• Mith (unregistered)

    OMG

  • Mith (unregistered)

    What I meant was - mistaking days and years in date functions?

    I guess the reason why noone really knows this one is that everyone had big hangovers all day (except for the ones fixing this, of course, who for some reason don't tell much about it) and didn't even notice :-)

  • Caleb (unregistered)

    Must be all the incidents of "Wang"

  • (cs) in reply to Mith

    But, but, if they worked overnight, then it would have been Jan 2 by the time the fix went out, and the files could have been deleted... or was everyone too drunk to figure that out? I personally spent that particular new year's eve/day in the emergency room (from about 11:45PM 12/31/83 on, and it seemed a quiet, if painful night).

  • (cs)
    Molly Ringwald, and Wangs
    I'm with you, but what does that have to do with computers?
  • whicker (unregistered)

    The real wtf here is that if they went through all the trouble of putting in an expiration date, then they should have simultaneously gone in the other direction of having a temporary file flag. Or (shudder) a special date that meant temporary.

  • MAV (unregistered)

    I was under 3 years old at the time, but as I recall my wang was not yet ready for full time service, and was only used incidentally and accidentally through no specific control of my own. I would have to consult my mother's extensive "bed wetting spreadsheet" to see if I tried to use my wang on that particular day.

    As far as the Wang repair people... It could, perhaps, explain why about that time a fat, balding, greasy man who loved star wars was interested in my pelvis...

  • (cs)

    I remember that day. The day the Wang went down. And, mind you, this was before Viagra.

  • anon (unregistered)

    At first, I thought the article may be about the Morris worm.

  • pweegar (unregistered)

    gads, I remember our Wang system. I worked for a state agency here in Az. I started around 1994. They were still using a Wang for many things, including word processing. We even had a dedicated Wang employ who worked as a consultant for many years with us.

    Then we moved to a client/server environment using HP pc and MS Word. What fun THAT was, coverting all those Wang documents! All kinds of strange characters in documents that would cause Word to go really strange.

    Plus, I remember how heavy the Wang computer was when we finally rolled it out of the computer room, down a carpeted hall.. Ah, the good ole days!

  • (cs) in reply to pweegar

    Plus, I remember how heavy the Wang computer was when we finally rolled it out of the computer room, down a carpeted hall.. Ah, the good ole days!

    And what did you do with the old machine? Turn it into a beer cooler? Or was that job already taken by the PDP-8?

  • bramster (unregistered)

    I remember working with a Wang. I don't remember anything special about January 1, 1984.

    I do remember, though, whenever new software was being bought, the vendors would ask "how big is your Wang?"

  • Old guy.... (unregistered)

    I wasn't old enough to have worked with them but I do remember that coming up the 405 in LA just as you turned to approach the airport there was a giant mirrored cylindrical building with a sign on it that said WANG.

    As a teenager that was pretty funny....

    =Tod

  • (cs)

    January 1984? I was in the womb.

  • A. Nony Mouse (unregistered) in reply to Mith

    I'm guessing the bug was adding 1 to the day for all days in a leap year instead of just those after February 28th.

    But I wasn't there so I'm not sure.

  • GrandmasterB (unregistered)

    Excellent story!

  • (cs)

    1/1/1984? I was something like -5 or -6, I'm from 1990.

  • AC (unregistered) in reply to joe.edwards
    January 1984? I was in the womb.
    Me too, born in June.
  • (cs) in reply to whicker
    whicker:
    The real wtf here is that if they went through all the trouble of putting in an expiration date, then they should have simultaneously gone in the other direction of having a temporary file flag. Or (shudder) a special date that meant temporary.

    Or maybe use the epoch for expiration date. Any kind of past time would make it, but 0 (the epoch) seems fit. Or did they store dates as structures? 0000-00-00 would still fit.

    The only problem would happen if they checked for inconsistences...

  • CynicalTyler (unregistered) in reply to AC

    me 2 lololol!

    But seriously, thank god I never lived in a world with faulty Wangs. Born February. Whew, just missed it.

