[Simh] Rainbow100

[Johnny Billquist]

The earliest documents I've found for the GIGI are late 1980, but most 
are from around mid 1981.

Either way, mass storage sure is a sore point, but there were other 
examples of micros around that era with a built-in BASIC and no mass 
storage (or mass storage introduced at a later point in time), so it 
wasn't totally unique.

I would definitely classify it as a micro either way.

Storage hurts it, I don't see why it would exclude it from being called 
a micro. As for existing software, for me that would be totally 
irrelevant. That's a question of how much of an eco system got created 
around the computer. It don't change the computer itself.

   Johnny


On 2017-07-20 19:31, Timothe Litt wrote:
> Gigi was a follow-on to the VT125, which introduced ReGIS.
>
> Gigi was sold - and used - primarily as a graphics terminal, though it
> does have a BASIC interpreter.  It was used on the DECSYSTEM-20 and
> VAX.  There was some software support; Scribe had a driver for it.
>
> I don't recall any BASIC software sold for GiGi - which would be
> difficult, since GiGi has no mass storage - just two  RS232 ports; one
> for host comm and one for either a LA34 printer or tablet.  with 16KB of
> (D)RAM (plus screen memory) and  28K of ROM, there really wasn't much
> you could do with it beyond its intended use as a terminal.  It was
> thought that the EDU market might find a use for BASIC; but it wasn't
> much of a thought.
>
> CPU is an 8085 - less capable than the Z80, and not capable of running
> any general purpose software - no CP/M, MS/DOS, or anything other than
> the internal BASIC interpreter.
>
> Someone sufficiently motivated might have driven one of the audio
> cassette drives popular at the time (typically modem style FSK) off a
> serial port.  But you'd have had to be very motivated.  GiGi wasn't
> priced for the hobbyist.
>
> I don't believe it predates the Robin - it was in 1982 (quite the year
> for DEC PCish devices).
>
> Again, I wouldn't classify it as a general purpose micro due to the
> inability to load/save a program & the lack of software.
>
>
> On 20-Jul-17 12:17, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>> 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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>>
>
>
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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