[Simh] Rainbow100

[Johnny Billquist]

Timothe gives a lot of good info here.

In addition, you also have the DEC GIGI, which I believe predates the 
Robin, and which I think also definitely would be classified as a "micro".

	Johnny

On 2017-07-20 18:06, Timothe Litt wrote:
> On 19-Jul-17 23:23, Bill Cunningham wrote:
>>     There's no simulator for DEC's first micro is there? Will there
>> ever be one?
>>
>> Bill
>>
>>
> That wouldn't be the Rainbow.
>
> There was the Harris/Intersil pdp-8 on a chip c.a 1975.
>
> The DEC/WD LSI11 c.a. 1976 followed.
>
> All these were in embedded systems.  The LSI-11 (and especially its
> follow-ons, the T/F/J11) were used in a number of DEC's storage and
> communications controllers, until ultimately replaced by VAXes.  (Yes,
> your VAX probably had more VAXes in the IO subsystem than you knew
> about.)  They were also very popular for third party embedded systems -
> from volume copiers to airport landing lights.
>
> If by 'micro', you mean general purpose consumer packaged Intel
> architecture machine, that would be the Robin (VT180), which is a Z80
> CPU with dual 5 1/4 inch floppies, as a plugin board for the VT100.
> CP/M.  Produced in the AD group, which Bob Glorioso managed at the
> time.  Released c.a. 1982.  The board had its origin as a model railroad
> controller created as a hobby project by an engineer in that group, and
> was brought in and adapted for the VT180 as a quick time-to-market
> product.  (I subsequently subsequently re-adapted the board for
> something completely different - and learned the history a few years later.)
>
> The VT103 used the same idea, but with an LSI-11 backplane and T11 -
> TU58 tapes & RT11.  But it was later, and not on the IA path.
>
> The Rainbow was the replacement for the VT180 (c.a. late 82/early 83),
> used RX50 diskettes and optionally, a st506 winchester drive.  It was
> part of the triplet of machines, which also included the Pro 350 (pdp11)
> and DECmate (PDP-8), that Ken Olsen pushed as the answer to the "cheap,
> poorly engineered" IBM PC.  Besides being over-designed for the market,
> all three suffered from being closed systems with hardware architectures
> different enough from the standards (IBM PC/QBus/Omibus) to disable
> commodity software.  Especially the Pro350, with its lobotomized P/OS
> operating system (RSX with a horrible GUI) and limited menu of
> application software.  (Eventually, RT was released, but too little, to
> late.)  The DECmate never pretended to be anything other than a word
> processor.  Ken's belief that quality would overcome price in this
> market turned out to be very wrong.  And locking out existing software
> made them niche products.
>
> Both the Rainbow and Pro got minor upgrades, then died.  The DECmate was
> the most successful of the three in that it did exactly what it set out
> to do; no more and no less.  It got larger winchester drives and some
> minor software updates, but basically kept chugging along until
> technology - Apple, WordPerfect (and eventually Word) - provided
> bitmapped fonts.  (But lost the gold-key UI in favor of the mouse...)
>
> I don't think there was any real volume for the PC devices until the
> DECstation IBM PC compatibles came along, which IIRC were
> undistinguished Tandy buy-outs.
>
> And yes, the Z80 is a superset of the the Intel 8080, so perhaps you can
> argue that it's not strictly IA.  But the Rainbow included one (you
> could run CP/M on it, and it served as an I/O controller for the 8088).
> And in any case, the VT180 fit the common definition of "micro" at the time.
>
> In any case, by no definition was the Rainbow "DEC's first micro".
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol