Wang Terminal boot \ VOGONS

Wang Terminal boot

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First post, by Planet-Dune

Posted on 2020-04-09, 20:32

Planet-Dune Offline

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Hello

Today I gave power to my Wang terminal (for the 1st time, wasn't sure it worked), I did not attach anything except the keyboard (see attachment1). I get a list of items it detects (see attachment2) but nothing I do (press on the keyboard) allows me to proceed. Is this normal behavior? Does the HDD/Floppy part need to be attached for the terminal to work? I was under the impression the hdd/floppy part was a optional addon and the terminal itself should be able to boot into Basic ? or do you need the 2200 MVP connected ? Though I thought that was used to connect multiple terminals at once...

Thanks.

Reply 1 of 3, by pentiumspeed

Posted on 2020-04-10, 00:03

pentiumspeed Offline

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Terminals is dumb what you type on the keyboard goes out to the server and it transmits the ASCII codes back to reflect what you are typing on and what server is executing what you are typing on and commands.

Some have to tap a key few times to get reaction from server or via modem and type in login and password after you type in correct type of server name or modem command codes to manually connect,. etc.

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 2 of 3, by Horun

Posted on 2020-04-10, 01:39

Horun Offline

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Many terminals could definitely boot to an OS. I do not know anything about your Wang but if the floppy drives were connected and the proper OS disk was in it should boot. One of my old terminals (now long gone) booted to CP/M, loaded some arcnet drivers and then would then allow it to login to a server. It has been years so am sure am forgetting lots of details. Do you have a manual for yours ? Even a good picture of the board with it's expansion cards would be of great help. Added: because yours appears to have a full processor board, floppies and HD it is not same as a "dumb" terminal which had very limited usage, no floppies and required the matching server. Yours appears to be a full smart terminal or even could be a full computer. Possibilities are endless with yours but need more info !

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 3 of 3, by Planet-Dune

Posted on 2020-04-11, 21:01

Planet-Dune Offline

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Horun wrote on 2020-04-10, 01:39:

Many terminals could definitely boot to an OS. I do not know anything about your Wang but if the floppy drives were connected and the proper OS disk was in it should boot. One of my old terminals (now long gone) booted to CP/M, loaded some arcnet drivers and then would then allow it to login to a server. It has been years so am sure am forgetting lots of details. Do you have a manual for yours ? Even a good picture of the board with it's expansion cards would be of great help. Added: because yours appears to have a full processor board, floppies and HD it is not same as a "dumb" terminal which had very limited usage, no floppies and required the matching server. Yours appears to be a full smart terminal or even could be a full computer. Possibilities are endless with yours but need more info !

Thanks for this information. I tried adding the HDD part and noticed I do not have the required cable to do so, so will first need to track that down.

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