Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!penndrls.upenn.edu!GTHEALL
From: GTHEALL@penndrls.upenn.edu (George A. Theall)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec.micro
Subject: RE: Contaminated Cheese -- oops, I meant DEC PCs...
Message-ID: <8905251803.AA16500@remote.dccs.upenn.edu>
Date: 25 May 89 18:44:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 48

From: pilchuck!dataio!dbp@uunet.uu.net  (Dave Pellerin)
>   - Does MS-COBOL run on the DEC rainbow?

  I don't know, but most older compilers from Microsoft work fine
on the Rainbow. Why are you worried about this? Does your auntie
plan to develop software *on* the Rainbow, or merely *for* it?

>   - Are MS-COBOL applications developed on the IBM PC object code
>     compatible on the Rainbow?

  Once again, I don't know (boy, I'm pretty ignorant today :-) but an
educated guess is that it is. Do you know whether the code makes use of
any BIOS routines, or does it only use standard MS-DOS function calls?
If the latter, auntie's chances of making some $$$ improve tremendously!
(There may be a matter of which version of MS-DOS the client has; until
last year, the latest version available was v2.11; starting in August,
though, Suitable Solutions has been marketing and supporting v3.10 for
our machines!! Price for the newer version is <$100.)

>   - How do you get the object files from the IBM PC to the
>     Rainbow (remember, the Rainbow has brain-damaged disks)?
>     Will Kermit work?

  It's not as tough as you might think. First, have auntie ask the
client if he/she has an I-drive. This neat little gadget adds a 5.25"
PC-compatible drive to the Rainbow. If the client has one already,
auntie won't have to do any extra work; otherwise, there are still
some alternatives to take without resorting to Kermit. Does auntie
have a 1.2MB drive in her machine? If so, there's a device driver called
RX50 available on many bbs's which gives you full read/write access to
Rainbow floppies. Sure, your aunt will have to get a hold of a few of
these, but the client can probably supply them himself. All she would
need to do is install the device driver, reboot her AT, then copy the
files over onto the RX50's. Piece o' cake. A somewhat less reliable
alternative would be to format a PC disk single-sided, then copy the
files onto it (remember, only ~170K on each disk), then the client
would read from this diskette after typing MEDIACHK ON on his Rainbow.
This trick works on my machine when transfering from surrounding PCs,
but I've heard it doesn't work on all Rainbows.

George

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