OBRIEN%OBRIEN@VENUS.YCC.YALE.EDU ("James A. O'Brien 432-4382", 203) (07/31/89)
There have been some inquiries recently concerning running products such as Turbo C, etc., on the Rainbow under Code Blue. Suitable Solutions (1700 Wyatt Drive, Suite 12, Santa Clara, CA 95054), telephone number (408) 727-9090 has announced MS-DOS 3.1b for the Rainbow. This upgrade allows essentially all non-graphics and non-communications PC software to run on the Rainbow. Personally, I'm running the integrated development environments of both Turbo C 2.0 and Turbo Pascal 5.5. I've also tried Borland's Quattro spreadsheet and Fastback Plus from Fifth Generation. All of these run fine (of course, you can't do DMA with Fastback on the Rainbow - the hardware isn't there). What I hear is that it's rare now to find a program that WON'T run on the Rainbow. Others that have apparently been tested include QuickBASIC and QuickC. If you have Suitable Solutions' MS-DOS 3.1 and a support agreement, you'll get the upgrade gratis. Otherwise, the upgrade is (I believe, but check) $50 for owners of 3.1 or $125 for first-time buyers. They've also got a character generator ROM (don't know the price) to allow the Rainbow to display IBM characters (including the double-line characters often used in display formatting, arrowheads, etc.) I was beginning to entertain notions of getting rid of the Rainbow, since I was finding it hard to get by without all the tools I have on my machine (AT) at school. However, with the upgrade, I'm back in business, and extremely happy. Disclaimer: I have no connection with Suitable Solutions other than as an extremely satisfied customer (I have an IDrive, Turbow board, Clikclok and MS-DOS 3.1). I think they are to be encouraged strongly to continue their efforts, the most useful method being, in my humble opinion, buying stuff from them. ======================================================================== OBRIEN%OBRIEN@YALEVMS Jim O'Brien, Dept. of Chem. Engrg. OBRIEN%OBRIEN@VENUS.YCC.YALE.EDU Yale University OBRIEN@YALEVMS 2159 YS, New Haven CT 06520, U.S.A. OBRIEN@VENUS.YCC.YALE.EDU +1 203 432 4382 (days) ========================================================================