mel (03/10/83)
Here is an update of my experiences with the Rainbow 100, and a few technical tid-bits of info. DEC still has not released ANY technical information! I got the communications port working on the 8088 side by probing memory to find that there is a count of characters in the comm. port input queue at location 0:2B4B . You can peek at that location and use it turning non-zero to tell if a character has arrived. I got a simple terminal program going with just this. What a boon to be able to up/down load ASCII files, and switch from PC use to terminal use and back without the beast hanging up the phone. There is still no way to get at the communications port from the Z-80 side, so MODEM can't be used. I am trying to bring up YAM on the 8088. My floor stand came, and that definitely is the way to go -- it gets the noise of the fan off your desk, and keeps the blast of cold air out of your face. However, the cable from the monitor (4') is way too short to allow the monitor to be on the left side of your desk, with the unit on the right (you have to have the monitor on the left or middle, it's unusable on the right side of your desk, since the keyboard foot keeps slipping off the edge of the desk). There still are no suppliers of CP/M software on Rainbow disks. The local stores have to make arrangements with local gurus to do media conversion, and, of course, none of the really good programs know anything about the DEC'isms of the keyboard and display (and none can work the comm. port). I got the set of Digital Research CP/M-86 manuals ($40 from Priority One Electronics). They are super -- just exactly what DEC should have supplied with the unit (and at $250 for CP/M, what any customer should expect). After 2 months of daily use, I still hate the keyboard; it is awful!! The monitor is great, the disks fine (but with the 2K allocation, fill up very fast), and I have had no hardware or software failures at all. Computer Innovations C86 (uploaded from the VAX 8" reader) works just fine, and most UNIX code ports with little change. Mel Haas , houxm!mel