PK Harmony - Terminal Emulation for PICK, and more

The Idea

In another blog post I talked about how Synex Systems had taken what we did for Terry Winter and turned it into a terminal emulator that could capture data from Business BASIC and Wang BASIC systems.  The owners of that company decided to pursue creating a version that worked with PICK systems.  A deal was offered to me that included me getting my own IBM PC computer in return for doing this little project.  I accepted the deal with great excitement!

The initial concept was to copy what the PC Harmony product did. The idea was that the terminal emulator software would respond to a special escape sequence, that was not used by any terminal we knew of, to shift into data capture mode.  It would then screen-scrape the data into an ASCII file, and another tool would allow you to define a ruler on the columns and capture the data.

This had some limitations. If you had summary lines, they often didn't line up, and created problems.  Also, when data wrapped in a column, it created interesting problems.

PICK had a query language called English on Reality systems, and Access on PICK systems (it actually had a bunch of names, but those two were the most common.)  It started with "LIST {filename}..." or "SORT {filename}..." and then you specified dictionaries for the columns you wanted on your report.  Dictionaries ranged from simple references to a field, to complex computed values. There were no joins, but you could reach into another file, if you could find its key, and pull out fields.  It was a pretty rich language and was very commonly used.

The Solution

So, I wrote a PICK/BASIC program that mimicked the LIST/SORT commands, but was called PICK-PC, and instead of padding and wrapping data for a columnar format, it delimited it.  Because both the PC and the PICK system had problems with high-speed transfers, and because hardware and software interrupts on the PC could cause it to lose data, we had to create an error correcting data transfer protocol for serial I/O.

The first version didn't handle some of the more complex computed dictionaries, but you could use raw data and could use "translates" to pull data out of other files.  In a pinch, you could stage the data you wanted into another file and then PICK-PC the data over.  I worked with the PC developers to come up with an architecture and design that would be practical on the PICK side, but still leverage the power of the PC.

More Horsepower Needed

It didn't take too long to realize that I had a little problem. I did much of this development (to earn my new PC) at home. But at home I could either boot into my 5 MB PICK partition, or my 5 MB DOS partition.  It was impossible to test PICK pushing data at the DOS side of the PC, as only one could be active at a time.  I also quickly ran out of room on my 10MB drive, so the company gave me a second hard drive. A 20 MB Seagate drive.

After a while, the company bought two AT&T 6300 computers. These were clones that were equivalent the the IBM AT class machine, which was the next generation after the XT. The video below shows one of these booting up.



Now I had a PICK system and a DOS system that I could run at the same time.  Both computers were quite a bit faster than my XT class machine, too, so that was another benefit.

Additional Features

In addition, I designed and the team developed a number of additional features:

• A scripting language that the PICK system could use to drive PC activity. You could do a number of things like change your current directory, create a directory, check for existence of a file, run a DOS command, program or batch file.  
• A scripting language that you could run on the PC to drive activity on the PICK application.  
• We allowed you to take data out of several formats and upload it into a file on your PICK system.

The full feature list of the production version is listed in the product brochure below:

My First Spectrum Show

We went to a Spectrum show in Las Vegas to show off our prototype and get market feedback.  That Spectrum show had a special room called "PC Labs", and we had a booth there.  The first time I was doing the demo, I showed a LIST statement displaying some data on a screen.  Then I said "Now here's something you haven't seen in PICK." and showed them the PICK-PC command.

It was completely unrehearsed, but that line became our "hook". Everyone for 3 or 4 booths away trotted over to see this "new thing they'd never seen on PICK"!

We pulled up the same data in Lotus 1-2-3.  We did another set of data and pushed into a Wordstar mail merge.

Trivia Note: Wordstar was the first WYSIWYG word processor with mail merge capability.

We left that show with pre-orders for the product, and a list of interested beta customers!

What I Learned

For me, there were several things I learned:

• I discovered PC programming and was intrigued at the possibilities.
• I discovered the incredible rush of working with a brilliant team of creative geniuses to come up with something of value. Software is so much like magic. You start with an idea in your head and wind up with something valuable that people are willing to pay money for!
• I discovered the excitement of working with sales and marketing teams to get something I helped author go to market!
• I learned more about serial I/O and data communications.

Finally, although we were far from accomplishing our vision for the host scripting we had developed, that vision was in line with a recent trend called Robotic Process Automation.  Interesting to see it coming to fruition some 30 years later!

Note: For a long time, the computer systems used by most libraries in North America was PICK based system sold by Dynix. Synex had an annual contract to sell Dynix PK Harmony licenses in bulk to allow data transfers to other systems.  Our customers also included the largest McDonald's franchise in North America (in Florida), the London Underground system, and other companies, including  fortune 500 companies, that were using PICK systems in all industries and in countries around the world.  This was great exposure for me.