Hi Everyone,
I have owned Watson II VIS boards Masde by Natural Microsystems ( NMS ) for many years and am an enthusiast. At one point, I had four cards but ended up selling all but one. I saved this one because I couldn't part with it, and knew I would put it to use.
I once had several models of Watson II boards including non-VIS. The Non-VIS boards were later upgraded by ordering a VIS Prom chip way back when. This VIS chip gave the board extra capabilities and extra commands.
The board I kept was the best of the bunch and back then there was no Internet. I traded or sold the other boards on what was FidoNet back then and was text based For Sale area. That was called an "echo" and the Fidonet messages were transmitted among private BBSs back then.
Nowadays the Internet is used and ebay is used extensively.
The Watson II VIS boards came in two models 1200bps or 2400bps and that was the built-in modem speed. Some of the older Watson II VIS boards had trouble running BITCOM software. I kept the board of the four that ran everything flawlessly and still have it today.
I recently found another Watson II VIS board on ebay (320338536243) which makes my total number of boards at 2.
The new board is a 1200 bps and runs VIS commands flawlessly and runs the model only with the included model software PCTalk III. It doesn't work on Bitcom. The Wmodem.com software is a little strange compared to my 1989 board I kept from before.
I currently have two Compaq "Luggables" model 101709 with two built-in 5.25" floppy drives and an external 100mb parallel port blue zip drive made by IOmega. I found shareware drivers to run the zip drive on the parallel port and paid my shareware fee. I also found that since I have two parallel ports I can use two drives on one computer.
Since older harddrives for the older computers are problematic in my experience on the vintage machines, I was looking for an alternative. My experience with the ST-225 MFM harddrives back then was very positive. Unfortunately, since Seagate used a yellow foam seal- this foam deteriorates with age (no fault of the drive as this is 20+ years later) and crumbles. I am not disrespecting Seagate or the ST-225 as I loved it at the time. The foam dust then damages the internal integrity of the drive.
Foam is also the weak point of the Compaq 101709 luggables as the keyboard uses foam as a "spring" under each key. I ended up replacing every piece of foam inside my keyboard with foam which I cut out using special foam and special conductive plastic - using my 40w laser engraver. Now the keyboard functions well.
See my webpage for my Compaq Portable 101709 keyboard repair kit - which I make myself. It contains hundreds of discs and circles of foam and plastic which replaces the deteriorated contact parts.
http://www.drviragopete.com/keyboard-repair-kit.php
My second 101709 Compaq was good to go and had no keyboard problem. Same age as the other one. It is very possible that some Seagate St-225 don't have foam deterioration- maybe the environment these were kept in caused increased deterioration. Anyways- there is some luck involved with getting a good one (Compaq luggable keyboard and Seagate ST-225 drive 20+ years later).
Both Compaq Luggables were upgraded to 640k through a memory expansion card. Zip 100MB is very capable of storing ALOT of voice and music since the Watson II VIS cards use very good compression techniques. I used 20mb to store about 1 hour of voice with a musical background.
I would like to find one extra Watson II VIS as a spare. I would also like to communicate with Watson II VIS enthusiasts and share programming techniques. I've been tinkering with my boards on/off for 20 years.
If you'd like to try it and see 1(847)XXX-XXXX 9AM-10AM Central Time Zone USA is when it is running. A few of the access codes are
1) Information and Email 4534
2) Exit/End Call 9999
3) System Overview 4541
There are more but have to do with the products I sell.
The above three should be enough to demonstrate the system.
I do have all of the books and have practiced programming the examples using the "Next:" commands. I wonder if there are lesser known commands or undocumented commands that you'd like to share.
I'm especially interested in the accumulator functions or ways to access subsystems by having a master password and then subpasswords.
I'm also interested in the modem functions and am looking for versions of the "wmodem.com" file as it seems that there were many versions of the board and each variance of the board had its own wmodem.com file that must be used with only that board.
I did buy one board from a seller on the Internet (no name mentioned to avoid issues) but it arrived without any modem functions and although it did work with VIS commands, the board was received in dusty condition and playback of my VIS commands and messages were at half the volume of my like-new original board. I received a promise of a swap and even an upgrade at no charge to a brand new in the box 2400 Watson II VIS. None of that cames through, and it was a big hassle with that seller who ended up returning my paypal money. He promised me a 2400 but really didn't know how to identify a 2400 board and he didn't feel it was of any value one way or the other. I do still use my 1200 or 2400 functions for Apple II+ IIe use. I'm a diehard Apple II fan and PC fan in all flavors.
Yes, I do have up-to-date computers, modem and CNC machines. Some things like the Watson II VIS card made early PCs the great computers that I remember. The capabilties of the 8-bit Watson II VIS far surpass anything else I can think of for telephone reposiveness using touchtones.
This is is truly wonderous device and I am writing to exchange ideas with other enthusiasts.
Sincerely, Pete
Let me know if you'd like to
sell/buy/exchange ideas/exchange files/try out each others phone systems/learn Watson II VIS techniques from each other
Yes I do use mine fro business purposes and works very well. I love this products and thsi page is intended as a tribute to ALL of the above mentioned products.
The foam deterioration mentioned is not intended as harmful but as a suggestion as to how to fix it for current owners.
[email protected]
I am not affiliated with Natural Microsystems and all trademarks or products mentioned belong to their respective owners or companies.
This webpage updated Sept 1, 2019
