26 May
1999
26 May
'99
10:15 a.m.
On Wed, 26 May 1999, Tony Duell wrote:
I just looked at one of mine and the major chip is a WD1010AL-00.
Likewise.
- don
<All my 'bows have 2 processors. An 8088 and a Z80. The Z80 runs the VT100
<emulation from ROM, etc, _but_ it's also possible to run user programs on
<it (CP/M on a rainbow will run CP/M80 or CP/M86 programs).
All rainbows had both that was the base configuration. The later B and B+
Sure. I was commenting about Tim's comment of a dedicated Z-80 for the
FDC. AFAIK there isn't. There is a Z80, but it can run user programs.
<I don't recall there being any processors
on the disk daughterboard (and
<I think I'd remember that), unlike, say, the Pro where there's a
<microcontroller between the system bus and the FDC chip.
The HD controller was 8x300, teh floppy was on the main board and relied
I thought it was a Western Digital chipset, but I can't find a board to
check at the moment. on the z80.
Formatting was possible on all models. Only that the early
The floppy controller in all my Rainbows is on a daughterboard plugged
into the main board. OS packages
didn't include the formatter(Pournelle got a first off the
line). For a long while Rainbows were popular for formatting rx50s.
That and people that had them really liked them.
The colour graphics card was pretty nice as well. It's got a 7220
graphics copro on it...
Allison
-tony