Programming the Convergent WorkSlate

[ClassicHasClass]

Many folks are familiar with the oddball WorkSlate from Convergent Technologies, which was a 1983 slab portable with a 6800-family CPU where everything is a spreadsheet. It was a commercial failure after seven months and Convergent took millions of dollars in losses on it. A printer/plotter (with the usual Alps mechanism of the time) and a serial/parallel expansion box were made for it, but the expansion box in particular is rather rare.

I've managed to worm my way into the WorkSlate's by using a modified "narrow modular" cord that fits its Peripherals port, where the printer/plotter and expansion box hook up. This is a GPIO port and despite appearances an Ethernet/RJ-45 jack won't fit. We can then hook up serial lines to it and using them send and receive data at 9600 baud using the WorkSlate's built-in terminal. It turns out there are some obnoxious and a couple critical bugs in the firmware ...

On this page are three example applications, a Rock-Paper-Scissors game, a pie charter, and a proxy for a Gopher client. These all work through spreadsheet cells and formulas, the Gopher client in particular by turning Gopher menus into spreadsheets.

Programming the Convergent WorkSlate's spreadsheet microcassette future

In this particular future, we will all use handheld spreadsheets stored on microcassettes, talking to each other via speakerphone, and proba...

oldvcr.blogspot.com

The code is on Github, along with a "crossassembler" for the spreadsheet that takes cell data and emits a sheet ready for upload.

GitHub - classilla/workslate: A1="Hello World"+WaitFor("Greatness")

A1="Hello World"+WaitFor("Greatness"). Contribute to classilla/workslate development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Finally, although Bitsavers does have a partial copy of the service manual (hi, Al!), there are no digital copies of the reference guide that I'm aware of and the reference guide is incomplete anyway. I documented all of the spreadsheet built-in functions here with more detailed descriptions, as well as how to hook it up and troubleshooting suggestions.

The WorkSlate WorkSpace: a memorial and technical reference for the Convergent Technologies WorkSlate

 

[Jeff_Birt]

The Workslate was a very odd choice of products for Convergent, irrespective of the 'all apps are spreadsheets' design philosophy.

Thanks for making more information about them available. I have worked on a few with duff microcassette drives (and leaky caps), they were different revs with different bodge wires in different places. The two cassette mechs were merged to make one that was physically OK but had no output from the audio amp hooked to the head. The incomplete manual (as you mentioned) and the multiple board/bodge revs make them challenging to work on.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

The Workslate is a very early example of a whole category of products that make me a little sad, IE, cute little portable things with keyboards and surprisingly nice LCD screens that could totally make for neat little portable computers if they had general-purpose firmware.

Years ago I had a box of RIM (Blackberry) 957 pagers that I held onto for a while hoping someone would figure out a good way to root them, because they have "interesting" hardware. (5MB of flash, 512K of RAM, and a 386EX embedded CPU.) Eventually gave up and recycled them.

 

[ClassicHasClass]

It was a fun hack, but it wouldn't have gotten off the ground if I didn't pick up the "beater" unit - just wasn't going to try soldering jumpers to my working collector's piece. Once I was able to isolate the serial port lines, the rest was "academic."

 

[ClassicHasClass]

Well, I hit the jackpot today. Picked up in San Mateo.





It came with not only an NOS WorkSlate, but a whole bunch of shrinkwrapped tapes and pens, a CommPort and a MicroPrinter. On top of that, it came with a crapload of product circulars, marketing material, print media and even press clippings:



Did you know there was a Convergent OEM official magazine? Neither did I. But it also included pages from the American Express catalogue where the WorkSlate was first sold. It has all the manuals, of course.




And did you also know that Convergent published official "docking" software for the WorkSlate? Neither did I, also! But here it is. It's called, reasonably, "TranSlate." It has a DOS TSR to manage the COM ports and interfaces with the WorkSlate over the built-in Terminal. It provides the clearest evidence that the WorkSlate is *not* derived from Lotus 1-2-3 because of all the errata in there about when you convert to WKS, though it seems WKS is the only supported format for interchange (no Multiplan, no SYLK). However, it came out in 1984, so that makes sense - 1-2-3 was taking over by then.



The pens work! I'm going to find a hermetically sealed box and put them all in it ...

Finally, there's this interesting thing:




The manual claims this tape can install a special module into the WorkSlate to add features. That means it must be possible to run native code on the WorkSlate after all! It adds something that allows more direct Mail support (adding credence to my theory that they never properly tested the built-in telecom functions, some of which are hideously buggy).

But I can't test it because the biggest disappointment is actually the NOS WorkSlate itself: it's flaky. The tape head does extend and retract correctly, but it won't read tapes, and the LCD sometimes flickers badly. The manual says the Mail module on the Electronic Mail tape cannot be saved as a normal spreadsheet, so I really hope it's not something that can only be installed via cassette.

In the meantime, I need to sit down and figure out how to decode tapes from an audio file, though the problem here is tape flutter. The device actually uses a PLL of some sort to lock the rotational speed of the tape reels to the data rate so it is more or less immune to this effect, but a regular recording will of course exhibit it.

It's going to take me a few days to go through all the stuff it came with. Still, exciting! More to come on this. Incidentally, the CommPort also responds to ENQ probes and responds with "2 I/O Box." (The MicroPrinter responds with "1 MicroPrinter." and the WorkSlate itself responds with "Workslate" {sic: no period, no capital S}.)