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Fifteen years ago I was handed a Wang (http://www.computermuseum.li/Testpage/WangVS100.htm http://www.computermuseum.li/Testpage/WangVS100.htm) and told to get

by jzwinck 12y ago

Fifteen years ago I was handed a Wang (http://www.computermuseum.li/Testpage/WangVS100.htm http://www.computermuseum.li/Testpage/WangVS100.htm) and told to get it working. Apparently some company my employer had acquired used this thing to store its business records, and my employer used PCs so they just wanted to archive what was on the Wang then get rid of it. The thing booted up but there was no display--the integrated screen was somehow blown. So I got a suitable television and that worked, modulo the TV's overscan clipping off the first character on every line. I then found enough adapters to get it to print, connected a dot matrix printer with continuous forms (just like Wang intended!) and printed every single document on the disk drive. Imagine. It came to perhaps a thousand pages.

Yetanfou 12y ago
Once upon a school Christmas holiday my father brought home a Televideo TS-806 [1] and a terminal. The thing contained a load of documents which they'd like to have on their snazzy new server, but nobody could find out how to copy them. The files were in some alien format, produced by a text processor native to the TS-806. I resolved this by hooking up the thing to a Bondwell 12 [2] through RS-232, printing the documents on the Televideo and receiving them in PIP [3] on the Bondwell. The (single-sided) Bondwell floppies could be read on one of the machines connected to the new server and the problem was solved. I considered this quite a feat at the age of 16... [1] https://archive.org/stream/bitsavers_televideo2anceManualMay83_10541067/2162200B_TS806_Maintenance_Manual_May83#page/n7/mode/2up https://archive.org/stream/bitsavers_televideo2anceManualMay... [2] http://www.z80.eu/bondwell.html http://www.z80.eu/bondwell.html [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_Interchange_Program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_Interchange_Program
jamesbrownuhh 12y ago
Reminds me of something similar I did about 20 years ago as a new and lowly employee in an HR department. Said department was part of a larger organisation which of course kept everything centrally on huge mainframes, access to said mainframe being allowed in the regional office by means of a green-screen terminal connected to a dedicated line. While the mainframe was of course the ultimate authority of what was what, for everyone, our local department just wanted to do some basic employee management on the then new wave of Windows 3.1-based softwares running on local PCs. But how to populate the PC data? Obviously retyping it was the only possible way, and I was hired literally to do that and nothing else for a month. First thing I said, naturally, was "why not just export it from the mainframe?" Not possible, I was assured. The mainframe was a secure device for storing secure data and no talk of exporting would ever get through the layers of bureaucracy. The mainframe terminal had no disc drive or local storage, being a thoroughly secure device with a secure connection through the secure floorboards. And anyway, I was hired as a typist so would I please get on with it for the next month, which was how long they had estimated would be required. An hour later the job was done - with no retyping at all, thank you very much. How? Well, I'll admit to feeling rather too pleased with myself for knowing that the terminal's attached dot matrix printer was not the only device that could speak RS232. Connected the secure terminal to an entirely not secure PC, and printed everything I wanted straight to disc. Edited the captured file in Wordstar and fairly quickly had a CSV-type file that went straight into the standalone software. Although I'd effectively instantly put myself out of a job, they were good enough to keep me around. I ended up staying for years.

by jzwinck 12y ago

Yetanfou 12y ago

Once upon a school Christmas holiday my father brought home a Televideo TS-806 [1] and a terminal. The thing contained a load of documents which they'd like to have on their snazzy new server, but nobody could find out how to copy them. The files were in some alien format, produced by a text processor native to the TS-806. I resolved this by hooking up the thing to a Bondwell 12 [2] through RS-232, printing the documents on the Televideo and receiving them in PIP [3] on the Bondwell. The (single-sided) Bondwell floppies could be read on one of the machines connected to the new server and the problem was solved. I considered this quite a feat at the age of 16... [1] https://archive.org/stream/bitsavers_televideo2anceManualMay83_10541067/2162200B_TS806_Maintenance_Manual_May83#page/n7/mode/2up https://archive.org/stream/bitsavers_televideo2anceManualMay... [2] http://www.z80.eu/bondwell.html http://www.z80.eu/bondwell.html [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_Interchange_Program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_Interchange_Program

jamesbrownuhh 12y ago

Reminds me of something similar I did about 20 years ago as a new and lowly employee in an HR department. Said department was part of a larger organisation which of course kept everything centrally on huge mainframes, access to said mainframe being allowed in the regional office by means of a green-screen terminal connected to a dedicated line. While the mainframe was of course the ultimate authority of what was what, for everyone, our local department just wanted to do some basic employee management on the then new wave of Windows 3.1-based softwares running on local PCs. But how to populate the PC data? Obviously retyping it was the only possible way, and I was hired literally to do that and nothing else for a month. First thing I said, naturally, was "why not just export it from the mainframe?" Not possible, I was assured. The mainframe was a secure device for storing secure data and no talk of exporting would ever get through the layers of bureaucracy. The mainframe terminal had no disc drive or local storage, being a thoroughly secure device with a secure connection through the secure floorboards. And anyway, I was hired as a typist so would I please get on with it for the next month, which was how long they had estimated would be required. An hour later the job was done - with no retyping at all, thank you very much. How? Well, I'll admit to feeling rather too pleased with myself for knowing that the terminal's attached dot matrix printer was not the only device that could speak RS232. Connected the secure terminal to an entirely not secure PC, and printed everything I wanted straight to disc. Edited the captured file in Wordstar and fairly quickly had a CSV-type file that went straight into the standalone software. Although I'd effectively instantly put myself out of a job, they were good enough to keep me around. I ended up staying for years.