From June 24, 2017
See the full post of pictures
And here on reddit,
Unfortunately, the user has been deleted...but are you still out there??
If so, please contact us here!
Saturday, January 29, 2022
Friday, January 28, 2022
Thursday, January 27, 2022
Diagnosing the DREM Floppy Emulator to work on the Convergent Technologies AWS!
Diagnosis dialogue to get the DREM MFM Hard Drive and Floppy Drive emulator to emulate a floppy drive (only) on all of our Convergent Technologies AWS Turbo machines.
For all below examples, for every test, we start with a floppy disk image containing all 00 bytes. See linked example BlankAWSfloppy-80.dsk
We like HxD.
First pass means the AWS writes Hex byte value 5A across the entire floppy disk, from tracks 0 to 76. There is no read-after-write so any errors are not found. This is basically the AWS's version of "Erase".
So a floppy disk image which has had only a first pass will be a file consist of an entire file of 5A (which translates to the ASCII character "Z") from track 0 to 76 (which is byte 0 to byte 630747 in the file), leaving the original 00-value bytes from tracks 77-79 (bytes 630748 to 655359).
Your old version DREM software performs this part perfectly. For this example, see linked file DREM-Old-Floppy-1st-pass.dsk
Saturday, January 15, 2022
1983 NCR WorkSaver with WorkGraph business graphics
Clearly this machine is also a rebranded Convergent Technologies IWS/AWS.
First time we've ever seen this from this vintage advertisement being sold on eBay:
eBay Auction Auction Archive
April 1, 1984
Rival mainframers NCR and Burroughs also offer workstations for
office automation applications. NCR's WorkSaver 100-series office
automation systems are based on Convergent Technologies' AWS workstations; its WorkSaver-200 series utilize Convergent
Technologies' IWS workstations. The WS-150 utilizes all the word
and information processing software available on the other models and
supports asynchronous TTY, bisyne 2780/3780 and 3270 communications.
For business graphics applications, a package known as WorkGraph
operates with the optional Multiplan spreadsheet software on the WS-200
models. Receiving statistical information from the Multiplan software,
WorkGraph can produce line, bar, pie and combination charts of various
sizes.
Convergent Technologies AWS Turbo Models Saved so far
The image below shows a montage of all of the ID tags on every Convergent Technologies AWS Turbo machine that we have preserved in our collection, and are actively restoring
Click image above to enlarge
The AWS 200s are all models with floppy and Winchester drives mounted in the lectern.
The AWS 210s with the AWS 217 option are "slave" machines with only a CPU board, but no floppy, no hard drive, and now HDD controller board.
But what do these product numbers and options mean?
Page 4 of this the CONVERGENT™ FAMILY OF AWS™ TURBO WORKSTATIONS, we see a chart that could answer this question, although we don't see any AWS 217s, 266s or 267s.
Click image above to enlarge
This chart shows only Shows only ending in '5'.
AWS-215
AWS-225
AWS-235
AWS-245
AWS-255
AWS-265
So, we'll just have to guess at the AWS-217, AWS-266 and AWS-267 models we see above. Thankfully, we have some idea what they were quipped with, and they do match the nearest numerically listed model closely.
We'll list more here soon on exactly how each above model was equipped when we received them
And here's a model number that we were NOT able to save, and may or may not still exist. This one is a big unknown!
The seller never replied to my questions. We weren't too motivated to bid such a high price and have to drive nearly 2000 miles for pickup, when the seller was so non-responsive, and had no feedback whatsoever. Was he/she even for real? But they took a picture of a real machine, that's not in our collection so THAT must have been for real...
Maybe forever a mystery. Do YOU know the whereabouts of this machine? Or the story behind it? We'd love to hear about it! Drop us an email here.
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