29 Sep
2006
29 Sep
'06
6:59 p.m.
Surplus dealer saved an odd looking box for me. It's a WANG, slightly larger
than a typical PC with monitor and keyboard. Comes with a case of floppy
disks, most of which are original WANG labels. I couldn't make out much from
them other than some of it was some productivity type software. The front
dimensions were square (Width = Height) and the depth was unusually deep
(maybe 2.5 to 3 feet). In the front was a power switch, 5.25 floppy drive,
and visibly the front of some small hard drive (looked like the old IBM PC
drives).
The thing that piqued my interest is that it supposedly had 10 terminals
hanging off the back of it before it was brought in. I'm going back tomorrow
to pull it out and get more info about it.
Jay
29 Sep
29 Sep
8:30 p.m.
On Friday 29 September 2006 09:59 pm, Jay West wrote:
Surplus dealer saved an odd looking box for me.
It's a WANG, slightly
larger than a typical PC with monitor and keyboard. Comes with a case of
floppy disks, most of which are original WANG labels. I couldn't make out
much from them other than some of it was some productivity type software.
The front dimensions were square (Width = Height) and the depth was
unusually deep (maybe 2.5 to 3 feet). In the front was a power switch, 5.25
floppy drive, and visibly the front of some small hard drive (looked like
the old IBM PC drives).
The thing that piqued my interest is that it supposedly had 10 terminals
hanging off the back of it before it was brought in. I'm going back
tomorrow to pull it out and get more info about it.
I worked for a while for a dealer that handled such stuff. If you open up the
box and find a big L-shaped CPU board then they're the same critters. I
believe I saw a metal tray intended to mount a drive in one of those boxes
around here someplace just in the past day or two. I may also, somewhere,
have some diagnostics for those machines. Maybe.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
30 Sep
30 Sep
10:09 a.m.
On Sep 29, 2006, at 9:59 PM, Jay West wrote:
Surplus dealer saved an odd looking box for me.
It's a WANG, slightly
larger than a typical PC with monitor and keyboard. Comes with a case
of floppy disks, most of which are original WANG labels. I couldn't
make out much from them other than some of it was some productivity
type software. The front dimensions were square (Width = Height) and
the depth was unusually deep (maybe 2.5 to 3 feet). In the front was a
power switch, 5.25 floppy drive, and visibly the front of some small
hard drive (looked like the old IBM PC drives).
The thing that piqued my interest is that it supposedly had 10
terminals hanging off the back of it before it was brought in. I'm
going back tomorrow to pull it out and get more info about it.
Many years ago (think "the 80386 had just hit the streets") I had a
job as a service tech working on Wang machines that meet that
description. If you can take a pic or two I'd love to see it.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Cape Coral, FL
11:30 a.m.
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.
The price was reasonable so I picked it up. The seller said it came from a
WANG dealer - since there's a lot of what appear to be diagnostics & test
diskettes, I would imagine that's the case. I will play with it for a bit,
but may well be interested in trading it off. I did note that the seller had
more of the proprietary CRT's and dual din cables if those are of interest.
Jay West
11:34 a.m.
In article <001301c6e4be$947d8110$6800a8c0 at HPLAPTOP>,
"Jay West" <jwest at classiccmp.org> writes:
[...] I did note that the seller had
more of the proprietary CRT's and dual din cables if those are of interest.
Weird WANG stuff seems to be fairly rare; I'd pick up anything the guy
is willing to give you. You have a unit from the PC clone era; stuff
from the pre-PC era is even rarer IMO.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
12:40 p.m.
I took more pictures of the unit after removing the chassis. They can be
found at:
http://www.ezwind.net/jwest/wang
The cpu main board is definitely the large L-shaped one that Roy Tellason
mentioned. Just eyeballing it, but what kind of backplane connectors are
those? They look larger than ISA connectors and appear to be 86 pin.
It seems to be quite clean inside and out. Not that I've had much time for
classic computers lately, but this one may be interesting for a while :)
Jay
4:17 p.m.
On Saturday 30 September 2006 03:40 pm, Jay West wrote:
I took more pictures of the unit after removing the
chassis. They can be
found at:
http://www.ezwind.net/jwest/wang
The cpu main board is definitely the large L-shaped one that Roy Tellason
mentioned. Just eyeballing it, but what kind of backplane connectors are
those? They look larger than ISA connectors and appear to be 86 pin.
