On Fri, 26 Jun 1998, Charles A. Davis wrote:
> Wang, has their own 'Shell' to go into things with (I.E. menus).
> The system that I was working on was DOS 3.1 or 3.2 (a ways back).
Does the menu come up even when it hasn't managed to find a disk to boot
from?
The reason I ask is that there seem to be four keys that have different
effects. I don't have any kind of monitor attached to the thing, so I can
only make guesses based on the sounds the keyboard makes. (The system's
speaker is located in the keyboard.)
The four keys that do something are 'P', 'Q', 'D', and 'M'.
Pressing 'P' has the most interesting effect. It seems to perform a cold
boot. All six lights on the keyboard (including the caps lock light) turn
on, then turn off in sequence. First off is the caps lock light, then the
red LED at the left side of the keyboard, and so on to the right. There's
quite a long pause between the third red LED and the fourth one, so it's
probably performing a RAM check. After all the lights are out, there's a
pause, then a beep, and then the floppy drive spins up. It whirrs for a
couple of seconds and stops with a beep. This can be repeated endlessly
by pressing 'P' over and over again, and is kind of fun. :)
Pressing 'Q' just clicks the keyboard (most keys beep), then beeps,
pauses, and beeps again. After the second beep the machine seems to be
back in its original state again (where one can watch the blinkenleitz by
pressing 'P', etc.)
Pressing 'D' causes a beep, and then all the other keys click instead of
beeping. The user is probably typing into some kind of shell at this
point. Hitting <EXEC> followed by <RETURN> seems to get the machine back
to the original state.
Pressing 'M' seems to just make every key beep, and I haven't found a way
out of this mode.
> The problem ----
>
> IF you entered the BASIC development system via the WANG menus, the 'F'
> keys (and the 'HELP key', and the other 'special keys) had one set of
> 'keystrokes' to return.
>
> On the other hand, if you 'bailed out' of the 'WANG' system, and changed
> directories, and started "GWBasic" from a 'C:/' prompt, then the 'F' key
> information was different. (It's a long story how I found this out.)
>
> It DID cause a bit of hassle.
Thanks for the warning. :)
> Chuck
Doug Spence
ds_spenc_at_alcor.concordia.ca
http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ds_spenc/
Received on Sun Jun 28 1998 - 05:54:27 BST