4 ms·

I worked for a law firm in the late 80s - early 90s that used a Wang VS system for data and word processing, before and until just after we installed a Novell L

I worked for a law firm in the late 80s - early 90s that used a Wang VS system for data and word processing, before and until just after we installed a Novell LAN. My boss programmed the system using a language called SPEED-2, which I never managed to learn. We had a number of highly non-PC compatible Wang PCs for a time, and eventually started installing Wang terminal cards in standard PCs to link to the main system. My major memory of that time was doing backups with huge, multi-platter removable disk packs. Incrementals at noon every day, fulls one Sunday a month, and managing the offsite storage...such a pain.

mikestew 4y ago
Wang did sell an IBM-compatible board after it was obvious that Wang wasn't going to win the desktop computing market. I had one of those boards, and the Wang to go with it; worked fine, and I don't ever recall any incompatibilities.
jes 4y ago
Yep, SPEED-1 and SPEED-2 were products of a company called "TOM Software," where TOM was short for "The Office Manager." Here's a little inside baseball on that. TOM Software (Burien, Washington) had many applications written in Wang Basic-II. Sometime in 1983, or so, I hired on with TOM Software to help with finishing and porting an interpreter for Wang Basic-II to various small (and not so small) UNIX systems that UNIX system vendors provided to TOM Software in the hopes of getting some applications on their systems. It was a hugely fun time, working on that interpreter. It was all written in C, and unfortunately, it's wasn't as fast as we would have liked. It did work and we did ship it on a number of platforms. Machines like the Fortune 32:16, the Pixel, Zilog Z-8000 micro, Perkin-Elmer 8/32, and even a Burroughs system (wtf?) As I remember, the Wang VS system was released and was a competitor to the Wang 2200. There was another company, Niakawa (sp?) if I remember, that did have a fast port of the Wang Basic-II interpreter to Windows based systems. Towards the end of my time there, we were coding certain SPEED-1 subroutines directly in C in the interpreter. They could be called via a magic command ... "BOB-N", that was embedded in the interpreter. So you had BOB-1 XXX, BOB-2 XXX YYY, etc. There is a book by Payne and Payne called "Writing Interpreters," which if memory serves, kind of centers around Wang Basic-II. I think I still have a copy of it in my storage unit, but I might have chucked it. I didn't find it on Amazon when I just searched, so perhaps I'm wrong. It was really a good time for me. I learned a lot about writing interpreters and other V7-ish stuff working there.
- themadturk 4y ago
  Great post, thanks. I remember visiting TOM with my boss one day (our firm was located in Seattle, just north of Burien), and seeing their server room behind glass, a sea of low-rise Wang systems with a single tall VAX standing above them like a skyscraper.
- smarks 4y ago
  The VS was more of a successor to the 2200 than a competitor. The 2200 was mostly a single-user system with a ROM-based (later, firmware-based) OS that simply ran a BASIC interpreter. Later versions (e.g., 2200 MVP) supported limited multi-terminal, multi-user capability, but it was essentially multiple independent BASIC interpreters, one per user. The VS came out a few years later and was an IBM 370-like machine in a minicomputer form factor. It supported 370-like assembly language and several compiled languages including COBOL, RPG-II, and BASIC. The BASIC was quite a bit different and considerably evolved compared to 2200 BASIC.
  - jes 4y ago
    Thank you for the clarity. Good to know.
- tasty_freeze 4y ago
  There is a scan of that Payne book at the bottom of this page: http://wang2200.org/tech.html http://wang2200.org/tech.html
  - jes 4y ago
    Thanks very much for the link. I was way off in left field on the title.
jes 4y ago
Here's some additional information on the SPEED-I and SPEED-II applications.[1] [1]. https://www.appx.com/history https://www.appx.com/history

mikestew 4y ago

Wang did sell an IBM-compatible board after it was obvious that Wang wasn't going to win the desktop computing market. I had one of those boards, and the Wang to go with it; worked fine, and I don't ever recall any incompatibilities.

jes 4y ago

Yep, SPEED-1 and SPEED-2 were products of a company called "TOM Software," where TOM was short for "The Office Manager." Here's a little inside baseball on that. TOM Software (Burien, Washington) had many applications written in Wang Basic-II. Sometime in 1983, or so, I hired on with TOM Software to help with finishing and porting an interpreter for Wang Basic-II to various small (and not so small) UNIX systems that UNIX system vendors provided to TOM Software in the hopes of getting some applications on their systems. It was a hugely fun time, working on that interpreter. It was all written in C, and unfortunately, it's wasn't as fast as we would have liked. It did work and we did ship it on a number of platforms. Machines like the Fortune 32:16, the Pixel, Zilog Z-8000 micro, Perkin-Elmer 8/32, and even a Burroughs system (wtf?) As I remember, the Wang VS system was released and was a competitor to the Wang 2200. There was another company, Niakawa (sp?) if I remember, that did have a fast port of the Wang Basic-II interpreter to Windows based systems. Towards the end of my time there, we were coding certain SPEED-1 subroutines directly in C in the interpreter. They could be called via a magic command ... "BOB-N", that was embedded in the interpreter. So you had BOB-1 XXX, BOB-2 XXX YYY, etc. There is a book by Payne and Payne called "Writing Interpreters," which if memory serves, kind of centers around Wang Basic-II. I think I still have a copy of it in my storage unit, but I might have chucked it. I didn't find it on Amazon when I just searched, so perhaps I'm wrong. It was really a good time for me. I learned a lot about writing interpreters and other V7-ish stuff working there.

themadturk 4y ago
Great post, thanks. I remember visiting TOM with my boss one day (our firm was located in Seattle, just north of Burien), and seeing their server room behind glass, a sea of low-rise Wang systems with a single tall VAX standing above them like a skyscraper.
smarks 4y ago
The VS was more of a successor to the 2200 than a competitor. The 2200 was mostly a single-user system with a ROM-based (later, firmware-based) OS that simply ran a BASIC interpreter. Later versions (e.g., 2200 MVP) supported limited multi-terminal, multi-user capability, but it was essentially multiple independent BASIC interpreters, one per user. The VS came out a few years later and was an IBM 370-like machine in a minicomputer form factor. It supported 370-like assembly language and several compiled languages including COBOL, RPG-II, and BASIC. The BASIC was quite a bit different and considerably evolved compared to 2200 BASIC.
- jes 4y ago
  Thank you for the clarity. Good to know.
tasty_freeze 4y ago
There is a scan of that Payne book at the bottom of this page: http://wang2200.org/tech.html http://wang2200.org/tech.html
- jes 4y ago
  Thanks very much for the link. I was way off in left field on the title.

jes 4y ago

Here's some additional information on the SPEED-I and SPEED-II applications.[1] [1]. https://www.appx.com/history https://www.appx.com/history