Date   : Thu, 14 Jan 1993 15:10:04 IST
From   : "Jacques J. Goldberg" <PHR00JG%TECHNION.bitnet@VM.TAU.AC.IL>
Subject: Re: INFO-CPM Digest V93 #8, FORTRAN for the DEC Rainbow.

Mark Tarka asks:
>DEC has retired all software for their first attempt at the PC market,
>the Rainbow 100.  The machine is designed to operate with either of two
>systems:  CP/M (I have ver. 2.0 (1.1)), or MS-DOS (I've got ver 3.0).
>I'd appreciate any lines leading to Fortran software and manuals for
>this unit.  Thanks for your time.  Mark.

    I have answered directly with more details, but more people than Mark
might want to know that:
-The DEC Rainbow has 2 processors, a Z80 which can run CP/M-80 code, and a
 8086 which can run either CP/M-86 or MSDOS.
-There exists a good Z80 Fortran compiler, FORTRAN-80 by Microsoft. Against
 a statement by Microsoft that they make/made it public, I will gladly send
 a copy, with the documentation which I have kept, limited  to operating
 instructions and machine dependencies. Remember: MEMORY(Z80) =< 64Kbytes !
-Any so-called PC compiler running on a PC or XT (that is, on 8086 and 8088
 processors) such as Microsoft's, Lahey's, Waterloo, and probably (not tested
 but very educated guess) the BCF compiler located in <MSDOS.FORTRAN> at
 SIMTEL20, will run on a Rainbow with two caveats: a) Lahey's require a 8087
 coprocessor even for compilation jobs even if the program does not use any
 real number, b) of course no graphics library made for the PC will work.
-Too many Rainbow owners have not had a chance to hear that very many packages
 made for the PC (XT, 8088, that is, not AT's 286/386/486, just in case you
 dream) will run flawless on the Rainbow. The border line is very easily
 defined, any package writing I/O thru BIOS calls will work, any package
 writing directly into the device will fail. In less cryptic language, games
 and packages "optimised" for speed I/O will normally fail, the rest will
 work. Many commercial packages (examples: KEDIT, REXX) have a documented or
 hidden option to enforce BIOS I/O to screen: with that option on, they do
 run on Rainbows, although (often very much) slower. Packages that come with
 customization options for various "terminals" will work on the Rainbow if
 installed as VT220 (memory mapped when option is available).
-A few examples of free software found on SIMTEL20 with which a science
 student can get a lot of work out of a Rainbow 100, under MSDOS: JOVE to
 edit texts, TEX to produce high quality documents, SMALL-C to write in C,
 COMPAS to write in Pascal, almost certainly BCF for Fortran. I would bet
 that there IS a data base and that there IS a spreadsheet that will work, one
 just needs a little bit of patience to try the packages until one finds the
 good one. Of course there is at Columbia a version of Kermit for the Rainbow,
 and the Rainbow is also in any case a VT100 terminal (at least VT220 in fact).
-What you really need to enjoy your Rainbow is a hard disk. With a bit of luck,
 the old Rainbow left over there might have 768k RAM, which could help convince
 those who don't believe that MSDOS does work beyond 640K  (up to 1 Mb, but
 IBM castrated again...). Still, without a hard disk, the Rainbow is frustra-
 ting.

 Jacques Goldberg, Prof. of Physics, Technion, Haifa, Israel