> Has anybody done this before? Any pointers?
I'm very familiar with the RX50 on the Rainbow. I wrote the "copy protected
disk copier" for it in that bygone era. ARRRRR!!
The Rainbow ran several operating systems, CPM, CPM/86, MSDOS 2, and MSDOS 3.
The Rainbow had both a z80 cpu and an 8088 cpu with the lowest 2k ram shared
between the z80 and the 8088. The z80 controlled the floppy drive via a
WD 1793 chip.
I'd actually recommend trying to use kermit to get the data out via the
serial port first :-) There is a rainbow kermit out there.
I remember being able to transfer files between the Rainbow and the IBM PC
using a lower density single sided format - like 40 tracks. This was in
MSDOS world only and not CPM. I'd bet there are utilities on simtel20 that
would read a CPM format floppy in 40 track format. I formatted them on the
IBM PC in low density mode and then wrote data to them on the Rainbow.
There is also a version of DECNET for the Rainbow that works via the serial
port.
If you can find someone with a PDP-11 or a MicroVAX unix system somewhere
you might be able to just dd them.
I still have my Rainbow and I have to use an air blower to get rid of dust
in order to get the floppies to even read at all anymore. My apple ][
floppies still read solid with no air blower.
Good Luck!
Mark Hittinger
Earthlink
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