Wang Laboratories

In 1971, Wang believed that calculators would become unprofitable low-margin commodities and decided to leave the calculator business within a few years.

The Wang 1200

Wang's first attempt at a word processor was the Wang 1200, announced in late 1971 but not available until 1972. The design consisted of the logic of a Wang 500 calculator hooked up to an OEM-manufactured IBM Selectric typewriter for keying and printing, and dual cassette decks for storage. Harold Koplow, who had written the microcode for the Wang 700 and its derivative the Wang 500 rewrote the microcode to perform word processing functions instead of numerical calculations.

The operator of a Wang 1200 typed text on a conventional IBM Selectric keyboard; when the Return key was pressed, the line of text was stored on a cassette tape. One cassette held roughly 20 pages of text and could be "played back" (i.e., the text retrieved) by printing the contents on continuous-form paper in the 1200 typewriter's "print" mode. The stored text could also be edited using keys on a simple, six-key array. Basic editing functions included Insert, Delete, Skip (character, line), and so on.

The Wang 1200 machine was the precursor of the Wang Office Information System (OIS).

Wang OIS

Following the Wang 1200, Harold Koplow and David Moros made another attempt at designing a word processor. They started by first writing the user's manual for the product. A 2002 Boston Globe article refers to Koplow as a "wisecracking rebel" who "was waiting for dismissal when, in 1975, he developed the product that made computers popularly accessible."

In Koplow's words, "Dr. Wang kicked me out of marketing. I, along with Dave Moros, was relegated to Long Range Planning – 'LRPed'. This... was tantamount to being fired: 'here is a temporary job until you find another one in some other company.'"

Although he and Moros perceived the assignment to design a word processing machine as busywork, they went ahead anyway. They wrote the manual and convinced An Wang to turn it into a real project. The word processing machine – the Wang 1200 WPS – was introduced in June 1976 and was an instant success, as was its successor, the 1977 Wang OIS (Office Information System).

The OIS was a multi-user system. Each workstation looked like a typical terminal but contained its own Intel 8080 microprocessor (later versions used a Z80) and 64 KB of RAM. Disk storage was centralized in a master unit and shared by the workstations, and the connection was via high-speed dual coaxial cable "928 Link".

Copiers/printers

Ahead of IBM and Xerox, Wang captured the lead for "the 'intelligent' printer: a high-speed office copier that can be linked electronically" to PCs "and other automated equipment". A year later, The New York Times described the IBM 6670 Information Distributor as "closer to the standard envisioned".

Wang 3300

Wang's first computer, the Wang 3300, was an 8-bit integrated circuit general-purpose minicomputer designed to be the central processor for a multi-terminal time-sharing system. Byte-oriented, it also provided a number of double-byte operand memory commands. Core memory ranged from 4,096 to 65,536 bytes in 4,096-byte increments.

Development began after hiring Rick Bensene in June 1968. The product was announced in February 1969 and shipped to its first customer on March 29, 1971.

Wang 2200

Wang developed and marketed several lines of small computer systems for both word processing and data processing. Instead of a clear, linear progression, the product lines overlapped and, in some cases, borrowed technology from each other.

The most identifiable Wang minicomputer performing recognizable data processing was the Wang 2200, which appeared in May 1973. Unlike some other desktop computers such as the HP 9830, it had a CRT in a cabinet that also included an integrated computer-controlled compact cassette storage unit and keyboard. It was microcoded to run interpreted Wang BASIC. It was widely used in small- and medium-sized businesses worldwide; about 65,000 systems were shipped.

The original 2200 was a single-user system. The improved VP model increased performance more than tenfold and enhanced the language (renamed BASIC-2). The 2200 VP evolved into a desktop computer and larger MVP system to support up to 16 workstations and utilized commercial disk technologies that appeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The disk subsystems could be attached to up to 15 computers giving a theoretical upper limit of 240 workstations in a single cluster.

Unlike the other product lines, such as the VS and OIS (described above), Wang used value-added resellers (VARs) to customize and market 2200 systems. One such creative solution deployed dozens of 2200 systems and was developed in conjunction with Hawaii- and Hong Kong–based firm Algorithms, Inc. It provided paging (beeper) services for much of the Hong Kong market in the early 1980s.

Overshadowed by the Wang VS, the 2200 languished as a cost-effective but forgotten solution in the hands of the customers who had it. In the late 1980s, Wang revisited the 2200 series one last time, offering 2200 customers a new 2200 CS with bundled maintenance for less than customers were paying at the time just for maintenance of their aging 2200s. The 2200 CS had an Intel 386 processor, updated disk units, and other peripherals. Most 2200 customers upgraded to the 2200 CS, after which Wang did not develop or market any new 2200 products. In 1997, Wang reported having about two hundred 2200 systems still under maintenance around the world. Throughout, Wang had always offered maintenance services for the 2200.

