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From: GTHEALL@PENNDRLS.UPENN.EDU (George A. Theall)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec.micro
Subject: Rainbow EchoMail Digest
Message-ID: <9012061304.AA15666@remote.dccs.upenn.edu>
Date: 6 Dec 90 13:04:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 106

Rainbow EchoMail Digest                         Dec  6, 1990

In this issue:
  LA100 PROBLEM                  (2 messages)
  RE: PC100B MEMORY EXPANSI
  RE: RAINBOW QUESTION


  Articles posted to either INFO-DEC-MICRO or comp.sys.dec.micro are
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  Please send reports of problems or suggestions for improvement of
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date:     12-02-90 (18:50)
To:       ALL
Subject:  LA100 PROBLEM
From:     DAVID HEID

I have an LA100 (with a keyboard) and the setup key is inoperable. I
installed a momentary switch along side the old setup key and
soldered the leads to the circuit board at the point where the
old set up key was. I still cannot get the printer to respond
to 'setup'. Does any one care to speculate on what I should do
next. The printer responds to my rainbow but with garbled
characters and I assumed that the setup needs modified and that
is when I discovered the blown setup key.

 Thanks for any help I may get :-)


- --- Opus-CBCS 1.12
 * Origin: Glacier Peak Rainbow, Bellevue, WA - 206/644-8431 (1:343/3.0)
------------------------------
Date:     12-04-90 (13:37)
To:       DAVID HEID
Subject:  LA100 PROBLEM
From:     FRANK MALLORY

 DH> I have an LA100 (with a keyboard) and the setup key is inoperable. I
 DH> installed a momentary switch along side the old setup key and soldered
 DH> the leads to the circuit board at the point where the old set up key
 DH> was. I still cannot get the printer to respond to 'setup'. Does any one
 DH> care to speculate on what I should do next. The printer responds to my
 DH> rainbow but with garbled characters and I assumed that the setup needs
 DH> modified and that is when I discovered the blown setup key.

Have you tried using the SETPORT program?


- --- msged 1.99L MSC
 * Origin: Silver Bullet - Silver Spring, Md. - 301-622-2247 (1:109/417)
------------------------------
Date:     12-04-90 (05:08)
To:       FRANK MALLORY
Subject:  RE: PC100B MEMORY EXPANSI
From:     BOB FULLER

        I appreciate the DEc phonme num,ber for old Rainbow parts.
 Sounds like an excellent place to start.


- --- Opus-CBCS 1.12
 * Origin: Glacier Peak Rainbow, Bellevue, WA - 206/644-8431 (1:343/3.0)
------------------------------
Date:     12-04-90 (10:43)
To:       PAUL ROBINSON
Subject:  RE: RAINBOW QUESTION
From:     RON KRITZMAN

Well Paul, it happened like this.  Just about the time the IBM PC came
out, DEC decided that the desktops of the workd should (and
rightfully so) belong to DEC.  They came out with the Rainbow
in about 1983, making it what the IBM-PC should have been.  It
could run both 8088 and 8080 code.  It used the well known
VT-100 cursor control and line drawing sets, it used serial
ports for printers.
 It could handle the whole range of memory that the 8088 could address
rather than setting an arbitrary limit at 10x the memory that the old
64k machines had.  Smooth scrolling, the setup menus, and a
terminal emulator were built in, and the keyboard was (and still
is) one of the nicest I've ever used.

But DEC being a big company and big companies taking a long time to get
things from drawing board to market, was just a day late and a
dollar short.  By the time the machine hit the market the IBM
"standard" was just too firmly entrenched.  Companies like Lotus
and WordPerfect, MicroPro, Ashton-Tate and others had pledged that
there would be RB versions of their products.  Eventually there
were, but generally not for many months after the versions were
released for Bozo the Clone.  To put it another way, there were
a lot of reasons the Rainbow should have been a great thing.
But it just never happened.
 Now of course the next generation stuff has all but supplanted the
original 8088s even in the IBM world and even DEC die-hards like myself
have gone the clone route.  $500 for a DEC floppy controller,
while I paid $1050 for this whole '286, complete with a 40 mb
drive and a meg of RAM.  <<insert heavy sigh here>>

- --end of history lesson--


- --- Opus-CBCS 1.14
 * Origin: Chicago's BIT WIZ Opus HST (Net 115 NEC) (1:115/689.0)
------------------------------