🚀 go-pugleaf

   In an earlier message Tom J Colley writes:
>..., but I'd be real surprised if anyone has released software
>for it in 4 or 5 years.  It is not IBM compatible in the least. ...

Whoa!! 4 or 5 years is taking things back aways. I'm no power user
on the Rainbow, but last year I did buy a Rainbow-specific version
of WordPerfect (v4.2) which at the time was the _current_ version.
Suitable Solutions in Calif. came out with MS-DOS v3.1 for the
Rainbow last August; in the fall the same company also began marketing
a 286-board for the Rainbow (for around $600). Sometime in the
summer or fall of 1988 another company came out with a terminal emulation
package supporting Tek 4010 (I think) graphics devices. If I had a
copy of Rainbow News I'd browse thru it for more examples of recent
Rainbow-specific products. True, the number of new software releases
for the Rainbow is tiny, but it has certainly not been dead for 4 or
5 years. There was even talk of porting MINIX to the Rainbow recently.

  As for compatibility, both the Rainbow and IBM PC run MS-DOS, which
in itself is a limited form of compatibility. Some compilers, for
example, only require this type of compatibility to function
perfectly on the Rainbow even tho' it may not be Rainbow-specific.
For other programs, it may be possible to run them with Code Blue,
a $99 program which to a limited extent provides compatibility at
the PC's BIOS level. For example, WordPerfect v5.0 will not be
released for the Rainbow; but the IBM PC version works ok on the
Rainbow under Code Blue.

George

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