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I have a questin for anyone interested

olddataman

Experienced Member
Joined
May 20, 2003
Messages
94
Location
Bloomingtom, IN
There are two interesting computers in the "vintage" catagory that I have never seen mentioned in anyone's collection or on eBay or other auction sites.
One is the Wang PC. They were out in about 1984, were built like the provebial brick outhouse and were 8086 based. They made no apologies for not being IBM compaatable, but furnished a nice DOS Shell to get around this and they wrked like a charm.
The other is the Alpha Microsystems S-100 bus system based on the Western Digital/DEC PDP-11 chip set with a couple of insstructions changed to get around DEC patented instructions. These insructions were changed to a couple of MOVE instructions to accomodate the S-100 8-bit menory data bus. They weere programmed in an in-house developd Basic that was Respected and loved by virtually all users. We sold them for years, as one of the first 8 dealers chosen. We had systems that had a meg of memory, had 16 crt terminals attached, two or three high capacity printers and CDC Cartridge disk system. Those of you who have the first 12 months of Dr. Dobbs Jurnal, scan them for an article by Dick Wilcox which describes the computer to the Home Brew computer club in 1975 or 76. It would be a terrible shame if these two computers disappereaed into the recyle bin just because noone was familiar with them.

Ray
 
I have a friend who has several of the Wangs in his collection, including the monitors with the special mounting bracket that clamps on to the edge of your desk, and allows you to swing it out of the way, courtesy of a local college's anual garage sale. I can probably convince him to part with one, if you're interested in it. Lemme know, I'll see what I can do.

--T
 
re a questioin for anyone interested

re a questioin for anyone interested

Terry, thank you for the idea. Can I take a rain check. If I get a Wang I'll have to get rid of something else if I want to keep my happy home. My wife thinks I'm too olld and infirm for this anymore. I am old and infirm, but not ready to throw in the towrel just yet. I'll get rid of a big AST 386 or 486 my dentist gave me. It is a big desk-top cabinet with a hugh monitor. AST made pretty good stuff and maybe one of these people that collect compatables and almost compatables will take it off my hands. It should be about the size of a Wang or a litttle larger.
Where do you live? Knolwing where it is coming from wold give me a handle on shipping charges. I would have to have docs and software with it. I'm a pretty good tech but I'm no programmer.
Thanks again;
Ray
PS I live in Bloomington, Indiana
 
Ok, I'll check on the availability and get back to ya. I'm in Michigan, right next door to ya, so shipping may not be as bad as you were thinking. (FedEx Ground is pretty reasonable when it comes to big heavy packages).

--T
 
re I have a question

re I have a question

Terry, Where are you in relation to Ft. Wayne? My daughter is at St. Francis University sstudying to become a Physician's Assistant, so shipping may get real cheap if you are anywhere near enough to Ft. Wayne to make it a one day roUnd trip on a Sunday.
Now to start looking for somene who might be intereted in an AST computer.
Ray
 
Terry Yager said:
with fuel prices these days, it's probably cheaper to just ship it.
Today - right before the Easter break - the nominal price on fuel was raised by 0.15 SEK/liter to a new Swedish record, now officially 10.76 SEK/liter, which corresponds to 5.82 USD/gallon. If the dollar gets strengthened shortly, we're looking at prices above 11 SEK/l.

I only refuel at unmanned stations which in average are 0.25 SEK/l cheaper than manned ones, and it fluctuates between cities. In some places they have a price war which at best brings the price well below 9 SEK, but it only works for chains who can afford to take the "hit".

Did I mention that we pay energy taxes, VAT on the fuel and VAT on the energy tax (thus double tax) in this country? Oh well, there are some neighbouring European countries where gas is even more expensive, so who am I to complain..

Edit: On my way home, I found an unmanned gas station that didn't seem to have raised their price yet, so I got a bargain at 9.90 SEK/l ($5.35/gallon). Maybe I should've filled up twice as much as I normally do, up to full tank if it is likely the price will only go up. OTOH, soon the weather and roads allow[1] for bicycling again, so I don't have to go by car everywhere.

[1] Yes, I know some people go by bike all winter, but I'm too lazy, afraid to slip and can afford to take the four wheeler in uncertain conditions.
 
Wow! I guess I better stop whining about having to pay $2.12/gal over here. I just finished filling up ($35.00/tankfull) when the radio station announced that a new station (on the other side of town, of course) was offering a Grand-Opening Sale" price of $1.99/gal. Drat! Wouldn't ya know...
So how do wages in Sveden compare to here? It's got to the point here where we have to turn down jobs that pay $10-12.00/hour, because that only covers transportation costs driving to work & back.

--T
 
ODM,

I just hung up talking to my friend, and he no longer owns any of the Wangs, but there's still a chance for ya. Seems Mark left his last job in a bit of a hurry, and ended up abandoning a large part of his collection for lack of storage space. That just means I'll have to go over to the computer store and rummage thru the basement for anything interesting, then try to deal them out of it. I'll see what I can do...

--T
 
I had one of the Wang PCs for a time in the late 90s. Large MFs built like a tank and almost as heavy. MY arms are still elongulated from carrying it home for 3 blocks. Another collector in Montreal had the same problem.
A large Motherboard with 8080s or 86's and Z80s. A large cage with 50
pin connectors. The British Wang site had a little info on it but not much.
Never did find a keyboard or monitor for it. Interesting machine, especially cause old Wang was so brilliant. Went the way of all good things during a move including a Lanpar and an excess Rainbow. There were many less serious collectors in those days.

Don Maislin had a bit of info on it. You can find my search in the CComp
archives. Just found my buddy's old site. Don't even know if he still has it.

http://www.total.net/~hrothgar/museum/WangPC002/index.html

Lawrence
 
Re: I have a questin for anyone interested

olddataman said:
There are two interesting computers in the "vintage" catagory that I have never seen mentioned in anyone's collection or on eBay or other auction sites.
One is the Wang PC. They were out in about 1984, were built like the provebial brick outhouse and were 8086 based. They made no apologies for not being IBM compaatable, but furnished a nice DOS Shell to get around this and they wrked like a charm.
The other is the Alpha Microsystems S-100 bus system based on the Western Digital/DEC PDP-11 chip set with a couple of insstructions changed to get around DEC patented instructions. These insructions were changed to a couple of MOVE instructions to accomodate the S-100 8-bit menory data bus. They weere programmed in an in-house developd Basic that was Respected and loved by virtually all users. We sold them for years, as one of the first 8 dealers chosen. We had systems that had a meg of memory, had 16 crt terminals attached, two or three high capacity printers and CDC Cartridge disk system. Those of you who have the first 12 months of Dr. Dobbs Jurnal, scan them for an article by Dick Wilcox which describes the computer to the Home Brew computer club in 1975 or 76. It would be a terrible shame if these two computers disappereaed into the recyle bin just because noone was familiar with them.

Ray

I usd to have a complete Wang office system with printer and monitor. I got it for free from someone who got it at a government auction. I found out later why it was free. It had been password protected and nobody knew what the password was to unlock it. It went in a purge of my collection about 12 years ago because it was taking up too much space. :?
 
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