ABN.ISCAMS@USC-ISID.ARPA (05/25/84)
Netlandians, Wang recently sold us some PC's with MS-DOS (I think, or their equivalent), CP/M emulation, etc. They were supposed to sell us 15" (132 column) dot- matrix printers, but we suddenly discover Wang (or our local vendor) doesn't HAVE 15-inch dot-matrix printers. They supplied 80-column ones, and now want to sell us 132-col letter-quality printers! Naturally, this failure to fulfill specs/contract will not pass -- but I do NOT understand. Wang says "Well, you'd have to write special drivers for any 15" dot-matrix printers." How come? I wrote no special drivers for my poor old CP/M-80, just dumped stuff via PIP to the serial port! Is MS-DOS so brain-damaged (or Wang's OS) that a simple straight-forward serial dump out a port, and some simplistic Xon/Xoff or some sort of ready/ not ready won't work? Why can't I carry my good old Mannesman Tally serial over there, plug it in to their (hopefully) RS-232 serial port, and push a WordStar file to it? I've been told by my users the provided serial printers aren't exactly serial, and don't use the RS-232 (?) port -- but a special Wang comm port instead. Stranger and stranger. I am NOT an MS-DOS hacker, don't even own/work on such a system -- but I find it hard to believe ANY OS is so restricted that such an obvious requirement is omitted. And what's the difference (to a port or OS) between 80 column and 132 column anyway? What does the computer care? Some enlightenment would be useful. Maybe it ISN'T so easy, and Wang IS correct ... but sure seems dumb to me. Or is Wang falling back on their good old "let's not be compatible with ANYTHING, and insure even our printers need special smarts!"? David Kirschbaum Toad Hall
jbn@wdl1.UUCP (05/31/84)
The Wang PC comes with two ports standard on the CPU card, an RS-232
serial port and a Centronics-compatible parallel port. Both work fine with
non-Wang peripherals. I did the port of AutoCAD, the drafting package to
the Wang PC, and have run printers, plotters, and mice off the machine, none
made by Wang. All devices were driven by AutoCAD drivers, though, not by the
BIOS.
One thing to be wary of; the RS-232 port is really RS-232, and insists
that the input levels swing outside the +2 to -2 volt range before anything
will happen. Input levels of 0 and +5 will not work; the low level must
go down to at least -2v or so, preferably -5. +5 to -5 works fine. Some
low-rent peripherals don't have a minus supply, and cause problems. I
had problems getting a Logimouse to work on the serial port, but the problem
was in our Logimouse adapter, not in the mouse itself.