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CED in the History of Media Technology

The DEC Rainbow 100 was introduced in May 1982 and was one of the first dual processor machines on the market. The CP/M operating system had been designed around the Zilog Z80 processor, while DOS used the Intel 8088. The DEC Rainbow had both of these processors and could boot in either operating system. The system could also boot as the regular VT100 terminal that Digital Equipment Corporation was famous for. The system used proprietary floppy disks and a dual disk assembly that were rather unique in design. To save space there is a single drive and head assembly which is shared by both drive slots. Disks in the upper slot were inserted upside down relative to the lower slot. The disks had orange arrows that were lined up with the orange stripes on the drive slots.