The Rainbow was a monthly magazine dedicated to the TRS-80 Color Computer, a home computer made by Tandy Corporation (now RadioShack). It was started by Lawrence C. Falk(commonly known as Lonnie Falk) and was published from July 1981 to May 1993 by Falk's company, Falsoft, which was based in Prospect, Kentucky. History The first issue of the magazine was two double-sided sheets containing text printed on a Radio Shack Line Printer VII printer. Falk photocopied 25 of the debut issue, and sold them for $1.00. After the first batch sold out, he made ten more copies. The magazine's "...articles, comments, tips, and program listings..." were good enough to attract advertisements from The Micro Works and JARB Software by the release of the third issue. JARB Software (and Joe Bennett in particular) became a contributor of many software and hardware articles in early issues of The Rainbow. Beginning with the first anniversary issue, the magazine was professionally typeset and had full color covers. The December 1982 issue was the first to use perfect binding. The magazine operations moved into a commercial space in early 1983 after having started in an extra room in Falk's home, then to this home's renovated basement. In 1983, The Rainbow started a series of CoCo conventions under the name Rainbowfest. Lonnie Falk was elected mayor of Prospect in November 1993 and was continued in office until his death in June 2006 at age 63 of a heart attack. Content The magazine featured articles, columns, reviews, tutorials, letters from readers, and advertisements. Many articles presented BASIC or assembly language program listings. Readers had to type these programs in by hand, unless they ordered a cassette or diskette containing these programs, through the Rainbow on Tape or Rainbow on Disk service. The BASIC programs were printed in a fixed font with 32 characters per line so that they would show up just as they did on the CoCo's standard 32×16 text screen. The magazine provided a small program called Rainbow Check Plus which helped users type in the listings accurately. The program would count the number and values of characters which the user typed in. A small box accompanying a program listing would serve as a checksum system. It was a two-column table that specified what checksum value was expected for a few chosen lines in the program. For example, after line 140, the checksum was expected to