  • sobani (unregistered)

    At my company we still keep some WANG machines. For that one customer of us that still uses it. All our other customers use a program designed with the successor of the SPEED language.

    Some years ago the SPEED language on WANG machines got converted to APPX for x86 machines. And that's the language we work with. For an idea: I felt a strong connection reading the MUMPS story earlier on this site, although I believe APPX is less bad.

  • grammarpolice (unregistered)

    "grinded to a halt" that should be "ground to a halt"

  • ItsMeAgain (unregistered) in reply to SenorLapiz
    SenorLapiz:
    > Plus, I remember how heavy the Wang computer was when we finally rolled it out of the computer room, down a carpeted hall.. Ah, the good ole days!

    And what did you do with the old machine? Turn it into a beer cooler? Or was that job already taken by the PDP-8?

    An IBM Series-1 always worked fine for us.

  • Nobody (unregistered)

    Home Depot still use Wang minis to run most of their stores.

  • (cs)

    Although George Orwell knew nothing of computers, he apparently predicted the year correctly!!

  • (cs)

    Bring back expiration dates on files!

  • (cs) in reply to AC
    AC:
    January 1984? I was in the womb.
    Me too, born in June.

    I was 61 years old in 1984. I don't know how old I am now. I don't remember much at all anymore...

  • Jaap-Jan van der Veen (unregistered)

    I was in my mother's womb, being a three month old fetus.

    This is a nice one to slap my father in the face. He worked for Wang at that time. And all the when we were talking about old stuff. I recently bought an Atari 130XE, we had that type when I was about six years old.

    And all that time he keeps rattling on about how advanced and perfect Wang was for that time. Now I know better, so that will be a nice conversation when he comes home tonight >:).

  • Magikarp (unregistered) in reply to whicker
    whicker:
    The real wtf here is that if they went through all the trouble of putting in an expiration date, then they should have simultaneously gone in the other direction of having a temporary file flag. Or (shudder) a special date that meant temporary.
    Or yesterday or last month or whatever.

    Anyway the real WTF is not having standard date routines in the OS.

  • bah (unregistered)

    Just out of curiosity.. Is anyone still working in an office using Wang computer?

  • (cs) in reply to Magikarp

    I'm not sure I agree - a computer has a timestamp (epoch, local, whatever) and that's what you make do with. Languages have routines, not operating systems IMHO.

    The real WTF, therefore, would be that their OS wasn't written using consistent tools (e.g., all in C or whatever).

  • Drone (unregistered) in reply to Jaap-Jan van der Veen
    Jaap-Jan van der Veen:
    I was in my mother's womb, being a three month old fetus.

    This is a nice one to slap my father in the face. He worked for Wang at that time. And all the when we were talking about old stuff. I recently bought an Atari 130XE, we had that type when I was about six years old.

    And all that time he keeps rattling on about how advanced and perfect Wang was for that time. Now I know better, so that will be a nice conversation when he comes home tonight >:).

    What? You're 23 years old, and still living with your parents? Zounds.

  • kahuna (unregistered) in reply to Foosball Girl In My Dreams
    Foosball Girl In My Dreams:
    But, but, if they worked overnight, then it would have been Jan 2 by the time the fix went out, and the files could have been deleted... or was everyone too drunk to figure that out?

    read it again... once the bug hit, you couldn't even boot so that it would fix the problem. the shipped fix probably involved booting from a floppy or something.

    btw... had trouble reading the captcha... was black on a very dark green background. had to turn my video card's gamma way up to even see that it was there.

  • Shiny (unregistered) in reply to kahuna
    kahuna:
    Foosball Girl In My Dreams:
    But, but, if they worked overnight, then it would have been Jan 2 by the time the fix went out, and the files could have been deleted... or was everyone too drunk to figure that out?

    read it again... once the bug hit, you couldn't even boot so that it would fix the problem. the shipped fix probably involved booting from a floppy or something.

    btw... had trouble reading the captcha... was black on a very dark green background. had to turn my video card's gamma way up to even see that it was there.

