Wang Professional Computer from 1984

 At the end of last year (Dec 2024) I was browsing Facebook Marketplace and saw a somewhat interesting computer that I had never heard of before, a Wang Professional Computer (Wang PC).   I've been interested in Wang since learning about the history of the company founder, An Wang, and his contributions to the history of computing.  He was involved in the development of Core Memory, and was able to use the funds from the sale of that invention to start his computer company Wang Laboratories.

I was interested in the Wang PC but did some research before buying it.  Because this is not IBM PC compatible, you need the custom Wang Keyboard and a custom monitor to use this machine.  The Facebook listing included a Keyboard but not a Monitor.  I was going to take a pass on the machine, but the seller lowered the price to the point that I could not refuse. 

I took the Wang PC apart and did some light cleaning and dusting inside of the case.  The computer appears to be in good shape.  Then it went up on a shelf in storage waiting for a time when I could find a matching CRT at a reasonable price.

Fast-forward 4 months.  I had a saved search for Wang CRT monitors on eBay, and a compatible monitor appeared.  I got the Wang PC down and tested it out to see if the Power Supply was working and if the computer was showing any signs of life without the monitor.  The computer did appear to be working, at least as well as I could tell without a monitor, and I thought it was even booting from the internal Hard Drive.  So I ordered the specialized CRT from eBay.  I was a bit nervous becuase the screen was not guaranteed to work.  But the seller did a great job of packing it and it arrived intact.

I was super happy when I powered the system up with the monitor for the first time and it worked!  Then only a few seconds later, the CRT's horizontal sweep collapsed to a vertical line, what a bummer...

Thankfully I have been able to fix simple CRT problems in the past so I took the monitor apart and started troubleshooting.  I was not able to find a service manual or a schematic, but the circuit board was well labelled.  That is about the best I can say about the circuit board.  When I started removing components to test out of circuit I damaged several traces as they were not stuck to the board very well.  It took me quite a few hours over a couple of different evenings to get the monitor working again, I never did identify a bad component.  I did reflow most of the solder joints on the monitor board so it was likely a cold solder joint from vibration or old age, or the low quality of the circuit board.  Either way the monitor is working again and the Wang PC is usable!

But, then I encountered the next issue, the keyboard was not working well.  I did get a few key presses to register but most of the keys didn't work at all.  Then the ones that had worked stopped working, too.  This was not a huge surprise as I had already read that this was a "Foam and Foil" type keyboard.  I've restored a couple of other brands of these type using these pads that are sold by TexElec so I got another set of those on order and prepared the keyboard by taking it all apart, removing the old pads and doing a through cleaning.  After replacing all tbe pads I did some testing and then fully re-assembled the keyboard.  All the keys appear to be working and I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

Once the keyboard was complete, I was able to explore the computer and see what files were present on the hard drive.  The 10MB hard drive is about 1/2 full.  The drive appears to be working well, it's not making any unusual sounds so that's good.  One interesting feature of the machine is a simple menu that starts up on boot, it allows the user to move around without typing any commands to start programs and move files around...

This machine has the Wang Word Processor installed.  Wang was famous for this.  They had dedicated hardware just for word processing in their previous generation of hardware, which you can see covered on Usagi Electric.  Although my machine is a General Purpose computer, Wang Word Processing is just about the only software installed on this machine.

I tested the Floppy Drive a bit, and it did not seem to be working correctly.  It was functional for a little while, then stopped working.  I took the machine apart and did some cleaning.  I re-seated connectors but there was nothing obvious wrong with the drive.  When I re-assembled in, the drive started working!  I was able to boot the machine from Floppies I had made from Drive Images I found on WinWorld.

And with that repair, the Wang PC is functionally complete!  I'm very happy to have this system.  It will go nicely with my other MS-DOS compatible machine, the Tandy 2000, and maybe this will motivate me to work on another MS-DOS system I've had in storage for a while, a Zenith Z-100 system.