From jce at seasip.demon.co.uk  Wed Jan  2 13:06:47 2008
From: jce at seasip.demon.co.uk (John Elliott)
Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2008 21:06:47 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [GEM Development] Reconstructed GEM/4.0 driver source
Message-ID: <E1JAAnX-0001Sy-00@seasip.demon.co.uk>

  From the usual place, that is:

http://www.seasip.info/Gem/drivers.html

  you can now get reconstructed source for the seven drivers supplied with
Artline 2. For various reasons it doesn't assemble to an identical file, but
it does assemble to something which seems to work in the cursory tests I've
done.

  The machine-specific bits of a GEM/4.0 driver appear to be pretty much
identical to the corresponding files in GEM/3.1, so it should be possible to
backport the Genoa 800x600 driver (if anyone's got a Genoa SVGA card) or
forward-port earlier drivers like CGA.

-- 
John Elliott

From jce at seasip.demon.co.uk  Sat Jan  5 09:27:32 2008
From: jce at seasip.demon.co.uk (John Elliott)
Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 17:27:32 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [GEM Development] Reconstructed GEM/4.0 driver source
In-Reply-To: <E1JAAnX-0001Sy-00@seasip.demon.co.uk> from "John Elliott" at Jan
	02, 2008 09:06:47 
Message-ID: <E1JBCo0-0001TF-00@seasip.demon.co.uk>

A couple of days ago, I wrote:
>   The machine-specific bits of a GEM/4.0 driver appear to be pretty much
> identical to the corresponding files in GEM/3.1, so it should be possible to
> backport the Genoa 800x600 driver (if anyone's got a Genoa SVGA card) or
> forward-port earlier drivers like CGA.

  I have now done so. The FreeGEM driver page
<http://www.seasip.info/Gem/drivers.html> now includes a separate pack of
GEM/4 (ie, Artline II) drivers with FreeGEM enhancements - codepage
support and high-resolution timer support.

  The pack contains FreeGEM updates of the original seven drivers (VGA,
MCGA, EGA, Hercules, AT&T 6300, Genius, Genoa SVGA) plus forward ports of
the two 800x600x16 drivers (VESA and non-VESA).

  I've also included a port of the 1024x768x256-colour driver for fun, but
Artline doesn't really work with it. The colour gradient support doesn't
work properly on a display with more than four planes, and it has the usual
distressing tendency to run out of memory.

  I don't currently plan to forward-port any of the other FreeGEM drivers to
GEM 4.0, unless someone asks me to. About the only other ones which might be
useful would be EGA mono and the two ViewMAX multiple-resolution drivers.
Likewise, unless I ever come across a Genoa SVGA card, I don't plan to 
backport its driver to FreeGEM.

-- 
John Elliott

From eekee57 at fastmail.fm  Sat Jan  5 20:38:14 2008
From: eekee57 at fastmail.fm (Ethan Grammatikidis)
Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 04:38:14 +0000
Subject: [GEM Development] Trouble installing - broke at plah screen choice
Message-ID: <20080106043814.8a71d2cc.eekee57@fastmail.fm>

Hiyos. I tried to install freedos for the first time today. It went quite well until I got to the boot splash screen choice. I decided to pick option 2 - to choose which splash screen I wanted. Option 2 turns out to be broken, an infinite loop with bad arguments to the choice command. 

(I could not get out of it with ctrl-c nor break, incidentally. I'm running freedos under qemu 0.8.2)

Is there any way to pick up the install from where it left off?

From topcatdrc at yahoo.com  Sun Jan  6 00:38:43 2008
From: topcatdrc at yahoo.com (Thomas Clayton)
Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 00:38:43 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [GEM Development] Reconstructed GEM/4.0 driver source
In-Reply-To: <E1JBCo0-0001TF-00@seasip.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <605801.22003.qm@web33605.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

John,

Does this mean that I SHOULD 'keep an eye out' for a Genoa SVGA card?

(I've worked at (in the past) and (currently) have a friend who has an
"e-waste" (well not really, since it isn't "virtual") - an electronic
recycling - business.) 

The problem would be: there aren't too many ISA-based scrap systems
these days.