The 2200 BASIC-2 language was ported to be compiled and run on non-Wang hardware and operating systems by at least two companies. Niakwa Inc created a product named NPL (originally named Basic-2C). Kerridge Computer, now a part of ADP, created a product named KCML. Both products support MS-DOS, Windows, and various Unix systems. The BASIC-2 language was enhanced and extended by both companies to meet modern needs. Compared to the 2200 Wang hardware, the compiled solutions improved speed, disk space, memory, and user limits by tens to hundreds of times; although there is no Wang support for the 2200, many software applications continue to function.

During the 1970s, about 2,000 Wang 2200T computers were shipped to the USSR. Due to the Afghan war in the 1980s, US and COCOM export restrictions ended the shipment of Wang computers. The Soviets were in great need of computers. In 1981, Russian engineers at Minpribor's Schetmash factory in Kursk reverse engineered the Wang 2200T and created a computer they named the Iskra 226. The "COCOM restrictions" theory, though, while popular in the West, is challenged by some Russian computer historians on the basis that development for the Iskra-226 started in 1978, two years before the Afghan war. It is also different from the Wang 2200 in its internals, being more inspired by it rather than a direct clone.

It used the same BASIC language (named T-BASIC) with a few enhancements. Many research papers reference calculations done on the Iskra 226. The machine's designers were nominated for a 1985 State Prize. Later, a somewhat scaled-down Unix implementation was created for Iskra-226, which was used in the Soviet Union.

Alliance

Wang had a line called Alliance, which was based on the high-end OIS (140/145) hardware architecture. It had more powerful software than the OIS word processing and list processing packages. The system was Tempest certified, leading to global deployment in American embassies after the Iran hostage crisis. The Z80 platform on which Alliance ran forced it to remain as an 8-bit application in a 64 KB workstation.

Software

The VS operating system and all system software were built from the ground up to support interactive users as well as batch operations. The VS was aimed at the business data processing market in general and IBM in particular. While many programming languages were available, the VS was programmed in COBOL. Other languages supported in the VS integrated development environment included Assembler, COBOL 74, COBOL 85, BASIC, Ada, RPG II, C, PL/I, FORTRAN, Glossary, MABASIC, SPEED II, and Procedure (a scripting language). Pascal was also supported for I/O co-processor development. The Wang PACE (Professional Application Creation Environment) 4GL and database was used from the mid-1980s onward by customers and third-party developers to build complex applications, sometimes involving many thousands of screens, hundreds of distinct application modules, and serving many hundreds of users. Substantial vertical applications were developed for the Wang VS by third-party software houses throughout the 1980s in COBOL, PACE, BASIC, PL/I, and RPG II. The Wang OFFICE family of applications and Wang WP were both popular applications on the VS. Word Processing ran on the VS through services that emulated the OIS environment and downloaded the WP software as "microcode" (in Wang terminology) to VS workstations.

Hardware

The press and the industry referred to the class of machines made by Wang, including the VS, as "minicomputers," and Kenney's 1992 book refers to the VS line as "minicomputers" throughout. Although some argue that the high-end VS machines and their successors should qualify as mainframes, Wang avoided this term. In his autobiography, An Wang, rather than calling the VS 300 a mainframe, said that it "verges on mainframe performance." He went on to draw the distinction between the "mainframes" at the high end of IBM's line ("just as Detroit would rather sell large cars... so IBM would rather sell mainframes")—in which IBM had a virtual monopoly—with the "mid-sized systems" in which IBM had not achieved dominance: "The minicomputer market is still healthy. This is good for the customer and good for minicomputer makers."

The VS7000 was introduced in 1987. These were a renumbering of the VS100 and VS300, with their more powerful counterpart upgrades identified as VS7110, VS7120, and VS7130 (for the VS100) as the new high-end machine in this series.

Later models, the small VS5000 series, launched in 1988, were user-installable, with the smallest being similarly sized to contemporary PCs.

The largest iteration, the VS10000, supported many users. The VS10000 used "emitter coupled logic" (ECL). ECL is a very fast current-based logic that necessitates the use of 375 amp, 3-volt power supplies, massive heat-sinks, and large squirrel cage blowers. The VS1000 computer drew up to ten kilowatts of power. The VS1000 was designed to run multiple concurrent operating systems and was piloted with the VS ver7 and a Unix operating system.

Aggressive marketing

In the late 1980s, a British television documentary accused the company of targeting a competitor, Canadian company AES Wordplex, in an attempt to take it out of the market. However, the documentary came to no conclusion regarding this.

