Talk:Rainbow Technologies

I think this page is important because Rainbow Technologies no longer exists and so knowledge of its role in the evolution of encryption technology and the Internet and information security industry may be lost if not recorded.

I cleaned up the entry so it doesn't sound like a sales brochure, but there is no sales or promotional agenda here. I happen to think Wikipedia pages that provide objective data about defunct companies are a particularly useful part of the knowledge base, something that distinguished Wikipedia from a traditional encyclopedia.

Stcobb (talk) 16:19, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Early Rainbow
Rainbow Technologies was started by Alan Jennings, Walter Straub, and an Okidata printer salesman Clark Prestia (this looks very much like him: http://www.hoodrivernews.com/obituaries/2015/jan/06/clark-prestia/). Rainbow was Clark's idea: To make the Okidata model 82 printer, print in color, via a customer add-on kit. (hence the name Rainbow)

A house was rented in Costa Mesa, where Clark (and an Epson printer salesman, who's name escapes me), would stay while in the area, and was the base for development equipment (a MicroStar 8085 based CP/M microcomputer with two double-sided, double density floppy disk drives, an 8048 in-circuit emulator, etc.) for initial firmware disassembly. This was begun by William (Bill) Jennings, Al's eldest son, moonlighting from Archive Corporation, later taken up by Scott Jennings, Al's Second oldest son, on hiatus from four years of hitch-hiking.

As the scope of the project manifest, doubts emerged as the the feasibility of the project, and a consultant, Rick Brownback (of EGApaint, and Colorix fame), was hired to assess the matter. Rick determined that the final product would likely be too complicated for end users to install, having Rainbow install would make the product unprofitable. By this time, Scott had fully disassembled the firmware, and had begun fixing bugs and adding features, and two firmware only products were released: OK-Writer, which used a larger font, and microstepping to produce "Near Letter Quality" print and full graphics... and PC-Writer, adding IBM-PC compatibility (the PC-XT had just been released).

Meanwhile, Rick Brownback was also consulting for CSPI (California Software Products Incorporated), which was shipping software to run mainframe software on the IBM-PC. (Al later commented that Rick was one of only two people he knew to have solved a Rubic's Cube without any aid or assistance)

This software was shipping to China and Brazil protected from running without a "keyboard dongle", a box that sat between the PC and it's keyboard, who's presence the software checked for. This dongle was being sold to CSPI (in OEM quantities) for $100 each, and somehow the company went bankrupt, leaving CSPI in the lurch. Rick mentioned this dilemma to Al, who then designed a dongle to sit on the IBM-PC printer port. (made possible by the newly available low power CMOS chips) Scott built the first prototype, and CPSI bought the idea, agreeing to fund the full development cost, including tooling, in exchange for the right to make their own, which they never did. Thus Rainbow Technologies entered the computer security field, and hired more sales strategists including Linda Dahl, from Apple (https://www.facebook.com/lynda.mail).

The first products were relatively simple, made from off-the-shelf CMOS shift registers, each version uniquely wired, and embedded (initially epoxy, later injection molding). Development never stopped, taking advantage of newly available technologies such as PALs, and eventually masking their own ASICs and beyond.

Software Dispatch
Yes, this is the 'Rainbow Technologies, Inc.' mentioned in the copyright of Apple Software Dispatch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ7AhZszatU?t=199 Henk Poley (talk) 17:34, 11 October 2019 (UTC)