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Found a Wang Computer

I believe that is a Wang Office Assistant (WOA). A dedicated Wordprocessing system. A quick look on the net didn't reveal anything more. You'll have to dig deep.

Philip
 
Looks like the slimline Wang PC. The two DIN connectors were a Wang trademark for these systems--one supplied power, the other, video.

Got a photo of the innards?
 
Here's a pic of the inside. The board is mounted to the top of the case. The bottom just has the floppy drive and power supply:

http://www.files.classicalgasemissions.com/misc/wang2.jpg

Being a WOA would make a lot of sense due to the unique keyboard layout which has a bunch of defined keys for word processor functions. I can't help but wonder if the actual word processor is built into the computer, or do you need to load it off a floppy? This thing is apparently not PC-compatible.

I really love the quite from the article: "The Office Assistant from Wang attempts to bridge the gap between dedicated word processing machines and personal computers, without much success."

Vintage computers that pretty much flopped are really interesting! Just wish I had a monitor so I could play with it :(
 
Well, if you've got a scope and a DMM, you can probe the monitor connectors to figure out what's what.

This thing uses the less-common ceramic LCC version of the 80186.
 
Anything with an 80186 is pretty unique/rare, so that's a nice find - especially something so compact. :)

The only device I have with an 80186 is an HP color *nix terminal that I can't get to function due to a lack of software.
 
Yep, that's a WOA

Yep, that's a WOA

Yes, that's definitely a Wang Office Assistant. This was my first computer as a teen and I still have one that I happen to be trying to get booted up right now. The WOA has 4 floppies that I know of that were used for different functions. First you'd load the bootdisk ("System Disk" it's labeled as), then there is a Printer Disk, a Forms/Typewriter Disk and a WP Utilities Disk.

I used the WOA a lot and have about 20 floppies of that that I'm trying to get access to but my System Disk is shot. It was a copy of the original and given it was heavily used and the machine is 26 years old, I'm not too surprised that it's not booting.

If anyone out there has any real experience with the Wang Office Assistant or getting it to start, would love to hear about it on this thread. Pice below from today when I broke open the case to fiddle with the floppy drive.

Here's some pics:

IMG00107-20101002-1713.jpg


IMG00108-20101002-1714.jpg


IMG00109-20101002-1714.jpg


IMG00110-20101002-1715.jpg


IMG00111-20101002-1733.jpg


IMG00112-20101002-2131.jpg
 
Looks like this was another example of how making an incompatible floppy format helped doom a machine, just like the Victor 9000.

Wang is one of the great "boom, bust" stories of the Boston area. For a while I worked in the old Wang Towers in Lowell, three 12-story buildings. When the company went bust, the towers were basically abandoned for a while and bought be a company for $500,000 (I believe it was thought the property had serious contamination problems which proved false) and they renovated it and sold it amid the late 90s tech boom for $100 million.

Odd fact: the middle tower actually had 13 floors, but the 13th floor was number 14 (even high-tech companies are superstitious). So An Wang's office was actually on the 13th floor.
 
mark66j said:
Odd fact: the middle tower actually had 13 floors, but the 13th floor was number 14 (even high-tech companies are superstitious). So An Wang's office was actually on the 13th floor.
Click to expand...

That's less uncommon than you'd think, particularly on older buildings. Seems that office space on the 13th floor doesn't sell as well as the other floors.

I attribute much of the decline of the Wang business enterprise to the ineptitude of Fred Wang during a very critical time of PC development.
 
Hello All,

I recently found Wang's WOA-40 on town dump. System block+keyboard+external 5" floppy. No monitor :-( It bootstraps on and tries to locate OS on both floppies. It looks just like this one: http://www.files.classicalgasemissions.com/misc/wang.jpg

Anybody want it? You only pay shipping cost (or local pickup in Boston area).

I am collecting old CPUs and will pull 80186 from it unless somebody wants to save it.

Regards,
Andy
 
Does anyone have a disk image of documents saved from this system? I would love to compare to disks I have received which I believe might be in this format.

Thor
 
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