Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pacbell!att!ihnp4!islenet!mmac From: mmac@islenet.UUCP (Michael E. Macmillan) Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec.micro Subject: Rainbow Windows Message-ID: <4061@islenet.UUCP> Date: 8 Jun 88 20:25:32 GMT Organization: Islenet Inc., Honolulu Lines: 152 The following article is from the June 1988 issue of Silicon Valley Rainbow, the newsletter of the Silicon Valley DEC PC Users Group. I thought it so informative as to demand a broader audience. It is posted here with the consent of the author and the editor of the newsletter. Michael E. Macmillan ---------------------------------------------------------------- CompuServe: 74206,577 Bitnet: macmillm@ewc.bitnet GEnie : macmillan UUCP : {ihnp4|vortex}!islenet!mmac ---------------------------------------------------------------- A glance inside Rainbow Windows ------------------------------- By Len Berk Toronto, Ontario, PC group There's good news for Rainbow users: A version of MS-Windows for the Rainbow exists, and some of us have had the chance to try it out. I've been playing with a copy for about a month, and I'm happy to report that it does most of what it's supposed to. I'll give some details of what it doesn't do shortly. But what it does do, above all, is permit a Rainbow to run a number of current, hitherto unusable, applications. MS-Windows is not an application but rather an extension to DOS. First conceived at Microsoft early in 1983, it was designed, in part, to solve the problem of software incompatibilities among MS-DOS computers, and to provide multitasking under MS-DOS. It does this by providing application programs with all the hardware interface services they presumably could ever want and then prohibiting them from laying a finger on the hardware itself. The result is that, under Windows, incompatibility is no more: Any program that runs under Windows on the IBM PC will run under Windows on the Rainbow. Since late 1985, when Windows for the IBM first became available, perhaps a couple of dozen applications have appeared commercially, ranging from desk-top publishing and presentation graphics to ``hypertext'' and artificial intelligence expert systems. And most of what I've tried so far behaves on my Rainbow just as it does on a comparably equipped IBM PC. In fact, the basic implementation of Windows on the Rainbow is so similar to that on the IBM PC that any generally available Windows instruction manual will serve as a guide. A description of Windows can be found in Nancy Andrews' Windows from Microsoft Press. To follow her account, you need to keep in mind that on the Rainbow Compose Character functions as ALT, and Control- Escape functions as Escape, the general purpose cancel command on the PC. Because Windows is an environment for running applications, the main questions are which ones it runs and how well? so I've been trying everything I could get my hands on. I've tried all of the desk-top applications included in the Windows retail package, a bunch of public domain demos and utilities, the font, bit map, and dialogue-box editors included with the Windows Software Development Kit, and two major commercial packages: Windows Draw and Pagemaker. Most run without a hitch. The reason that not all do is that the current implementation of Windows for the Rainbow is incomplete. Like MS-DOS, Windows comprises some code that's machine specific and some that's not. The machine specific code resides in device drivers for the computer's peripherals: keyboard, serial ports, mouse, sound generator, and so on. Of these, the communications port driver turns out to be inoperable -- it crashes the machine -- and the mouse driver has not been installed, so programs that perform serial communications or require a mouse won't work. Among the standard Windows desk-top applications, the terminal emulator doesn't run, nor does the print spooler, for reasons that I haven't yet figured out. And Pagemaker, which does run, won't actually do page layout because all the movement functions require a mouse. There are three more limitations: The first is speed. It's a commonplace by now that Windows runs slowly on 8088 machines, and the Rainbow is no exception. Programs like Pagemaker or Draw can sometimes take a minute or more to load and display a complex image, and some common operations in Draw and Paint, like drawing a bounding box, become tedious if you attempt them with the image displayed in actual rather than reduced scale. The second limitation is that the version of Windows running on the Rainbow, 1.03, was superceded last fall by version 2.0. The changes have been sufficient to prevent a couple of applications written expressly for 2.0 from running under 1.03. These are Windows Write 2.0 (earlier versions do run on the Rainbow) and Microsoft Excel. In other cases, the changes make access to the 2.0 applications' menus cumbersome. Third, and perhaps least significant, the screen drivers are monochrome; I don't have a color monitor, but I've been told that the screen display comes up as shade of blue on white. But if the limitations of the present version are real, its benefits are equally so. The screen and keyboard handling are excellent. And the printer implementation is, except for the spooler, complete. All the applications I've tried will print handsomely on the LA50 or LA75, Pagemaker included. I haven't tried hooking up a laser printer. That means that applications like Draw and Paint, for which the mouse is recommended but optional and which do not access the communications port, perform on the Rainbow precisely as they were designed. And how many Windows applications are like Draw and Paint? I've only tried a few, of course, but only Pagemaker broke the rule established in Microsoft's Windows Style Guide that every function be accessible to a machine that lacks a mouse. I suspect that, at this stage of the game, most Windows applications conform. There is hope, moreover, of lifting some, perhaps all, of the present version's limitations. The prospect of Suitable Solutions' 286 board means that Windows's sluggish performance on the Rainbow can soon be remedied. I'm told a Rainbow implementation of Windows 1.03 complete with mouse already exists. And from what I've learned about the innards of Windows and the policies of Microsoft regarding Windows-related development, I suspect we can have, if we want it, a completely functional and current version of Windows for general distribution, DEC's official posture of indifference notwithstanding. That would mean, I believe, a greatly extended useful life for the Rainbow. * * *