Wang gives new meaning to ‘micro’

Press, 24 December 1985, Page 19

Wang gives new meaning to ‘micro’

By

GARETH POWELL

The latest microcomputer from Wang, the Advanced Personal Computer (which will inevitably become known as the APC), seems set to make the word “microcomputer” eventually as archaic as “Yclept” and “eftsoon.” (Although eftsoon could have a comeback if used to define a bank that hopes, in the near future, to install electronic funds transfer.) Considering the speed and capacity of the APC, the word micro gives a totally wrong impression. The APC computer is a logical extension of the Wang PC and the Wang office automation policy. And it is also, paradoxically, a radical departure. It is a logical extension, in that anyone who has already bought a Wang PC can have it upgraded into an APC very simply and at a reasonable cost.

This is encouraging news in what has been described by a Wang executive as “a marketplace that is becoming increasingly a disposable one,” There is* no builtin obsolescence here. Wang PC users may breathe a sigh of relief. It is logical in . that it gives the speed and power of an IBM PC AT to the Wang line. Indeed, perhaps just a tad more. At the press conference to launch the newcomer a strange and seemingly pointless demonstration was set up to show the Wang APC can find the square root of 100 numbers faster than the IBM AT. The audience was singularly unimEressed, possibly because it new of no great need to find the square roots of a hundred numbers in a hurry. Nevertheless, you can take it the machine is fast, very fast. With its Intel. 80286 chip running at 8 mHz it positively gallops along. Interesting to note, this speed makes the APC an illegal export to the People’s Republic of China. The APC is a lo’gical extension to the Wang PC in that it will run practically all PC software straight out of the box.

On the other hand, it is a radical departure because of the philosophy behind the machine. At one time Wang appeared almost to have totally cornered the market for office automation. The

central theme behind its marketing was the linking together .of various machines in fairly large configurations. The Wang APC is not designed to fulfil that function, although it can, of course, be very easily hung on to an existing network. Instead, the APC is basically designed with “work clusters” in mind. A work cluster is four or fewer machines linked together so they can use the same files from a hard disc, the same printer, the same plotter and can easily communicate one with the other up to a distance of, say, 100 metres.

This seems emininently sensible as the majority of businesses in New Zealand are small enough to need only limited computer power but large enough to need to have a few machines linked together instead of standing in onanistic isolation. .

However, remaining true to its original philosophy, Wang has so designed the machine that it can be linked into a standard Wang system either directly or remotely. It can become part of a standard local area network through two different options and it supports all the industry standard communication protocols so that it can chat happily away to non-Wang systems. Finally, it can, if need be, operate as an office automation work station on a Wang office system although this would seem to be a waste of its abilities, speed and power. The APC can be configured in so many different ways it is almost totally versatile.

In memory, you can have either the standard 5.25-inch floppy with its miserly and stingy 360 K bytes. Or you can have the same size disc with 1.2 megabytes, which is more like it. Or you can go up to hard discs — and with this machine it would be folly not to — where you have your choice between 20, 30 or 67 megabytes. That last size should easily cope with most storage

has a streamer tape as back-up agains the awful day of a head crash. Memory on the board starts at half a megabyte but can be expanded to two megabytes which would be fairly essential with some of the bigger programs. Wang has developed a new technology to provide this memory in the smallest possible size —7.5 cm by 19cm — which clips on to the main board and does not take up slot space. Wang has called this SIMM which, it proudly states, stands for Single Inline Memory Module. The new APC offers three different operating systems with a fourth due next year. First there is, of course, MS-DOS. Then there is CP/ M. Those two probably cover 99 per cent of all the commercial packages available. It will also handle Xenix, which is Microsoft’s implementation of Unix. The current betting is. Unix — or one of its implementations — will become the operating system of choice on most powerful office machines sometime, in the future. But it is taking an unconscionable

time getting its act together and, outside of universities, has not yet made a significant penetration into the New Zealand market. Wang demonstrated its machines working in a network using Xenix. First impressions are that it is ?[uick, competent and riendly. As far as is known this was the first demonstration of a Xenix system working commercially anywhere outside the United States. The fourth operating system, which will be available sometime next year, is called IN/IX and is yet another interpretation of Unix V. The Wang APC is available with a monochrome screen, but cries out of a high-fidelity, high-resolution colour screen which Wang makes available on a splendid ergonomically-sound arm which clips to the side of the desk. Despite all the power and speed, this is a very com6 act computer — perhaps le only regard in which it can truly called micro — and it can be operated from a normal desk with only the keyboard on the top surface taking up a space of 46.5 cm by 19.8 cm. This is an elegant, wellbuilt and powerful machine.