Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!PENNDRLS.BITNET!GTHEALL From: GTHEALL@PENNDRLS.BITNET (George A. Theall) Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec.micro Subject: New Software for the Rainbow Message-ID: Date: 26 Feb 89 13:43:00 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 40 In an earlier message Tom J Colley writes: >..., but I'd be real surprised if anyone has released software >for it in 4 or 5 years. It is not IBM compatible in the least. ... Whoa!! 4 or 5 years is taking things back aways. I'm no power user on the Rainbow, but last year I did buy a Rainbow-specific version of WordPerfect (v4.2) which at the time was the _current_ version. Suitable Solutions in Calif. came out with MS-DOS v3.1 for the Rainbow last August; in the fall the same company also began marketing a 286-board for the Rainbow (for around $600). Sometime in the summer or fall of 1988 another company came out with a terminal emulation package supporting Tek 4010 (I think) graphics devices. If I had a copy of Rainbow News I'd browse thru it for more examples of recent Rainbow-specific products. True, the number of new software releases for the Rainbow is tiny, but it has certainly not been dead for 4 or 5 years. There was even talk of porting MINIX to the Rainbow recently. As for compatibility, both the Rainbow and IBM PC run MS-DOS, which in itself is a limited form of compatibility. Some compilers, for example, only require this type of compatibility to function perfectly on the Rainbow even tho' it may not be Rainbow-specific. For other programs, it may be possible to run them with Code Blue, a $99 program which to a limited extent provides compatibility at the PC's BIOS level. For example, WordPerfect v5.0 will not be released for the Rainbow; but the IBM PC version works ok on the Rainbow under Code Blue. George +------------------------------------------+---------------------------+ | GTHEALL@PENNDRLS (BITNET) | Dept. of Economics | | GTHEALL@PENNDRLS.UPENN.EDU (INTERNET) | Univ. of Pennsylvania | | | 3718 Locust Walk /6297 | | (215) 898-6741 (AT+TNet) | Philadelphia, PA. 19104 | +------------------------------------------+---------------------------+ Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous. - Confucius