Speaking of which, I probably still have the backplane left and maybe some
slot covers and that drive mounting plate that I mentioned in an earlier post
left over from that unit I had here. Maybe. I'll have to look, if anyone's
interested.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
7 Oct
7 Oct
12:45 p.m.
interested in anything that has to do with making this
thing closer to a pc. I do have one of this type of
Wang on hold. But hardware like that is of particular
interest to me, if available.
--- "Roy J. Tellason" <rtellason at verizon.net> wrote:
On Saturday 30 September 2006 03:40 pm, Jay West
wrote:
__________________________________________________
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I took more pictures of the unit after removing
the chassis. They can be
found at:
http://www.ezwind.net/jwest/wang
The cpu main board is definitely the large
L-shaped one that Roy Tellason
mentioned. Just eyeballing it, but what kind of
backplane connectors are
those? They look larger than ISA connectors and
appear to be 86 pin.
Speaking of which, I probably still have the
backplane left and maybe some
slot covers and that drive mounting plate that I
mentioned in an earlier post
left over from that unit I had here. Maybe. I'll
have to look, if anyone's
interested.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most
unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a
critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein,
"The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a
society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
1:03 p.m.
On Saturday 07 October 2006 03:45 pm, Chris M wrote:
interested in anything that has to do with making this
thing closer to a pc.
I do have one of this type of Wang on hold. But hardware like that is of
particular interest to me, if available.
--- "Roy J. Tellason" <rtellason at
verizon.net> wrote:
<...>
> Speaking of which, I probably still have the
backplane left and maybe
> some slot covers and that drive mounting plate that I mentioned in an
> earlier post left over from that unit I had here. Maybe. I'll have to
> look, if anyone's interested.
Well, if I can find any of the hardware bits you're welcome to them. The
boards themselves and the power supply are long gone, scrapped out some time
ago, though if you need some particular part I may have it on hand still.
Feel free to contact me offlist if there's interest.
The only thing I remember about that machine that would make it closer to a pc
is there was a board that plugged into it, I don't recall if that's where
the monitor ended up getting connected instead of the stock setup, but then
it's been a while -- I first encountered those machines in 1985, and for a
few years after that.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
1 Oct
1 Oct
4:48 a.m.
These were great machines for their time and were the
standard desktop machine at Ford Motor Company in
Europe in the early to mid-80's. We had them networked
to Wang VS's for e-mail, file and print serving but
the most common app in use at that time would have
been Wang Word Processing. IIRC Wang made an emulation
board that made this look like a normal PC clone. Once
Wang started delivering 286's and 386's these became
known as Wang Classics to distinguish them from their
more mainstream PC clone siblings.
Lucky find - I have been looking for one of these
forever.
-Dave
--- Jay West <jwest at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I took more pictures of the unit after removing the
chassis. They can be
found at:
http://www.ezwind.net/jwest/wang
__________________________________________________
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Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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12:05 p.m.
David wrote....
These were great machines for their time and were the
standard desktop machine at Ford Motor Company in
Europe in the early to mid-80's.
Odd, this machine seems a bit large to me to
be a standard desktop machine.
Maybe built into a desk... but a desktop?
Yes, this machine has software on it to interface to Wang VS hosts.
But more interesting to me, I noticed that I could boot to a different
partition when the machine is in "bios". On that partition is a full
development suite, including basic interpreter, basic compiler (both
microsoft), Assembler (Microsoft I think), and Pascal compiler. Fun stuff.
Lucky find - I have been looking for one of these
forever.
It may be available at some point, especially if you have some interesting
stuff to trade :D
Jay
2 Oct
2 Oct
7:24 a.m.
--- Jay West <jwest at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Odd, this machine seems a bit large to me to be a
standard desktop machine.
Maybe built into a desk... but a desktop?
You're right, the box would have been desk-side, on
the floor. I use the term 'desktop' in its loosest
sense. A lot of folks where I worked had swing-arm
mounts for the monitor so the keyboard would have been
the only item that required desktop space.
It may be available at some point, especially if you
have some interesting
stuff to trade :D
Let me know if you decide to divest yourself of it !
-Dave
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7 Oct
7 Oct
12:07 p.m.
there were a couple of big Wangs back in the day. Is
anyone out there knowledgeable of the different early
Wangs machines. Details of such have eluded me to
date. There is something on Ebay right now (closing
fast), but this isn't as old as anything here that's
being talked about, but still of interest.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Wang-Office-Assistant-WOA-40-Computer_
W0QQitemZ290034430165QQihZ019QQcategoryZ4193QQssPageNameZWD
VWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
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2 Oct
2 Oct
9:01 p.m.
Lucky find - I have been looking for one of these
forever.
