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DEC Rainbow questions

Because everyone is so madly confused about the keyboard connection.....

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It's RJ9. It's same connection found on the handset end of most telephones and on the VICmodem. You mention this to any old salt phone guy and he'll flip his lid because RJ9 technically never existed, but ignore that. Most of them went to pasture for a reason. ;)

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Personally if you wanted to go the composite route I'd build a proper break-out box and scavenge an RJ9 jack from somewhere.
 
Next and HoJoPo, thanks a million. I was thinking that I have completely lost my ability to describe what I am talking about.

HoJoPo, thanks very much for the pointer. I hadn't thought of looking at Amazon.

I remembered that someone had suggested that the jack was the same as a telephone handset, and I just finished trying it out. Yes the jack is the same as a telephone handset. Thanks for the great pictures, NeXt.

Anyway, I have ordered the thing from Amazon, and I already have a 15 pin D-type male-to-female cable that I can cut off the male end, so shortly I'll be able to do the experiment. A small hobby box is an excellent suggestion, and I have Crazy glue, and my wife has a few hot glue guns. This mini-project is coming together.

Thanks very much for all your help, guys!

smp
 
Can anyone point me to where I can find what the 7 diagnostic LEDs on the back of the Rainbow mean?

I have the Rainbow Specification and the Rainbow Technical Manual and the Rainbow Handbook. None of these documents describe what the various LED patterns mean, and the Technical Manual simply refers to the Rainbow User's Manual, which, of course, I do not have.

Thanks foe anything you may be able to provide.

smp
 
Steve,

I am a little late to the party, but I have made a generic monitor adapter for the rainbow, and I did just glue the phone handset jack into the side of a project box as Next suggested. There is a series of photos in this album: http://www.vcfed.org/forum/album.php?albumid=204&attachmentid=14603 . Somewhere there is a thread with more info. I made this little box to enable the dual monitor configuration that the advanced graphics option supports. Somewhere there is also a thread where I used an old plasma monitor as replacement for the VR241 (http://www.vcfed.org/forum/album.php?albumid=204&attachmentid=14600).

I am still in search of AutoCAD V2.6 for the rainbow that supports the dual monitor capability. Since my father worked for DEC, we actually had that setup at home. At some point that Rainbow and all its accessories went back to DEC, including the ACAD. I have since scrounged all the parts to recreate the Rainbow of my youth, but without the V2.6 ACAD. I only have the V2.18, as shown here: http://www.vcfed.org/forum/album.php?albumid=56&attachmentid=9197. The same image is on both monitors in this photo. In V2.6 however, one monitor has the graphics, and the other one the text.

Lou
 
Steve,
I am a little late to the party, but I have made a generic monitor adapter for the rainbow, and I did just glue the phone handset jack into the side of a project box as Next suggested. There is a series of photos in this album: http://www.vcfed.org/forum/album.php?albumid=204&attachmentid=14603 . Somewhere there is a thread with more info. I made this little box to enable the dual monitor configuration that the advanced graphics option supports. Somewhere there is also a thread where I used an old plasma monitor as replacement for the VR241 (http://www.vcfed.org/forum/album.php?albumid=204&attachmentid=14600).

Hi Lou! Thanks very much for chiming in. Your photos show a hobby box similar to what I have in mind. Thanks for letting me know that I'm on the right path with my thinking. It'll take some days for all the bits to arrive, but I'll post back with what my results are.

smp
 
The RJ9 jack is designed to slide into a cut notch in a plastic or metal housing. You should be able to just cut the right sized notch, and slide it right into place... then install the bottom plate over it, and it will be firmly held.
 
I am still in search of AutoCAD V2.6 for the rainbow that supports the dual monitor capability. Since my father worked for DEC, we actually had that setup at home. At some point that Rainbow and all its accessories went back to DEC, including the ACAD. I have since scrounged all the parts to recreate the Rainbow of my youth, but without the V2.6 ACAD. I only have the V2.18, as shown here: http://www.vcfed.org/forum/album.php?albumid=56&attachmentid=9197. The same image is on both monitors in this photo. In V2.6 however, one monitor has the graphics, and the other one the text.

Lou

You reminded me that I had a copy of AutoCAD for the Rainbow as well but alas, all I got was 2.00 and 2.18 as well. :(
 
Can anyone point me to where I can find what the 7 diagnostic LEDs on the back of the Rainbow mean?

