[net.micro] DEC Rainbow questions

HAAR%RCSMPA%gmr.com@RELAY.CS.NET (RLH) (11/07/86)

First, a general request: please include your net address in the
text of any messages you post. Our mailer strips off most of the
header info before we see the mail, so I do not see the originator's
address on messages coming thru mail lists like INFO-MICRO. Please
give an ARAPnet address. I am on CSNET, but can easily get to ARPA-
style addresses. However BITNET and UUCP addressing schemes are
mysteries to me and many others.

now to the questions:

I have a newly acquired DEC Rainbow 100+ running MS-DOS 2.11.

What is a good source of public domain software for this? I have
Kermit, but would like to find utilities analogous to the good
PD software that I am used to in the 8-bit CP/M world. I am
particularly looking for UUDECODE, UUENCODE, ARC, and disk utility
programs. If these don't exist in PD form, are there good
commerical versions?

Is there anything like the SIMTEL20 CP/M archives for Rainbow/MS-DOS ?

Can you recommend good C and PASCAL compilers?

Is the VEDIT editor any good? I'd like a powerful, extensible editor
for program source on the order of DEC's TPU. Any suggestions?

Alan Vymetalik recently posted a UUENCODED ARC file of a desk-top utility
for Rainbow's, but I am having trouble with it. I cannot reach him
directly since he gave only a UUCP address. I can UUDECODE it on our
VAX/VMS host with no apparent problems (using the UUDECODE.PAS 10/15/86
version by Erik Olson). When I try to access the ARC file result, I get
errors messages saying the file is not in ARC format. This happens both
with a VMS utility called VMSSWEEP that handles both ARC and LBR files,
and with a CP/M ARC program. I have used both of these to un-arc a number
of ARC files from the CP/M world, so I believe they work. Alan, if
you are listening, where are you? Anyone else, can you suggest anything
else I might try?  I'd really like to get this running.

        Thanks for any help you can give,

        Bob Haar
        CSNET: HAAR@GMR
        ARPA:  HAAR%GMR@CSNET.RELAY
        PHONE: (313) 986-1467