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Possible lead on an AT&T PC 6300 WGS

Trixter

Trixter

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Joined
Aug 31, 2006
Messages
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Location
Chicagoland, Illinois, USA
I found a 6300 WGS at my company that has been apparently running since 1991 in active service. It was monitoring a UPS that has since died, so it has no purpose any more, so I asked them if I could have it. I believe the answer is yes, because otherwise it will be junked; if I get it, I'll take some pictures and post them.

There is very little information online about the 6300 WGS, but from what I could tell by looking at the back is that it is a 6300 that is "nicer" to ISA cards (it is running a special paradise VGA card that also supports AT&T 400-line and DEB modes, just like the Paradise VGA adapter that comes with the 6286). I also found some AT&T PC 6300 diagnostic disks, which I sent to Yzzerdd (did you get them?), which were interesting in that one of them was a "system diags" which is more comprehensive than the "customer diags" (the disk that came with 6300s).

In a wacko twist, it claims to be an 8086 yet is running Windows/286. I am pretty sure it is upgraded to an NEC V30 and that Windows "286" only uses a handful of opcodes that are supported by the V30.

All of this is a very very strong argument for me to start writing my "oldskool pc profiler" so that I can get to the bottom of these things without tearing machines apart... I will make it my next project.

If anyone has any information on what exactly a 6300 WGS is, please let me know.
 
I was able to do some more research (thank you usenet archives) and found out a couple of interesting things:

The 6300 WGS (Work Group Server? Station?) had an 8086 that ran at 10MHz. That means an 8MHz V30 won't work in it (I wonder if there was ever a V30 that was rated for 10MHz?)

Also, I tracked down the DIP switches (which are probably identical to the 6300's DIP switch banks):

There are two banks of DIP switches: DIPSW-1 which is located towards the edge
of the printed circuit board and DIPSW-0 which is next to DIPSW-1.

A Number "0" means switch is off, "1" switch is on.

Code: 
DIPSW-0 Position 1-4
  0111  128k RAM on motherboard
  1011  256k
  0011  256k                    + 128k on expansion board
  1101  256k                    + 256k
  0101  256k                    + 384k
  1110  512k on motherboard BANK0
  0110  512k                      + 128k on motherboard BANK1
  0100  128k                      + 512k

DIPSW-0 Position 5
  1     8087 not installed
  0     8087 installed

DIPSW-0 Position 6
  0     Z8530 comm. controller installed
  1     8250 installed

DIPSW-0 Position 7
  not used

DIPSW-0 Position 8
  1     2732 EPROMs installed
  0     2764 EPROMs installed

DIPSW-1 Position 1
  0     96 TPI diskette drives (720k)
  1     48 TPI diskette drives (360k)

DIPSW-1 Position 2
  1     slow diskette startup (800 ms)
  0     fast diskette startup (250 ms)

DIPSW-1 Position 3-4
  11    use standard BIOS for harddisk control
  01    harddisk controller has its own BIOS

DIPSW-1 Position 5-6
  11    reserved
  00    monochrome display
  01    40x25 CGA display
  10    80x25 CGA display

DIPSW-1 Position 7-8
  11    1 diskette drive
  01    2 diskette drives
  10    3
  00    4

Also found a very concise answer:

I have seen the suffix WGS appended to both the 6386 and the older
6300 machines. Is it an acronym for something and, if so, what?
Click to expand...

Work Group System. It apparently signifies the network capabilities
and family nature of the product line. The 6300 WGS is not the old
Personal Computer 6300. It is a new physical design with new
packaging, that fits better with the rest of the WGS products. It's
still an 8086 processor, but the uProcessor is on an `expansion'
board, and the `motherboard' is a passive bus. It should be pointed
out that the 6300WGS != 6300.

