Wang Computers

Ruu_Old · 01-06-2005 8:42pm #1

I used to have one, remains of it are still at home somewhere. It was a savage of a machine! It was a 386, 16mb ram, 120mb hard drive. Remember having to compress the drive all the time and once stuck windows 95 on it, but rarely worked that well.
It used to be the case of..turn on the computer, see loading screen, go out and have a game of football, come in..still loading screen, have my tea and come back in, its finally loaded just about. It was a noisy fecker of a thing too.
I believe Wang were bought out by AST Computers at some stage, but they were great

aidan_dunne · 01-06-2005 9:19pm

A friend of mine had one as well. As did a few other people I knew. The ESB were selling them in the early '90s when they first started selling PC's.

They had a factory somewhere in this country too, I believe. Down in Limerick, I think it was. I think you're right, Ruu, in that they were bought out by AST. I remember the AST factory closed down sometime around 1996/1997, something like that.

My friend got his Wang around 1991/1992, roughly. It was a 386 as well, 2MB (yes, 2MB's, folks! :eek:) of RAM, a 40MB hard disk. Floppy drive only, no CDROM or soundcard. Came with DOS 5 and Windows 3.1. You say that it yours was slow, Ruu, but my friend's one seemed pretty damn fast for it's time. Though, these things are all relative, I guess, aren't they?

It was also one of the first machine's I worked on that had Windows 3.1 (it had just come out around the same time this machine had, so it would have been one of the first brands of PC's being sold in this country with 3.1 bundled. Many were still shipping with 3.0 at the time). I agree, it was pretty loud!

In 1994, just before the AST buyout, our school got a few Wang 486's for use in the woodwork room, for the use of CAD and stuff like that. My woodwork teacher got myself and my aforementioned friend to spend the day setting them all up, installing the software and stuff on them, etc., seeing as we were the "computer nerds" of the school!

We were always being called out of various classes by the woodwork teacher when he needed something to be done on them or he needed us to show him something.......... or when something went wrong with them!

I still have a copy..... whoops, sorry, I mean "backup" (

)..... of DOS and Windows 3.1 on floppy disk that I copied from my friend's original copy that came with his Wang.

Ruu_Old · 01-06-2005 11:45pm

well slow starting up, but when it actually loaded :rolleyes: it wasnt too bad

cant remember what i used it for or had on it. Think i had a version of MS Flight Simulator and the first Doom, which probably pushed the PC to its limit hehe. I cant hold it together anymore!!!

aidan_dunne · 02-06-2005 12:00am

Well, we used to play on my friend's machine, amongst others, the likes of F15 Strike Eagle II, F29 Retaliator, Grand Prix Circuit and, amazingly enough, Street Fighter II. And, believe it or not, it actually ran pretty well on the machine. The lack of a soundcard in it was a disadvantage, alright, but I don't think we were too bothered by that.

Strangely enough, doing a Google search for Wang computers brings up hardly any information at all about them (or maybe it's just me!

). Anyone got any good links, particularly information and pictures about the PC's they made in the early '90's?

Sarsfield · 02-06-2005 12:10am

Computers as they should be:

http://www.computermuseumgroningen.nl/wang/wangpc.html

I remember the excitement of reading the mags and looking at the pics imagining getting my hands on one. kinda like looking at pr0n

http://www.computermuseumgroningen.nl/wang/wang.html

daveirl · 02-06-2005 12:22am

This post has been deleted.

Ruu_Old · 02-06-2005 12:48am

hehe good episode that.
Something like, Bart has drawn the attention away from my shirt

Ah they dont make computers like Wangs anymore...and THANK GOD!

aidan_dunne · 02-06-2005 12:50am

Yes davirl, I always have a little smile to myself everytime I see that episode of 'The Simpsons' with Martin Prince in the Wang t-shirt.

Sarsfield, those particular Wang models look a lot older than the ones I remember. They look like they're from the mid-late '80's roughly. The earliest ones I came across had a grey, metallic case and 3 1/2" floppy drive.

aidan_dunne · 02-06-2005 1:08am

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about:

"This is a PC 240 made by WANG, probably in their factory at Ireland (knew I was right about them having a factory here!

). It still works well.

If I am correct, this PC is equipped with an Intel 286 processor. We had several of these PC that worked very well. For some odd reason WANG had the 5.25 floppy of 1.2Mb as the standard while the 3.5 floppy was the thing to have.

If you look insight, you see that it is designed very well with a very pleasant keyboard and fully IBM compatible.

WANG never used that word, but said that it did comply with the industry standard.

It came with a lot of manuals that contained useful information"

*taken from "The Small Wang Museum" website, which can be found here: http://home.wxs.nl/~janvdv/wang/wangmuseum.htm Boy, is this guy big into his Wang stuff!

*

The one my friend had was similar to the one in the picture. The case looked very similar, anyway, but the monitor was different and had a more standard looking keyboard. And, as I said before, it was a 386 he had, not a 286, with a 3 1/2" floppy drive, not a 5 1/4", 40MB hard disk and 2MB RAM.

Sarky · 02-06-2005 1:38am

My cousin used to work for Wang.

*Snigger*

aidan_dunne · 02-06-2005 1:42pm

You always had to be careful what you said when it came to Wang computers. For example, saying to your friends that you were "going home to play with my Wang" could lead to some funny looks and a lot of slagging!

Ruu_Old · 02-06-2005 2:33pm

hehe so true. mine had a 3 1/2" floppy and 5 1/4" drive which i never used! Those mad looking disks. The one in the picture looks mighty close to the one i had.
Let them laugh aidan, for they would never knew the power that the Wang unleashed!