Re: Anyone have a working DEC Rainbow PC200B?

On Sun, 15 Mar 2009 13:25:34 UTC, "Richard B. Gilbert"
<rgilbert88@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

JCamCMKRNL wrote:
Hello old friends,

It's been a while since I have posted here, and I am back with another
Legacy Computer issue. This time it is not for a PDP-11. Now for
something a little more modern. A DEC Rainbow.

I have two boxes of old DEC Rainbow backup 5.25" floppies that I need
to get as much data off of as I can. Does anyone have any suggestions?
I'm not sure what density they were written in, but it looks like they
were written with something called an "IDRIVE", and no it is not like
an iPod.

Than you.
Jeff

Once upon a time, there was a PC DOS and/or Windows program that would
read Rainbow disks. I think it may have been able to write them as
well. I don't know where to find a copy now.

But only if you had a PC/AT. You need one of the 1.2MB 5.25" drives...as
that is an 80 track drive. Such drives weren't that popular - most were
40 track ones. And you had to be prepared to program the controller to
DD rather than HD mode.

Once that's done, it's easy to read the blocks off the disk, and take
time to unpick the (pretty simple) disk format...basically standard
MS-DOS, with some reserved sectors on the front to hold the Z80
firmware.

--
Bob Eager

.

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