🚀 go-pugleaf

    While others out there might want to confirm me on this, I
don't believe it is possible to read "standard" (= IBM PC?) floppies
with a Rainbow because of ***hardware*** limitations. That is,
the RX50 drives in a Rainbow can only read one side of a disk;
the "standard" 360K floppies are double-sided. No software program
will be able to read a double-sided disk unless the hardware supports
this.

    There are other possibilities, though. For example, if you're
willing to restrict yourself to single-sided PC floppies, you may
be able to read from/write to them with the Rainbow drives (just
be sure to turn MEDIACHK on and format the disks on a PC first).
I've done this using AT disks (use FORMAT /1 on the AT)
and heard it works on a PC, too. Of course, this halves the
available disk space, but it's cheap.

    There's also a IBM PC disk drive that can be added to your
Rainbow; it's called an I-Drive. As the name suggests, you
simply treat it as drive I, and access it as you would the
other Rainbow drives. It's available from a couple places that
sell Rainbow products. One such place is Suitable Solutions,
(408) 727-9090. Another is Rainbo-Works (209) 832-1001.

    For those who don't mind getting their hands dirty, it
is possible to modify the Rainbow BIOS and replace the RX50
drives with more common PC-type drives so that you gain
PC data compatibility without losing the ability to use
your Rainbow floppies.

George

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