MARSDEN@ecs.umass.edu (Ben Marsden) (09/23/89)
Hi to all! I'd like to ask for some Rainbow help. But as this is my first post to this group, please first let me thank all those who have submitted much useful information, and donated their efforts, to this group and the Rainbow. I've been given a 100B since I now have space, but no funds (new house :-). It has a 5mb hard disk (oh well), and a graphics board. I've upgraded memory to max (896), and bought MS/DOS 3.10b and Code Blue from S.S. -- thanks to info from this group. (I also have the IBM character ROM, but haven't installed it yet.) And I have an LA50 printer. I'm writing my own graphics packages (for fun) on a VAX cluster from the ground up, which includes device drivers (ReGIS & QMS now, hope to add other drivers later). I'd like to download them and run them on my RB too. I see no problem with the LA50, but being fairly pc ignorant, am curious about accessing RB screen graphics. I need basic tools: access to pixels, access to a few vector graphics routines if they exist, and access to some locator device (crosshairs moveable with the arrow keys, I'd guess). The documentation I got (as I recall) included something that runs under CP/M, but I don't want to run CP/M for several reasons. I've written my programs in Pascal, but plan to convert them to C as well. (I have the Mark Williams C compiler which runs under CP/M also, but would prefer only to use it as a last resort.) (So finally) my questions: -- How do I access the RB graphics capabilities under MS/DOS? (I've done some assembly language (6502? *old* anyway!) programming, so am rusty, but not fearful, if its required -- except I have no RB assembly language documen- tation either.) -- Am I better off getting Turbo Pascal (4.0) or Turbo C (2.0) for this? (I'll probably do most of my editing using SEDT so mostly want compiler and debugging capabilities.) I have no experience with any Turbo products. -- I've seen mentioned in this group something called "Poly-ReGIS" for the Rainbow. What is this? How can I get it? And how much will it cost?? Other related questions: -- I currently use LCTerm (and the built-in vt100 emulator) to dial in to work from home, but believe I've seen mentioned VT240 terminal emulators for the RB. Where might I find such an animal? -- And finally, rumor has it that Autocad was originally developed on a Rainbow. Does anyone know if there is any truth to this? And if so, are there any old PD versions of it kicking around? Again, my thanks to George, Alan, Rob, and all the others who've contributed (unkowingly!) to getting my own efforts off the ground. I won't be writing anything like SCRAM anytime soon, but I hope someday I'll have something worth contributing in return! -- Ben -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ben Marsden Engineering Computer Services internet: marsden@ecs.umass.edu 100 Marcus Hall / UMass BITNet : marsden@umaecs Amherst, MA 01003