2 May
1998
2 May
'98
3:52 a.m.
From: Lawrence Walker <lwalker(a)interlog.com
To: Sam Ismail <dastar(a)wco.com>
Subject: Re: Wang PC XC3-2
Reply-to: lwalker(a)interlog.com
Date: Sat, 2 May 1998 15:02:08
On 2 May 98 at 22:48, Sam Ismail wrote:
Ok, what do you all know about the Wang PC XC3-2 circa 1984? I got one
today. Unfortunately it was just the system itself with no documentation,
but I did get some software. This one has a 5.25" disk drive and a
half-height hard drive. I haven't dug into it yet so don't know many more
details but from the labels on the interface cards on the back it has an
IBM Monochrome emulator board among all the basic stuff (winchester disk
controller, serial, parallel, etc.)
Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
I posted on a trash find about 2 weeks ago on virtually the same machine,
with no response. Ditto on some newsgroups. That in itself is fascinating.The
one I have is a PC-S3-2. The only info I was able to find on Wang's venture
into the world of MS-DOS was on the Wang users bbs and this was pretty slim.
They call it a "classic" Wang, (Apple anyone ?) I was able to get a start-up
file from them but it seems to be an orphan like the Atari PC. There's quite a
few Wang CP/M enthusiasts sites but like the TRS m.2 little info on this beast.
even tho, like the TRS m.2, many were sold to the business community.
Most likely quietly fed to dumpsters around the world since most small
businesses don't have garage sales. You were fortunate ( mind you didn't find
it in the garbage) to have some means of IO. Mine had the 2 winchesters
removed and nothing else. I find the MB interesting with its mix of Zilog,
Motorola and Intel chips. Old Wang was known for it's interesting innovations
and IIRC many of it's people went on to illustrious careers with other
companies , like the original DEC, Xerox, and Atari crews did. I don\t have the
URL for the WUG handy but it should be readily available thru a search. They're
a Brit group IIRC and I wasn't about to pay $35 for the privelage of joining
their discussions. Could you give me some info on the FDD's , KB , etc.
ciao larry
lwalker(a)interlog.com
3 May
3 May
6:59 p.m.
On Sat, 2 May 1998, Lawrence Walker wrote:
Most likely quietly fed to dumpsters around the world
since most small
businesses don't have garage sales. You were fortunate ( mind you didn't find
it in the garbage) to have some means of IO. Mine had the 2 winchesters
removed and nothing else. I find the MB interesting with its mix of Zilog,
Motorola and Intel chips. Old Wang was known for it's interesting innovations
My motherboard is probably a later revision (board is stamped with 1985
date code) and only has Intel 8086 CPU.
and IIRC many of it's people went on to
illustrious careers with other
companies , like the original DEC, Xerox, and Atari crews did. I don\t have the
URL for the WUG handy but it should be readily available thru a search. They're
a Brit group IIRC and I wasn't about to pay $35 for the privelage of joining
their discussions. Could you give me some info on the FDD's , KB , etc.
The floppy drive seemed to be a standard half-height double density drive.
The keyboard is interesting. Its definitely not a standard PC keyboard.
First of all it has a 4-conductor DIN plug. Also, upon boot-up it seems
to go through a rigorous self-test. There are 3 LEDs on the keyboard
between the top row number keys and the function keys. They light-up in
patterns at boot-up for several seconds. Pretty cool to watch. Also, the
keyboard has a speaker in it. I didn't pay attention as to whether the
system beeps emanate from it but it does make a pleasant key-click sound
for every key pressed.
The hard drive is a 10 MB NEC (model 134-200403-006). I'm hoping its
auto-parking because I couldn't find any park or shutdown command on the
drive. It has MS-DOS 2.01 loaded. I got additional floppies which are
basically system disks: DOS, diagnostics, etc. My unit also has a
Streamer Interface (a tape drive controller).
The system boots into a nice menu program. From there you can get into
most everything loaded onto the hard drive including Wang BASIC (which is
simply a re-branded GW BASIC). You can also modify the menu system add
your own items.
On an unrelated note, today I picked up a very cool PC disk copying
system. Its a small box, big enough to enclose two half-height 5.25"
drives and a power supply and controller board. The front panel has three
buttons: Start, Reset and AT/XT. I assume the AT/XT button allows you to
select between double density and Quad/High(?) density disks. However,
the button seems to be stuck. Basically you stick the original in the top
drive and the blank in the bottom and hit start. It takes about 90
seconds to do a complete copy. It does a track by track copy, reading the
track from drive A and writing it to drive B. I'm not sure if it will
copy copy-protected diskettes but I don't see any reason why not. It uses
some Intel micro-controller on the controller board but I don't know which
one as all the indentifying numbers have been scratched off for whatever
reason. The rest is TTL logic.
I made a copy of a 360K disk and it worked fine.
Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't blame me...I voted for Satan.
Coming in September...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0
See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details!
[Last web page update: 04/25/98]
4 May
4 May
6:15 a.m.
On Sun, 3 May 1998, Sam Ismail wrote:
On an unrelated note, today I picked up a very cool PC disk copying
system. Its a small box, big enough to enclose two half-height 5.25"
drives and a power supply and controller board. The front panel has three
buttons: Start, Reset and AT/XT. I assume the AT/XT button allows you to
select between double density and Quad/High(?) density disks. However,
the button seems to be stuck. Basically you stick the original in the top
drive and the blank in the bottom and hit start. It takes about 90
seconds to do a complete copy. It does a track by track copy, reading the
track from drive A and writing it to drive B. I'm not sure if it will
copy copy-protected diskettes but I don't see any reason why not. It uses
some Intel micro-controller on the controller board but I don't know which
one as all the indentifying numbers have been scratched off for whatever
reason. The rest is TTL logic.
I made a copy of a 360K disk and it worked fine.
Sam, if you have the hardware at hand, try duplicating a non-DOS disk and
see if that works. I have an analogous box here whivh gags on anything
but standard DOS formats.
- don
7:46 a.m.
On Mon, 4 May 1998, Don Maslin wrote:
> On an unrelated note, today I picked up a very
cool PC disk copying
> system. Its a small box, big enough to enclose two half-height 5.25"
<...>
Sam, if you have the hardware at hand, try duplicating a non-DOS disk and
see if that works. I have an analogous box here whivh gags on anything
but standard DOS formats.
I considered this and will try it, but my guess is that it can only copy
PC formatted diskettes. How cool it would be if I'm wrong though. We
shall see.
Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't blame me...I voted for Satan.
Coming in September...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0
See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details!
[Last web page update: 04/25/98]
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dastar＠wco.com -
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lwalker＠mail.interlog.com