rl1b+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Robert A. Locke) (10/22/87)
You can count me in too. I also have a Rainbow that I use to do consulting of the database variety for various people. I still believe that the Rainbow was the best damn engineered machine in its time. I am not extremely impressed with the VAXmate nor am I enthused about DEC's killing of certain projects for my machine. Namely the Network Integration Kit and MS-DOS 3.1. I really didn't care whether or not I got MS-Windows but those other two could have been valuable to me. I have seen a prototype of MS-DOS 3.1 and think DEC should just release the thing with minimal support. I have heard that many people are using it with no problems. Well, enough of that. I am fairly knowledgable about the strengths and weaknesses of my machine and if I don't know the necessary information, I can usually find it from somebody. My machine is your basic 100B with full memory, graphics option, 20meg hard disk, both mono and color monitors (the color is not DEC's though I should have gotten DEC's but that's another story), an LA-50 (though I should probably get an LA75, can anyone believe that DEC is still charging the same price for the LA50 and 75??), and an I-Drive. The I-Drive is a 360K floppy drive that really reads and writes IBM double-sided floppies. Well, that's enough about me. As to a digest. I don't think this news group has one. Seeing as I'm the one currently maintaining the list (and not knowing much more about how this stuff works other than that adds and delete requests keep coming to me along with the mail yelling and screaming about networks being down, etc.), I would probably be willing to do a digest. I also like the idea of some sort of link between us and the active Fido Rainbow Echomail. I don't even know at this point if I'm supposed to be moderating this stuff or if I just maintain the list. The whole thing got dropped in my lap a while ago.... So anyways. I guess since people are looking for increased volume etc on here, I should go get some questions answered about my role.... Well, happy Rainbow hacking and if anyone knows anything about what I'm supposed to be doing please send me mail. I got a couple of addresses, all of which should be reachable: RL1B@ANDREW.CMU.EDU Y615RL1B@CMCCVB.Bitnet Rob Locke FidoNode 1,129/15 or you can call my answering machine and me at (412) 621-6544 Also, feel free to contact any of the above if you need help with a Rainbow. I've seen most of the possible Rainbow problems in this world..... 'Til next time. --Rob Locke
V2002A@TEMPLEVM.BITNET (10/23/87)
Hi,
Although the Health Sciences Center here at Temple U. has been
taken over by AT&T, Macs and Zeniths, I'm still supporting a user
with a dental patient recall system running under cp/m on her
rainbow. I developed the system with Dbase II.
I've noticed that the rainbows VT100 built in emulator fails
with FMS-11 and DEC-MAIL if you set it to 8 bits/no parity but it
works fine on 7 bits/even parity. (A real VT100 works fine with 8/N.)
Any answers?
Also in response to Sergiu Hart...
_______________________________________________________________
>Just adding my vote to any initiative to do something for us Rainbow
>users! In particular, since I can hardly phone the BBS in the U.S. ...
>
>SO, any posting of useful programs will be really useful! (How about
>the new version of History to start with ?). I guess most people
>have uuencode and then arc, so there should be no problem.
>
> Sergiu Hart
> ARPA: hart%taurus.bitnet@wiscvm.wisc.edu
________________________________________________________________
Is the Hitchhiker BBS linked into Arpa/uucp or Bitnet? I know
that Chinet,M-net and Pacsbbs are. If so then internet users overseas
could request files directly.
Andy Wing V2002A%TEMPLEVM.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU
{your,favorite,link}!psuvax1!templevm.bitnet!v2002aAKK9180@RITVAX.BITNET ("I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For...") (03/05/89)
Hey... I just got back from vacation and WOW... 20 new Rainbow
conference mail messages (or there abouts)... all this arguing and I
missed it! Any ways... somebody said something about a mouse I bel-
ieve. Well, I have a $49 Tandy Microsoft compatible mouse on my Rainbow
that works perfectly with MS Windows... so mice aren't the problem. I
agree with the fact that the Rainbow is an excellent machine. It's no
longer state of the art... but I think that there are still plenty of
reasons NOT to trash it. I'm capable of doing anything and everything I
have to on it! [Granted, that's not much lately...] The notion that it
is a dead machine is definitely wrong. With Suitable Sulitions new
board and Windows 2.1 (I only have an old beta version discussed a while
ago in Rainbow Echomail) there is still hope for this great machine. From
what I heard, Suitable Solutions had a Rainbow w/ the 286 board running
Windows at DEXPO.
Also... for those who are interested in some Rainbow history and
why it's not the IBM PC of today... I was reading an interesting article
in ComputerWorld magazine. DEC passed up LOTS of chances in the industry.
One of them was VisiCalc. The author originally offered to write it for
DEC on the Rainbow (or something to that effect) but DEC wasn't interested
and he went to IBM. VisiCalc was a big reason that a lot of people got
IBM's in the start... it could have been the 'bow...
Personally, I'm doing just fine using my good as new (never had a
single problem) Rainbow 100+ w/ 20 meg HD, 704K, graphics and color monitor.
I don't think I could switch to an IBM. The 'bow has lots of advantages
(many of which are outlined in an earlier IRUG issue). But that's just my
opinion...
Alok Kapoor
AKK9180@RITVAX