I had a chance to play with the 6300WGS
and to look inside of it. The motherboard is now half the size of the
original 6300 board. The clock/calender and speaker have been moved to
a seperate board. The battery for the clock is now replaceable without
using a soldering iron. The other nice features of the new unit are
a front panel power switch and a a volume control on the speaker. They
did make one mistake in that they shrunk tthe size of the reset button,
and those of us with large fingers may find it hard to press it. I also
beleive they solved the hardware problem that caused difficulty in running
EGAs on the old 6300's.

The only thing that is shares with the PC6300 is the 8086
family CPU chip. It is faster (10 Mhz) and does not suffer from
the video problems that some people complained about. That is, there
is no intrinsic video card, any card will do.

Very exciting!
 
Last edited:
cool, i hope you get it. i recall reading some stuff about those AT&T computers a long long time ago. afaik, the WGS is more desireable... less compatibility issues when trying to use normal PC software, and it doesn't have a whole bunch of wacky hardware that nobody has heard of before.

it has to be the NEC if its running win/286... i've been thinking of getting one of those V30 chips and putting it in one of my XT clone boards. i have read that the speed ranges from something from 8 to 16 mhz, but does that mean it wouldn't work if i tried to run it at 4.77 mhz? i would assume it should work, but thats just a guess. i've never heard of any problems trying to run CPU's slower than what they're designed for.

it would most likely go on the PC's Unlimited mobo i have from like 1985 (apparently the first "Dell" motherboard, and this was right before they changed their name to Dell) because that board can switch from 4.77 to 8 mhz.

pic: http://rubbermallet.org/8088mobo.jpg
 
Mike Chambers said:
cool, i hope you get it.
Click to expand...

Got it! I had to let the hard drive spin up and stay spinning for at least 2 minutes before it would start to read data correctly, but it's booting and running AT&T MSDOS 3.2 (anyone have AT&T MS-DOS 3.3?). There's a paradise VGA in there and an AT&T fixed-frequency VGA monitor connected to it, but I haven't tested to see if it's one of the ones that emulate the 400-line modes yet.

Evidently the WGS was still not quite 100% hardware compatible; on 25% of the games I have run so far, the palette is all screwy. EGA is fine. (CGA occasionally has a screwy palette as well...?). Maybe it's the VGA card.

Having a 10MHz NEC V30 in there means it's the fastest xt-class machine I've ever owned. It's fast enough to play a MOD mixing at 14KHz using Galaxy Player outputting through a Covox Speech Thing (although this is also a testament to how exquisitely Galaxy Player is coded). I'm loading all the games that were not quite fast enough to be fun on a 4.77MHz 8088 onto it to see how they fly.

Another thing that I have been reminded of that can help the speed of old games is switching to EGA. When you code a CGA game, you typically build the screen in system RAM, then copy it to adapter RAM to display it (CGA only has one video page). If you have EGA, however, you can build the screen directly to off-screen adapter RAM, then just make that screen page visible. Even though it's twice the memory to write, and you have to jump through a bit more hoops because of EGA's planar nature, it is still faster (and more colorful as a bonus).
 
Windows 286 will run just fine on an 8088 or 8086-equipped system; it does not use the added 286 opcodes. What it does use, if present, is the HMA--but that isn't required for operation.

So your 6300 WGS probably still has an 8086 in it, I'm guessing.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Windows 286 will run just fine on an 8088 or 8086-equipped system; it does not use the added 286 opcodes. What it does use, if present, is the HMA--but that isn't required for operation.

So your 6300 WGS probably still has an 8086 in it, I'm guessing.
Click to expand...

Then why did they call it Windows/286?
 
Trixter said:
Then why did they call it Windows/286?
Click to expand...

There were two versions of Windows 2.10. Windows/286 which could use HMA and EMS if available and Windows/386 that could use the protected mode and V86 features of an 80386. What I don't remember is if Windows/386 would run on a 286. I suspect that it might--I'll have to try it to be sure.

