Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ncar!gatech!mcnc!rti!bcw From: bcw@rti.rti.org (Bruce Wright) Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec.micro Subject: Re: DecMate II Summary: No way ... Message-ID: <1990Dec14.185805.27814@rti.rti.org> Date: 14 Dec 90 18:58:05 GMT References: Organization: Research Triangle Institute, RTP, NC Lines: 28 In article , C491153@UMCVMB.MISSOURI.EDU ("John Schultz") writes: > I recently purchased a DecMate II at an auction and have a few questions > about it. Is this sucker a Rainbow (or PC compatible in any regards)? > If so, is there someone I can make arrangements with to get a boot disk? > If it is not PC compatible, is anyone interested in it? ;> Well, I'm not sure if you can classify the Rainbow as PC compatible (it's MS-DOS compatible, if you have the Rainbow version of MS-DOS, which is often good enough). But to answer your question, no, the DECmate II is not PC compatible, nor is it Rainbow compatible. It's basically a PDP-8 based word processing system. Some of them had a Z80 board added which made them CP/M compatible (the old 8-bit CP/M, not the 16-bit CP/M that is sometimes seen in the PC world and more often on the DEC Rainbow). Without that board it's pretty useless by modern standards, unless you happen to like the DECmate word processing software (which I understand isn't too bad, though a bit dated compared to more modern offerings). If it _does_ have the Z80 CP/M add-on, it's considerably more useful, but the Z80 and CP/M software are nowhere near the mainstream for microcomputers any more. But there's quite a bit of good (if old) software for it ... sort of depends on what you want the machine for. No, I'm not particularly interested in it. Good luck -- Bruce C. Wright