[GEM Development] The OpenGEM Interviews

[Peter Green]

Liam Proven wrote:

>> : Good grief! I never knew. However did you find that?
>>
>>   I stumbled over it by accident.
>
>
> Ahhh. Often the way. TFTI!

Another barked shin...

>
> I am often slightly surprised by how many ex-Strad people are still 
> knocking around & still in the business. It was actually quite a small 
> company & just a few people were behind whole ranges of stuff, and 
> what's more, they seem to retain their proprietorial feelings or 
> fondness for the kit. It's good to see.

I nearly bought Amstrads on a few occasions, and was given one once -- 
something with dual floppies and, IIRC, no hard drive (Weren't such 
Amstrads almost single-handedly responsible for hard cards?). 
Unfortunately I couldn't get it to run properly.

Here they were relatively cheap and the GEM interface was quite a step 
up from plain DOS. I have an idea that some were sold here with a 
different GUI,  but am not sure -- I saw one running in a computer store 
once, using a rather colourful but slightly clunky file manager, and 
said "That looks interesting..." but had to resume my journey and never 
got back to it.

Amstrad had been into consume electronics before computers came out, and 
one of their products was a quite innovative stereo amplifier. I had one 
until one of the speaker connexions came adrift when I moved the unit. 
Freed from an output load, it quickly converted itself from an amplifier 
into a box full of silicon and melted copper.

I sent copies of my GEM (2.1?) disks to one of the GEM sites around 7 
years ago, but I don't know whether I still have the full set, or even 
any of the disks.

I think that Alan Sugar deserves more credit than he got for bridging 
the gap between hobbyist projects and consumer products.

Peter