http://www.gbswang.com/forum/recent.aspx Discussion - Recent Posts en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Jitbit AspNetForum Wed, 18 Apr 2012 22:06:18 GMT Wed, 18 Apr 2012 22:06:18 GMT http://www.gbswang.com/forum/messages.aspx?TopicID=3
http://wangvs.ning.com/profiles/blogs/klm-royal-dutch-airlines-completed-migration-project

-Fern

edited by ferns on 4/18/2012
edited by ferns on 4/18/2012]]> Wed, 18 Apr 2012 22:06:18 GMT http://www.gbswang.com/forum/messages.aspx?TopicID=3 Tue, 06 Mar 2012 10:29:00 GMT http://www.gbswang.com/forum/messages.aspx?TopicID=9 edited by ferns on 12/30/2010]]> Thu, 23 Dec 2010 07:28:04 GMT http://www.gbswang.com/forum/messages.aspx?TopicID=8 wang-laboratories
edited by ferns on 10/14/2009]]> Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:39:25 GMT http://www.gbswang.com/forum/messages.aspx?TopicID=2 Fri, 24 Oct 2008 09:32:57 GMT http://www.gbswang.com/forum/messages.aspx?TopicID=4
My hero, Eugene Marais was sent down with instructions to not return until the problem was fixed.

We took to standing behind the worst offender to try and pick up what was different about them. Some were quite distraught and intimidated by now.

I cannot remember who it was of us in the team who finally saw a glimmer of understanding. In retrospect it was simple - the problem was worse amongst the secretaries who typed the fastest! Now the picture started to clarify. As the secretaries were getting the feel for the keyboards and Wang Word Processing, they were typing faster. This explained the insidious onset of the problem, starting in isolated spots - initially slowly and then spreading like a cancer to many of the other sites - but not, of course, in the sleepy towns.

So we had a keyboard buffer overrun problem. This was not so obvious since it could not be simulated just by typing rubbish fast. Some little bit of code somewhere in the software was not handling the buffer full situation under certain circumstances.

Eugene and I spent a hectic and exciting afternoon examining code like a couple of sleuths slowly homing in on their quarry. We compared every byte of the object code that the bank was using with the original code from Wang. And finally we found it. One miserable ****TY little character embedded in megabytes of code was different - without a documented reason!

You will recall that I said above how we often used some dubious techniques to get around problems - like using DEBUG to change a character in the object code to output a different one for some special reason or another. If the changed character didn't achieve our aim, it was put back and another one was tried.

Well folks, I think now, after 25 years down the line, it is probably safe for me to reveal that it was in fact (ahem!) actually it was ME who changed that fateful little character and it was (ahem!) ME who forgot to change the little bastard back!

The repaired software was duplicated over the next few days and distributed with the usual bank's efficiency. Finally the phones stopped ringing. Phew!

Epilogue:

I shall always be indebted to Eugene who decided then and there that no one, least of all ME, would benefit by him revealing the truth about this little omission of mine and he made up some bull**** story to take back head office. We were all so jubilant that the problem was fixed that nobody checked out Eugene's story. Gulp!

I end this little fun story on a rather sad note, in that I honestly believe that Eugene never told anyone the truth about this and took my little faux pas with him to his grave. If anybody has claim to the contrary I do not wish to know.

I will always remember Eugene, who was a great guy.

Kind regards to all

MAX HOUNSELL
edited by ferns on 10/15/2008
edited by ferns on 4/20/2011]]> Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:04:56 GMT http://www.gbswang.com/forum/messages.aspx?TopicID=6
Although Ken is no relation to Dr Wang and he's in fact of Norwegian stock there are several funny stories about the confusion he would accidentally cause from time to time...

Salesman would introduce him to customers as "We've brought Mr Wang to personally attend to your software problems"

Way to go Ken...


edited by ferns on 10/24/2008]]> Wed, 15 Oct 2008 10:18:50 GMT http://www.gbswang.com/forum/messages.aspx?TopicID=4
This is a true story that illustrates the camaraderie that existed amongst the staff of GBS in those days

Someway back in the early 80's Cape Town Branch landed the biggest single deal in the history of GBS where we displaced IBM from a well known financial Institution to create an intelligent network system involving some 42 Wang LVPs. The Wang PC made its debut soon after and was eagerly snapped up by as well for use as both an LVP terminal and as a word processor.

This bank like all banks was a demanding customer and was always insisting on functionality that our sales staff claimed was possible and often beyond what Wang had originally intended. Usually the GBS support staff, of which I was the resident specialist, came to the rescue. We were sanctions busting at the time and not always getting cooperation from Wang, State Side. So we were not above patching object code if necessary, in order to achieve the impossible and often using techniques of dubious methodology!

Anyway, after many months of training, tuning and tweaking, the Wang PCs were finally rolled out in huge numbers countrywide throughout this banking enterprise. The banks had even designed a special desk to accommodate the PC and all its associated bits and pieces - they didn't mess around!

For several weeks all went well. We had the occasional hardware failure or support issue but things looked really good.

One day we got a call that a keyboard was RUNNING - i.e. it was acting as if a key was held down and repeating. No problem - a CE was dispatched with a new keyboard and the problem fixed.

For a while!

But the problem returned!!! So the PC was swapped out and for a while things were fine again. But once again the problem recurred. And then someone else started reporting the same problem. And so on it went.

As the weeks went by more and more calls came in. My keyboard's running - my keyboards running AGAIN. The poor CEs were running too - their butts off - swapping keyboards, CPUs and anything else they could think of. With usual GBS CE efficiency the problem was escalated to head office and specialist came down - =-- armed with Eskom power analyzers, earth checking devices and all manner of theories. Even two engineers out from the States at the time were rushed down from Jo'burg. They crawled all over the PC's with additional earth straps and the like but had to leave defeated.

The problem got worse!!!! MUCH WORSE.

And the bank executives started getting seriously irate. VERY IRATE!!!

We started to more carefully analyze just what on earth was going on. It was noticed that the problem tended to be associated with a given secretary, i.e. if the whole PC caboodle, (CPU, keyboard, printer and software diskettes) was swapped with another secretary, then the problem did not move with the hardware or the software.

So what was different about the secretaries? Things were worse in the big cities than in the slower sleepy towns. Strange!

I have to say that the bank's secretaries were real bricks throughout these very trying times. We once suggested that the problem might be a result of the fact that some of them wore nylon under garments (!) whilst others wore cotton ones (nylon can create static). We had fun doing a survey of who wore what?

But that wasn't the problem either - no correlation with the observable facts.

... Please see Part 2 of this post...

On Behalf of - (MAX HOUNSELL) --
edited by ferns on 10/15/2008
edited by ferns on 4/20/2011]]> Wed, 15 Oct 2008 10:01:46 GMT http://www.gbswang.com/forum/messages.aspx?TopicID=3
I'm wondering how some of my old buddies are doing these days. Where can I contact guys like JD, Ian and/or Blokkies... or perhaps Joe from installations. If you do know please do contact me.

edited by ferns on 10/24/2008]]> Tue, 14 Oct 2008 22:25:34 GMT http://www.gbswang.com/forum/messages.aspx?TopicID=2
I'd seen other Wang web sites and there was nothing with a South African flavor. The history of computing also has an African component so I messed around a little and came up with this. Apologies if I scorched a couple of you for content, but I'm still waiting for any real pics of equipment we serviced way back then.

Let me know what you think, but most of all please support it, its dedicated to you!!! ]]> Tue, 14 Oct 2008 22:14:36 GMT