I don't know where you're currently located (you mention Europe in your
mail) but just in case, there appears to be a similar one on eBay right
now, located in California:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-Wang-Computer-w-5-1-4-Flopy-Drive_W0QQitemZ1900….
Josh
David Comley wrote:
These were great machines for their time and were the
standard desktop machine at Ford Motor Company in
Europe in the early to mid-80's. We had them networked
to Wang VS's for e-mail, file and print serving but
the most common app in use at that time would have
been Wang Word Processing. IIRC Wang made an emulation
board that made this look like a normal PC clone. Once
Wang started delivering 286's and 386's these became
known as Wang Classics to distinguish them from their
more mainstream PC clone siblings.
Lucky find - I have been looking for one of these
forever.
-Dave
--- Jay West <jwest at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I took more pictures of the unit after removing
the
chassis. They can be
found at:
http://www.ezwind.net/jwest/wang
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
7 Oct
7 Oct
12:42 p.m.
--- Richard <legalize at xmission.com> wrote:
In article
<001301c6e4be$947d8110$6800a8c0 at HPLAPTOP>,
"Jay West" <jwest at classiccmp.org> writes:
Also, there was a unit on casters, like a modern
server type case but fatter. Don't know anything about
it, possible a z80 or something. It had pre-date the
unit currently lol being discussed.
__________________________________________________
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Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
[...] I did note that the seller had
more of the proprietary CRT's and dual din cables
if those are of interest.
Weird WANG stuff seems to be fairly rare; I'd pick
up anything the guy
is willing to give you. You have a unit from the PC
clone era; stuff
from the pre-PC era is even rarer IMO.
3:47 p.m.
On Oct 7, 2006, at 3:42 PM, Chris M wrote:
Wang made a number of physically large Z80-based multiuser (no joke!)
dedicated word processing systems. They actually worked quite well.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Cape Coral, FL
Weird WANG
stuff seems to be fairly rare; I'd pick
up anything the guy
is willing to give you. You have a unit from the PC
clone era; stuff
from the pre-PC era is even rarer IMO.
Also, there was a unit on casters, like a modern
server type case but fatter. Don't know anything about
it, possible a z80 or something. It had pre-date the
unit currently lol being discussed.
30 Sep
30 Sep
4:15 p.m.
On Saturday 30 September 2006 02:30 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
Definitely newer than the stuff I worked with, that had only FH floppy
drives...
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.
Yeah, I'd forgotten about that. And in a system that gets moved or whatever
where those get plugged/unplugged a lot that's a source of trouble,
particularly when one of the connections in the power plug gets a little
loose.
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.
Sounds like old thermal printing to me.
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
The original machines were not hardware compatible with the "IBM PC" so they
added that board to give that compatibility, I forget exactly what it does,
but it's some sort of remapping of hardware.
and a "winchester controller module" which
has a part number like PM029.
The host adapter for the HD.
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.
Two things come to mind offhand: One is that the "switch character" is going
to be "-" instead of "/", and the other is that there's going to
be
provision in at least some stuff for that odd keyboard that Wang used --
which had a return key and a separate "execute" key, now that I'm thinking
about it. I'd forgotten about that...
The price was reasonable so I picked it up. The seller
said it came from a
WANG dealer - since there's a lot of what appear to be diagnostics & test
diskettes, I would imagine that's the case. I will play with it for a bit,
but may well be interested in trading it off. I did note that the seller
had more of the proprietary CRT's and dual din cables if those are of
interest.
That system being newer than the stuff I worked with, there may be someone
who's interested. When I had that last "Wang PC" around I couldn't even
give
it away, even to the one person I knew of that still had one (they had it in
a closet, they told me).
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
11:37 p.m.
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.
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
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. 
1 Oct
1 Oct
6:57 a.m.
Why is it that Wang equipment is not seen available very often? I
just find it interesting that you rarely see many people on the list
discussing Wang mini's or Wang workstations. I had the opportunity
back in 1991 to install a Novell NACS (Async Comm Server) to a Wang mini
so that the company that had it could replace the Wang terminals with
PC's running the remote connectivity client and still continue
connecting to the Wang mini.
Curt
Dave McGuire wrote:
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.
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
--No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.407 / Virus Database: 268.12.10/459 - Release Date:
9/29/2006
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.
6422
days inactive
6429
days old
18 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
chrism3667＠yahoo.com -
curt＠atarimuseum.com -
david_comley＠yahoo.com -
derschjo＠msu.edu -
jwest＠classiccmp.org -
legalize＠xmission.com -
mcguire＠neurotica.com -
rtellason＠verizon.net