WANG Computer

This historical curiosity I picked up at a school. I'm not entirely sure what it does or how it does it.

It sports 3 racks of 2 boards each, labelled KILL, UNISYS-ASYNC-9600, and PROGS.

It has 4 RS232C ports, 3 of which are connected. It has 4 proprietary WANG terminal interfaces.

On powering it up, I get the lights on the front blinking.

I've taken to calling it a "mainframe" but I have no idea what it really is. Any extra
information (model numbers, processors etc....) would be appreciated.

Photo gallery:
WANG Mainframe - 11WANG Mainframe - 12WANG Mainframe - 9Wang Mainframe - 10WANG Mainframe - 7WANG Mainframe - 8WANG Mainframe - 9WANG Mainframe - 5WANG Mainframe - 6WANG Mainframe - 4WANG Mainframe - 2WANG Mainframe - 3WANG Mainframe - 1

Manufacturer: 
Content Type: 
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Comments

Eudimorphodon's picture

I'd be willing to bet it's either an original Wang WPS Word Processor, or one of the smaller Wang OIS (Office Information Systems) systems.

Write the guy who runs this site a nasty letter telling him to chmod his images o+r:

http://www.cass.net/~jdonoghu/

--Peace

ex-parrot's picture

220 mail.cass.net ESMTP DOS 5.0 1.1.0beta; Tue, 2 Mar 2004 17:09:13 -0500 (EST)
'May I help you?'
EHLO 02net.co.nz
250-mail.cass.net Hello [202.124.103.214], pleased to meet you
250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
250-PIPELINING
250-EXPN
250-VERB
250-8BITMIME
250-SIZE 15000000
250-ETRN
250-DELIVERBY
250 HELP
MAIL From: SIZE=1364
550 5.7.1 ... Access denied

Someone needs to send him a strongly thought telepathic message to set up his mail server properly Blum 3

- Michael "trouble at the mill" Fincham

Those boxes were used for hooking modem lines into the Wang system to enable remote communications. Each of the dual coax connectors has a corresponding RS-232 port. Hook a system such as a VS 1000 onto the coax, hook a modem up to the RS-232 port, then across the street (or country) hook modems onto the remote controller, and hook the coax to a printer, terminal, etc.

coius's picture

When my dads company (Honeywell) and WANG teamed up in his building, I saw a lot of the controllers that they used. (the branch was in Nebraska). Huh... Nice to see one of those things again

ex-parrot's picture

As an addendum:

IMAGE(http://hotplate.co.nz/files/pub/dscf0982.jpg)

The WANG is back Smile

Everything has its uses Smile

Eudimorphodon's picture

What is it about the internet that so strongly motivates people to post high-resolution photos of their WANGs for just anyone to see? ;^)

--Peace

Hawaii Cruiser's picture

Shucks, it looks like I deleted my original highest resolution Photoshop image, so here's the best I can do at your behest, Eudi:

IMAGE(http://www.applefritter.com/images/wang1-23851_640x480.jpg)

I sold the cards and drives to a guy a couple of months ago on eBay:
my Wang auction
I reluctantly threw away the case (it was quite nice), but I've still got the power supply. Thought I might put it up for auction too and see if anyone bites. Wang made some impressive machines. The heavy metal case was very tactile to the touch. I always had the strong urge to go over and try the Vulcan mind meld with it while it was all in one piece.

eeun's picture

Wang made some impressive machines. The heavy metal case was very tactile to the touch.

HC, that's just too easy a setup, and I'm not going there. Acute

Hawaii Cruiser's picture

Well, as you can see by his high resolution photo, Ex-parrot realized that, for it to be truly appreciated, the proper placement of an impressive Wang machine is in the upright position. I forgot to mention that, along with the power supply, before throwing the case away, I also removed that wonderful iron bar bracket you can see on the bottom of the Wang server which kept it upright--just in case I discovered myself with some use for it someday. I was thinking of painting it blue, for reasons unknown and unspeakable.