This was the first "real" computer I ever owned. In many ways it salvaged my college career. I was at a small campus of the State University of New York that had gained a reputation as having a good Computer and Information Sciences program. By the time I enrolled they were flooded with CIS students. They had an aging Burroughs mainframe, and way, way too few terminals. Rather than having an organized process for reserving terminal time, it was basically a free-for-all. Students either had to wait for hours, or try back over and over and over again throughout the course of a day. I was unwilling to put up with this kind of bullshit. Consequently, I never got on the computer, I never got my projects done, and I was in grave danger of failing out of the CIS program.

Then one year the administration announced that they had selected the DEC Rainbow as the official personal computer for the CIS department. They would be sold and serviced at the campus store, and students could turn in their assignments on floppy disk. I was saved! My parents bought me one, and my academic performance immediately skyrocketed. I spent hours and hours working on programming problems, and I loved every minute of it. Even over the summer vacation I would spend most of my time at my Rainbow programming games or other projects of personal interest.

Unfortunately the Rainbows were not known for reliability or longevity. Some time after graduation the mother board failed and it would no longer boot up. The Rainbow was not PC-compatible, so I couldn't justify the expense to get it fixed again. But it holds a special place in my heart, and it played a major role in my development as an information technology professional.

The unit pictured above is the exact same one I used in college. A couple years back I got an email from a guy in Seattle who said he had an old Rainbow in storage. It was rigged up in the case that set it upright like a tower. He said he'd give it to me, plus lots of extras, if all I did was pay for the packaging and shipping. I was stoked! But when I got the bill it came to $350! It was cool to have a working Rainbow again, but it wasn't worth nearly that much money to me.