[vcf-midatlantic] DEC Rainbow 100+

David Gesswein djg at pdp8online.com
Mon Mar 2 21:37:24 EST 2020


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-100-b2_1_7450a211bd5a51daaf335136a45b64d8.jpg

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


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