Wang's approach was called "The Gas Cooker Program," named after similar programs to give discounts on new gas stoves by trading in an old one. Wang was accused of targeting Wordplex by offering a large discount on Wang OIS systems with a trade-in of Wordplex machines, regardless of the age or condition of the trade-in machine.

Based on its good reputation with users and its program of aggressive discounts, Wang gained an increasing share of a shrinking market. Wordplex was taken over by Norsk Data.

Word processing market collapse

The market for standalone word processing systems collapsed with the introduction of the personal computer. MultiMate, on the IBM PC, and MS-DOS PC clones, replicated the keyboard and screen interface and functions of the Wang word processor, and was actively marketed to Wang corporate users, while several other WYSIWYG word processing programs also became popular.

Wang did make one last play in this arena, producing a dedicated Intel-based word processor called the Wang Office Assistant in 1984. This was marketed and sold successfully in the UK to a specific few office equipment dealers who were able to upgrade their clients from electronic typewriters to the Office Assistant. They proved to be very reliable and fast when connected to the Wang bi-directional printer, providing cheap but very fast word processing to small companies (such as solicitors). The USA was surprised at the success of this machine in the UK, but could not supply a spell-check programme in time before the PC. The PC, with its flexibility of combining word processors with other programs such as spreadsheets, had rendered such a specific-task machine unsellable. The Wang Office Assistant had a short life span of four years.

PCs and PC-based products

Despite the release of the 2200 PCS (Personal Computer System) and 2200 PCS-II models in 1976, the history of computing regards the earliest PC as one which contained a microprocessor, which the 2200 PCS did not. However, the self-contained PCS-II incorporated many of the innovations that would later be seen in PCs, including the first 5.25-inch floppy drives that were designed for the PCS-II by Shugart Associates.

The original Wang PC

The original Wang PC was released in April 1982 to counter the IBM PC, which had been released the previous August and which had gained wide acceptance in the market for which Wang traditionally positioned the OIS system. It was based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor, a faster CPU than the IBM PC's 8088. A hardware/software package that permitted the Wang PC to act as a terminal to the OIS and VS products was available. The first version of the hardware component was made of two large add-in boards called the WLOC (Wang Local Office Connection). It contained a Z-80 processor and 64 KB of memory. The original PC-VS hardware used the 928 terminal emulator board; the WLOC boards were used in the subsequent 80286 machines.

These PCs later formed the basis for the system console on VS7000 and later series of the Wang mid-frame series, being used for the initialisation of the boot process. One of the distinguishing features of the Wang PC was the system software. Similar to the Wang VS minicomputer, the command line was not evident. Everything could be run from menus, including formatting a disk. Furthermore, each item on a menu could be explained by hitting a help key on the keyboard. This software was later sold in MS-DOS-compatible form for non-Wang hardware. The Wang word processing software was also very graphical. The keyboard had 16 function-keys and, unlike WordStar (the popular word processor of the day), control key combinations were not required to navigate the system. The F-keys had the word processing functions labeled on them.

Despite being a compliant MS-DOS system, it was not compatible with the IBM PC at the hardware level, because MS-DOS was used as a simple program loader. Complex software (spreadsheets, Flight Simulator, etc.) could obtain acceptable performance by direct manipulation of the hardware. Wang used a 16-bit data bus instead of the 8-bit data bus used by IBM, arguing that applications would run much faster since most operations required I/O (disk, screen, keyboard, printer). With this 16-bit design, Wang used peripheral hardware devices, such as the Wang PC display adapter, that were not compatible with their counterparts in the IBM PC line. This meant that the vast library of software available for the IBM PC could not be directly run on the Wang PC. Only those programs that were either written for the Wang PC or ported from the IBM PC were available. Lotus 1-2-3 and dBase II were also available. This lack of application software led to the original Wang PC's end, and it was replaced by an Intel 80286-based product that was plug compatible with the IBM PC. The unique system software was available at extra cost.

Most Wang PCs were released with a monochrome graphics adapter that supported a single video mode with text and graphics planes that could be scrolled independently. A color graphics adapter and Wang-branded color monitor were also available.

An ergonomic feature of the Wang PC was the monitor arm that clamped to the desk and held the monitor above and a system clamp that attached to the side of the desk and held the rather large computer box. By using these, there was nothing on the desktop except the keyboard.

IBM-compatible Wang PCs

Wang released an emulation board for Wang PC that enabled operation of many PC-compatible software packages. The board accomplished this by monitoring all I/O and memory transactions (visible in those days before North/South bridge chips to any board plugged into a slot on the expansion bus) and generating a non-maskable interrupt (NMI) whenever an operation was deemed to involve an incompatible device, requiring emulation.

