🚀 go-pugleaf

[ Roger Ivie ]

| DEC came out with a number of PCs in that timeframe that all used very
| similar boxes, but the insides were different. DECmate II was a PDP-8,
| Pro 350 was a PDP-11, and Rainbow was an MS-DOS box.

I'm certain somebody will correct me if I'm wrong (and my memory is admittedly
hazy on this point), but I believe that when the Rainbow first came out, it ran
only CP/M, and that MS-DOS wasn't available until people raised a fuss (and DEC
realized that they'd made a rather serious marketing blunder, by which time it
was too late).  Completely analogous, in fact, to what happened on the Pro/350,
with only P/OS available at first, and no RT-11 or UNIX.

It's really quite sad, since the DEC PCs were far better engineered than IBM's,
but DEC, entering the game late, would have had to do everything right to make
a go of it in the PC area, and instead they did nearly everything wrong.  Sigh.

By the way, I also believe that the original Rainbow had both an 8088 and a Z80,
so that you "could run either 16-bit or 8-bit CP/M", as they so proudly boasted
during that silly live-by-satellite, direct-from-Maynard product announcement at
whatever DECUS symposium it was (Spring 83?).  My choice of *two* CP/M options?
Whoopie.

Mark Bartelt                                                       416/978-5619
Canadian Institute for                                    mark@cita.toronto.edu
Theoretical Astrophysics                                  mark@cita.utoronto.ca

"Sheep not busy being shorn are busy frying"   -   Dylan, at a NZ lamb barbecue