker on the back says it's a PC-P002.
The keyboard has a lot of word processing functions on it.
That is what Wang really got established in.
Anyway, I haven't opened it up yet, or done
anything with it but look at
it. Disassembly looks like it might be difficult, because I have to slip
the innards through the full length metal sleeve. I won't be up to that
until my arms recover. I've even got bruises and some kind of blood
blisters or something, from carrying that thing. :/
Stand it up on its face and lift the cover off. Everything inside is in
a heavy guage wire frame.
- don
I probably won't have time to play with it today
as I promised to install
NetBSD 1.3.2 and some UNIX software on my Amiga 3000 instead of coming to
work. (And look at the time. :) )
Doug Spence
ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca
http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ds_spenc/
donm(a)cts.com
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