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
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