DEC Rainbow 100

computer of

Mount Si (summitpost.org) With an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 visitors each year, Mount Si is arguably the most heavily climbed trail in the entire state of Washington. Mount Si is used by a wide variety of people- hikers, climbers, trad climbers, trail runners, people training to climb Rainier, and even mixed climbers in winter. It is not uncommon to see paragliders who have used Mount Si as a launching pad, either.

DEC desktops (retrotechnology.com) I acquired three DEC desktop computers during spring-summer of 2013. This page is a description of my initial work to test and operate them. I have many DEC computers which are listed on this linked Web page. I have in particular, a PDP-8/f which is largely operating, thanks to work done on that 8/f as of April 2013.

Rainbow 100 (Wikipedia) The Rainbow 100 is a microcomputer introduced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1982. This desktop unit had a monitor similar to the VT220 and a dual-CPU box with both 4 MHz Zilog Z80 and 4.81 MHz Intel 8088 CPUs. The Rainbow 100 was a triple-use machine: VT100 mode (industry standard terminal for interacting with DEC’s own VAX), 8-bit CP/M mode (using the Z80), and CP/M-86 or MS-DOS mode using the 8088. It ultimately failed to succeed in the marketplace which became dominated by the simpler IBM PC and its clones which established the industry standard as compatibility with CP/M became less important than IBM PC compatibility. Writer David Ahl called it a disastrous foray into the personal computer market. The Rainbow was launched along with the similarly packaged DEC Professional and DECmate II which were also not successful. The failure of DEC to gain a significant foothold in the high-volume PC market would be the beginning of the end of the computer hardware industry in New England, as nearly all computer companies located there were focused on minicomputers for large organizations, from DEC to Data General, Wang, Prime, Computervision, Honeywell, and Symbolics Inc..