Talk:Wang Laboratories
From Academic Kids
I have a WANG OIS with boards dated well pre 1980 and it has the previously labelled "Circa 1990" logo on it, so I have changed the date.
Wang was surprisingly unconcerned about the exact appearance of their logo and there were minor variations.
I believe that in later years the logo was more frequently rendered as a solid blue oval with white lettering on it; that is, the word Wang was white on a blue background. In earlier years the word Wang was brown on a white background with a brown oval outline surrounding it. That's what I think, anyway. If your OIS boards are the blue version then I stand corrected. Dpbsmith 17:21, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Wang is considered a minicomputer vendor. None of their machines was known as a mainframe. I'm considering changing the section header to reflect that. Dyl 17:35, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)
- I agree with you. When I wrote the article I gave that section the heading "IBM-compatible minicomputers." On 10 March, User:Tjunker changed it to "IBM-like mainframes." I'm not sure why he did that, but I didn't think it was worth fussing over. Why don't you go ahead, but do put "See Talk" in the edit summary. Tjunker doesn't have a user page; if he did I'd consider asking him about it there, but since he doesn't I'll assume he either a) has this article on his watchlist and can join this discussion here if he cares, b) doesn't care, or c) is inactive...
- Of course, personally I've never understood this use of the word "mainframe." To me it always meant the bay or bays containing the CPU in any floorstanding computer. One day I referred to "the mainframe" in this way and somebody said "O no, it doesn't mean that, it means a computer that costs over a million dollars" or something like that. I THINK the evolution probably took place in the IBM world. I'm guessing that third-party vendors of plug-compatible peripherals for IBM computers didn't want to say "IBM," so probably used "the mainframe vendor" as a circumlocution. Or possibly to mean "IBM and Amdahl." So then people started thinking that "mainframe vendor" meant "manufacturer of big honkin' MIS computers" or "IBM and the seven dwarfs," and then "mainframe" meant "big honkin' MIS computer." [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 12:26, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Yes, in my understanding of the word mainframe, it has multiple meanings:
- A computer system that costs at least $1M dollars
- A computer system that runs one function for a large company (say more then 200 people)
- A computer with the highest level of reliability, availability and servicibility features
- An IBM 360/370/etc compatible
- Wang computers were none of these. A more typical application for a Wang machine was more likely word-processing for a small department. Anyways, the scale of the jobs & number of users for a minicomputer and a mainframe are easy to distinguish. Also, if you placed an IBM AS/400 physically next to an IBM System/370, it would be immediately obvious. Dyl 16:06, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)
- Yes, in my understanding of the word mainframe, it has multiple meanings:
- After doing a google search, I see the people who are selling these machines , are the ones referring to them as mainframes. People who are/were users/owners call them minicomputers. I'm going to make the change now. Dyl 19:06, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)