I have the Rainbow Specification and the Rainbow Technical Manual and the Rainbow Handbook. None of these documents describe what the various LED patterns mean, and the Technical Manual simply refers to the Rainbow User's Manual, which, of course, I do not have.

Thanks foe anything you may be able to provide.

smp

I found that Appendix B of the Rainbow Technical Manual Addendum for PC-100A PC-100B and Rainbow 100+ has all the information on the Rainbow diagnostic LEDs. I see that my Rainbow is performing its self-test and finishing with the LED pattern indicating that no keyboard has been detected. That's a good sign, because I do not yet have my keyboard attached. So far, so good. I can't wait for the rest of my bits to arrive so I can get this system up and running!

smp
 
I received my 15 pin female-to-female cable today, and now everything is connected together and up and running. YAY!

I tried all three of my boot disks that I made back in post #11, and all of them don't work. BOO!

I made the disks on my system that I've made other boot disks on before. I used the settings for 10 sectors per track, 512 bytes per sector, and 80 tracks with single step. That all adds up to 400K (80x10x512), but each of the disks gives an error on sector 1, track 2.

Does anyone have any hints for making boot disks for the Rainbow?

Thanks!

smp
 
I tried all three of my boot disks that I made back in post #11, and all of them don't work. BOO!

I made the disks on my system that I've made other boot disks on before. I used the settings for 10 sectors per track, 512 bytes per sector, and 80 tracks with single step. That all adds up to 400K (80x10x512), but each of the disks gives an error on sector 1, track 2.

Does anyone have any hints for making boot disks for the Rainbow?

Thanks!

smp

My guess is that there may be a floppy drive RPM issue here. A 5.25" HD drive (1.2MB) will normally spin at 360 RPM in HD mode (500 kbit/sec data rate). To successfully write a DD disk in the same drive (at the standard MFM 250 kbit/sec data rate), the drive needs to be slowed down to 300 RPM. Usually this is achieved by pulling Pin 2 low to select the lower speed, though it typically depends on the drive model and the jumper settings on the drive.

The other alternative is to leave the drive spinning at 360 RPM, and write the data out to the drive at an increased data rate of 300 kbit/sec. ImageDisk has an option to do this.

You can put a CRO/DSO/frequency counter on Pin 8, to examine the drive RPM.
 
My guess is that there may be a floppy drive RPM issue here...

The thing that's confusing me is that I've used this system to create boot disks for both Osborne and Kaypro computers in the past. The floppy drive is my most trusted drive that I move into questionable systems when I need to be sure that I have a good drive when troubleshooting. It has worked on my IMSAI with Northstar controller and my Heatkit H8. So, I am not questioning the drive's ability to make a 300K floppy. I'm just confused about what went wrong for me in this situation.

smp
 
I am now thinking that I am being thwarted because my PC that I've used for creating boot disks has a floppy drive that can only read/write 40 tracks on one side of the disk.

I got a disk image from another source (thanks for the pointer SomeGuy!) and tried again using Dave Duffield's ImageDisk. I took care with the settings: 512K bytes per sector, 10 sectors per track, 80 tracks, 300K BPS, single step, and all of that.

The thing I noticed is that after something like 42 steps, my disk drive makes a different noise on every step, kind of metallic, perhaps like it's hitting the stop. If this is the case, my floppy disk drive is only capable of writing 40 tracks on one side of a floppy - and I need to write 80 tracks for a proper image.

If I am only writing half of the tracks on the disk, then that would be a very good reason that the Rainbow cannot read a disk that I create.

Sigh! If this is what's happening, I'll have to dig up another floppy disk drive in order to make my disk images. Can anyone suggest a good (and inexpensive) one?

Thanks for listening.

smp
 
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Steve,

Yes, you have identified your problem. You need a high density (1.2MB) 5-1/4" floppy drive on your PC to make the disks properly. I have done this (make RX50 floppies for the Rainbow) successfully and I did it with Imagedisk.

I think most will agree that the best 1.2MB floppy drive is the Teac FD-55GFR. DEC rebadged them as the RX33. There are plenty of others that will work. I think the drive in my Imagedisk machine is actually a Y-E Data (most of the ones in the IBM AT were from Y-E Data, ISTR.) However, I am always particularly on the lookout for the Teac.

Lou
 
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