Got a Rainbow 100 and ...

Alan Perry aperry at snowmoose.com
Sun Nov 11 00:47:40 CST 2018


Today I picked up a Rainbow 100. The seller bought it new for a specific 
need and he says that it had been sitting in his barn since '84. It 
looks like it was a dry barn because things look pretty clean for the 
most part aside from a thick layer of dust on everything.

What I got was the system unit, a VR201 monitor, a keyboard, a vertical 
deskside stand for the system unit, and a LQP02 daisy wheel printer. I 
also got the MS-DOS and CP/M doc and software slip cover boxes. The CP/M 
disk box is still sealed and the CP/M docs are still in shrink wrap. The 
specific need that the seller bought it for involved MS-DOS, not CP/M.

I last saw a Rainbow 100 in college around the time that the seller 
stopped using this system, so I am getting familiar with it now. I 
haven't powered anything on yet.

Problems so far -

1. The VR201 monitor is leaking a brown fluid. Doing a little searching, 
I found some stuff posted here a couple years ago about it being common 
for them to leak PVA compound, so I am presuming what is what I am 
seeing. Right now I am looking for something that describes how to open 
the case up to clean the stuff up. If someone can give me some pointers 
to some docs/write-ups and save me some time, that would be great.

2. The belt that moves the print head is dried out and looks like, if 
the motor put any load on the belt, it will fail. Is any kind of 
replacement available?

Thanks for any help that can be provided.

alan



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