So, take your pick. Windows 2.10 aka Windows/286 was called that because:

  • It could use the HMA only available on a 286 or better. However, note that you could order a PS/2 model 25 with an 8086 CPU shipped with Windows/286. This led to incredible confusion, as in: "What do you mean it's not a 286 system? It runs Windows/286, doesn't it?"
  • This was Microsoft, after all. :roll:
 
Well, things were pretty primitive back then. A lot of corporations still had their XTs (some with 286 add-in boards; e.g. Intel AboveBoard), so it made sense to market to the broadest base. Windows wasn't exactly setting the world on fire back then.

I was just musing about Windows 3 and VxDs. Remember when, if you were going to deploy your application with a VxD of your own, you had to either mail in a form or submit a request via CompuServe (MSN didn't exist then) to get a 16-bit VxD ID?

I wonder if the list of IDs was ever published. It would make interesting reading.
 
Got the AT&T PC 6300 WGS from work and cleaned it as much as I could, dumped the hard drive components (I *always* dump what I call a "system archive" of every new machine I get... great little time capsules), then deleted crap I never plan on using (GEM, windows/286) and installed stuff I can see myself using (games ;-) , Geoworks, etc.). It has an AT&T-supplied paradise VGA that emulates BIOS calls for the AT&T 640x400 graphics mode, so programs that detect a 6300 and switch to that mode will still work.

Eyecandy here:



In the wider shot you can see a Covox Speech Thing to the left (played a few .mod files with it :) ) and a "puck" Microsoft Bus mouse to the right. I have never owned a bus mouse before, so that was a nice surprise. The custom interrupt made for very smooth mouse movement; must have been a reaction to the Mac or something.

The hard drive is a miniscribe 32MB RLL and it is QUITE ****ING LOUD, pardon my french... it is the loudest drive I have ever heard in a PC. When I first heard it spin up I thought a head was cutting a groove in a platter!

I also managed to grab ANOTHER WGS from an ebay auction which unfortunately needs some restoration. The battery leaked so I removed it completely, but that is the ONLY good thing about the 6300 line with the motherboard being on the bottom -- when it leaked, it just dumped acid onto the bottom half of the case and not anything important. Yay AT&T :) The floppy drive is kaput so I'll be trying to get that working (I only have a few 5.25" drives left and try to service all I have), will make another system archive dump, then I will be repartitioning because the drive shows a 10MB filesystem but Ontrack Disk Manager (came with the machine, now I finally have a copy!) shows it has at least double the cylinders.

Neither of them have an NEC V30, so I'm going to try to snag one; it will make for good comparisons when I get around to writing my benchmarking program.
 
I found a manual that's called "User's Guide Work Group System Processor."
It's filled with disks both 5.25 and 3.5 for the system.

Here's some info from the "about the system" page:

The AT&T 6300 WGS Processor represents the state of the art in today's world of personal computing. Developed around the Intel 10 MHz 8086 microprocessor, the AT&T 6300 WGS is more advanced and far more versatile that PCs using earlier microprocessors. The system has been designed to provide faster processing speed, greater storage capacity, and the capability to support multitasking functionality.

With it's enhanced processing speed and greater memory capacity, the AT&T 6300 WGS easily accomodates the needs of memory intensive software, including large spreadsheet and data base appications, Computer-Aided Design/Computer-Aided Engineering (CAD/CAE) applications, multitasking operating systems, network servers, and telecommunications.

The AT&T 6300 WGS maintains downward compatibility with software created for previous lines of microprocessors. Moreover, by providing the ability to simulate various system speeds, it ensures that timing-dependent applications operate without modification.

Because of this compatibly, your system can grow along with your requirements. You can add a variety of expansion boards as well as a host of peripherals, including printers, video and graphic devices, and magnetic storage devices.

SUMMARY OF SYSTEM FEATURES

The system module of the AT&T 6300 WGS features:

*The Intel 10MHz 8086 microprocessor
*support for the Intel 10 MHz 8087 math coprocessor
*16-bit architecture (address and data paths)
*10 MHz microprocessor clock speed
*640 kilobytes (KB) of RAM on the motherboard
*seven 8-bit XT-Compatible slots (for XT-Type expansion boards)
 
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