Interesting. This a video we took when first booting the machine: https://www.instagram.com/p/B86IsEwHV9v/ No menu. The Columbia link says it could potentially run 3 OSes: MS-DOS, CP/M-86 (16-bit), and CP/M-80 (8-bit). That would make sense with C:, D: and E:. The plot thickens... I'll go through the manuals carefully at the workshop this weekend. I haven't seen smooth scroll in decades, so I can't really say if it is different that what I know. It is beautiful, but I can imagine that the speed would get annoying with repeated uses. On 3/2/2020 9:37 PM, David Gesswein via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Curious so looked a little. No first hand experience.
Should have a boot menu https://thumbs.worthpoint.com/zoom/images4/1/0516/12/vintage-dec-rainbow-pc-...
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/rainbow.html
I always found the smooth scroll looked nice but was significantly slower than jump so I always turned it off. Is it any different on this machine?
On Mon, Mar 02, 2020 at 08:23:32PM -0500, Adam Michlin via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Hi Everyone,
So we have an absolutely gorgeous, looking almost brand new, completely dec'ed out (see what I did there?), DEC Rainbow 100+ for hands on use in the museum now in the new business office display.
It currently boots up to MS-DOS and runs the DEC WPS word processor. It also seems to have 123 installed, although there may have a copy protection issue.
But what intrigues me the most is that the MS-DOS boot disk is E:... C: and D: appear to exist, but aren't MS-DOS formated.
So, I'm guessing these might be CP/M partitions for the Z80 processor also in the DEC Rainbow. But, the big question, how do we tell it to boot CP/M?
And, I understand it can also function as a standand alone VT-100 terminal. How do we get it to go into that mode? This opens an entirely different world of uses once it is rotated out as the "business" computer on the business desk.
Oh... most importantly... I had forgotten how absolutely gorgeous smooth scroll is.
Thanks much,
-Adam