For example, the floppy controller circuitry on the Wang PC was similar to that of the IBM PC but involved enough design differences that PC-compatible software attempting to manipulate it directly would fail. Wang's PC emulation hardware would detect I/O and memory operations involving the addresses associated with the floppy controller in the IBM PC and generate an NMI. The NMI handler would be activated (the exception vector having been appropriated during system init to point to ROM routines on the emulation board instead of the NMI routine in the PC BIOS) and would then update an internal representation of the IBM PC floppy controller and manipulate the real controller to reflect its state. Reads were satisfied in a similar way, by forcing an NMI, decoding the machine code indicated by the instruction pointer at the time of the fault, and then obtaining the desired info and updating the CPU registers accordingly before resuming the executing program.

IBM PC-emulation on the 8086-based Wang PC was working well when IBM released its 80286-based PC-AT, so Wang made the 80286-based Wang APC (Advanced Professional Computer).

Further iterations of the PC line were released commencing with the model number PC-240. They booted into MS-DOS or another compatible operating system, and supported ISA-standard expansion cards.

This PC-240 was still not IBM PC-standard, as the keyboard, although a standard PC/AT device, supported VS-compatibility with 24 function keys rather than the normal 12, and had a number of Wang VS-specific keys. There was also a slight difference in CPU interrupts from IBM standard, so some software had compatibility issues.

VS connectivity was via an ISA-based VS-terminal card, or via LightSpeed, the networked VS Terminal Emulator, over an IPX-based Ethernet connection. The PC-240 came with a Wang-specific Hercules Graphics Card and compatible screen, which also acted as a keyboard extension, so that the base unit could be kept some distance from the screen. This was later replaced with an EGA card and screen.

Around 1991, Wang released the PC350-16 and PC350-40, which were Intel 80386-based, clocked at 16 MHz and 40 MHz. They used the same VS-compatible keyboard as the PC-240, had a maximum of 4 megabytes of RAM, and came with VGA screens as standard. They were supplied by Microsoft with MS-DOS and Windows 3.0.

The 350-16 had a bug where the machine would freeze and not boot up if power-cycled at the mains. Although it would power on, the BIOS would not start. The solution was to turn on the machine at the mains and hold down the power button for 30 seconds, at which point it would start. It was suggested that this was due to an under-valued capacitor in the power circuit. This problem appeared to be resolved in the 350–40, which had a different PSU.

In 1992, Wang marketed a PC-compatible based on the Intel 80386SX processor, which it called the Alliance 750CD. It was clocked at 25 MHz and had a socket for an 80387 math coprocessor. It came with 2 megabytes of installed RAM, and was expandable to 16 megabytes using SIMM memory cards. It had a 1.44 megabyte floppy disk drive, an internal 80 megabyte hard disk, and a CD-ROM drive. Five expansion slots were built-in. It came with MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 operating systems.

In 1994, Wang released the slimline Alliance 750CD 80486 based PC in the United Kingdom. These machines used standard PC/AT keyboards and were IBM compatible, shipping with MSDOS 5.0 and Windows 3.11 as standard. System BIOS settings and the real-time clock were maintained by four standard AA batteries instead of a specialty battery pack or lithium battery. While offered with a 33 MHz 80486DX, the 750CD could be upgraded to later Socket 3 processors such as the 80486DX2 through the use of third party CPU upgrade adapters or interposers. This allowed upgrading to speeds beyond 50 MHz without overclocking, or more than 100 MHz with overclocking, dependent on the processor used.

Wang Freestyle

Wang Freestyle was a 1988 product consisting of:

A touch-sensitive tablet and a special stylus for written annotation of any file that could be displayed on the PC.

A phone handset for voice annotation, but not voice communication. Demonstrated with the tablet for explaining the text annotations.

Email, via Wang OFFICE, of the resulting document set.

The pricing of the low-end product at $2,000 precluded the important features such as "facsimile and voice options" (priced at $12,000). Freestyle was not a success in anything except marketing terms. A description of the system at the University of Southern California (USC) shows the symptoms of the failure:

The $1.2 million USC system includes a VS 7150 mid-range computer; 30 image workstations, 25 with Freestyle capabilities; a laser printer; five endorsers; and five document scanners. Initial storage for document images is eight gigabytes of magnetic disk storage.

25 of the stations were Freestyle stations. The Freestyle was only affordable for highly specialized or very senior staff in Wang Laboratories. It was sold as a C-Level tool for C grades to communicate with other C Grades. This reduced the marketplace immediately from the mass market, where the system would have been effective.