    I think the point you're missing is that the computers could have booted the next day, since the thing stopping them was the deletion of the then-unexpired temporary files.

    The next day - files expire, boot succeeds, everyone smiles (for the next 4 years or so).

    CAPTCHA: darwin

  • dkf (unregistered) in reply to Nobody
    Nobody:
    Home Depot still use Wang minis to run most of their stores.
    Isn't that just the heater for when the weather goes cold?
  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Shiny

    No, "the thing stopping them" was the fact that the drives were full so the OS could not write necessary additional temp files for booting. The boot can't succeed unless the files are deleted, but the files can't be deleted without booting. Regardless of the day.

    Thus, the "shipped fix" which probably involved a boot disk.

  • Freddy Bob (unregistered) in reply to grammarpolice
    grammarpolice:
    "grinded to a halt" that should be "ground to a halt"

    or "did grind to a halt"

    or "began to grind to a halt" perhaps

  • Curious Mind (unregistered)

    Um. What's going to happen in 2070?

  • ubersoldat (unregistered)

    1984??? So I was playing with my Macintosh??? I don't even remember what I did yesterday.

    Who in his right mind would name a big HW/SW company Wang? A chinesse maybe.

    Anyway, let's hope we (as a specie) have learned no to use expiration date to avoid dumb things like file deletion... now that I think of it, does Vista comes with this "feature"???

    Yeah! I'm so burned by WOW!

  • (cs) in reply to Curious Mind
    Curious Mind:
    Um. What's going to happen in 2070?

    We're all going to die.

  • (cs) in reply to ubersoldat
    ubersoldat:
    1 Who in his right mind would name a big HW/SW company Wang? A chinesse maybe.
    That would be Dr Wang to you, bub. Two Chinese fellows founded it, but it's an American company, since it was founded in Massachusetts, and headquartered there ever since.

    As for the funny looking building, there's a Siemens office with its own (very phallic) water tower, which you see on GA 400 just as you get to the "Welcome to Cumming" sign. That one always cracks me up.

  • Not-I (unregistered) in reply to AC

    my parents were in the process of conceiving me....shudders

  • SomeCoder (unregistered)

    Geez... all these kids posting on this thread... makes me feel old.

    I wasn't terribly old in 1984 but I was alive :)

  • getoffmylawn (unregistered)

    I felt pretty old when some young punk tried to delete a reference to Wang computers from a Wikipedia article, assuming it was vandalism.

    And now people posting here saying "omg like i wuz not born yet lololol". It might be time to put an age limit on the Internet... I think banning anyone who is younger than I am is a good start.

  • (cs) in reply to ubersoldat
    ubersoldat:
    1984??? So I was playing with my Macintosh?
    That didn't come until 23 days later. And 1984 wasn't like "1984". :^)
  • Mike (unregistered) in reply to poochner

    That's if you've survived the meltdown of 2038 ...

  • Bernie (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    1984 - at that time you had to set time and date on every boot of a Wang VS, and the OS didn't use temp files during boot.

  • evilghost (unregistered)

    Excessive play with your Wang obviously results in some form of blindness; perhaps why this bug persisted though QC?

  • (cs) in reply to getoffmylawn
    getoffmylawn:
    I felt pretty old when some young punk tried to delete a reference to Wang computers from a Wikipedia article, assuming it was vandalism.

    And now people posting here saying "omg like i wuz not born yet lololol". It might be time to put an age limit on the Internet... I think banning anyone who is younger than I am is a good start.

    Yeah, damn these young punks.

    <old person's rant>Downloading music? In my day we had CDs and we were damned happy with that.

    Reminds me of the time I went to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. I was wearing an onion on my belt, which was the style of the time.

    Now back then nickels used to have pictures of bumblebees on them, "gimme 5 bees for a quarter", you'd say...

  • (cs)

    I was there, working for Wang as a service rep in Oakbrook, IL. I spent a couple of days at customer sites doing just what they're talking about. A 75meg disk pack in one hand, a 300meg in the other, and a couple of microcode floppies.

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