Tom Clayton

--- John Elliott <jce at seasip.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> A couple of days ago, I wrote:
> >   The machine-specific bits of a GEM/4.0 driver appear to be pretty
> much
> > identical to the corresponding files in GEM/3.1, so it should be
> possible to
> > backport the Genoa 800x600 driver (if anyone's got a Genoa SVGA
> card) or
> > forward-port earlier drivers like CGA.
> 
>   I have now done so. The FreeGEM driver page
> <http://www.seasip.info/Gem/drivers.html> now includes a separate
> pack of
> GEM/4 (ie, Artline II) drivers with FreeGEM enhancements - codepage
> support and high-resolution timer support.
> 
>   The pack contains FreeGEM updates of the original seven drivers
> (VGA,
> MCGA, EGA, Hercules, AT&T 6300, Genius, Genoa SVGA) plus forward
> ports of
> the two 800x600x16 drivers (VESA and non-VESA).
> 
>   I've also included a port of the 1024x768x256-colour driver for
> fun, but
> Artline doesn't really work with it. The colour gradient support
> doesn't
> work properly on a display with more than four planes, and it has the
> usual
> distressing tendency to run out of memory.
> 
>   I don't currently plan to forward-port any of the other FreeGEM
> drivers to
> GEM 4.0, unless someone asks me to. About the only other ones which
> might be
> useful would be EGA mono and the two ViewMAX multiple-resolution
> drivers.
> Likewise, unless I ever come across a Genoa SVGA card, I don't plan
> to 
> backport its driver to FreeGEM.
> 
> -- 
> John Elliott
> _______________________________________________
> gem-dev mailing list
> gem-dev at simpits.org
> http://www.simpits.org/mailman/listinfo/gem-dev
> 


From jce at seasip.demon.co.uk  Sun Jan  6 03:16:32 2008
From: jce at seasip.demon.co.uk (John Elliott)
Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 11:16:32 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [GEM Development] Reconstructed GEM/4.0 driver source
In-Reply-To: <605801.22003.qm@web33605.mail.mud.yahoo.com> from "Thomas
	Clayton" at Jan 06, 2008 12:38:43 
Message-ID: <E1JBTUW-00011G-00@seasip.demon.co.uk>

> 
> John,
> 
> Does this mean that I SHOULD 'keep an eye out' for a Genoa SVGA card?

  Nope. I really don't think it's worth the effort. We've got two perfectly
good 800x600 drivers already, which should work on most systems that people
are likely to have.

-- 
John Elliott

From shane at shaneland.co.uk  Mon Jan  7 02:20:36 2008
From: shane at shaneland.co.uk (Shane Martin Coughlan)
Date: Mon, 07 Jan 2008 11:20:36 +0100
Subject: [GEM Development] Trouble installing - broke at plah screen
	choice
In-Reply-To: <20080106043814.8a71d2cc.eekee57@fastmail.fm>
References: <20080106043814.8a71d2cc.eekee57@fastmail.fm>
Message-ID: <4781FCF4.7070009@shaneland.co.uk>

Ethan Grammatikidis wrote:
> Hiyos. I tried to install freedos for the first time today. It went quite well until I got to the boot splash screen choice. I decided to pick option 2 - to choose which splash screen I wanted. Option 2 turns out to be broken, an infinite loop with bad arguments to the choice command. 
> (I could not get out of it with ctrl-c nor break, incidentally. I'm running freedos under qemu 0.8.2)
> Is there any way to pick up the install from where it left off?

This is a mailing list for the graphical user interface called GEM.  We
don't offer support for FreeDOS.

I think the best next step for FreeDOS support would be to visit the
FreeDOS website at www.freedos.org

From eekee57 at fastmail.fm  Mon Jan  7 04:17:29 2008
From: eekee57 at fastmail.fm (Ethan Grammatikidis)
Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 12:17:29 +0000
Subject: [GEM Development] Trouble installing - broke at plah screen
 choice
In-Reply-To: <4781FCF4.7070009@shaneland.co.uk>
References: <20080106043814.8a71d2cc.eekee57@fastmail.fm>
	<4781FCF4.7070009@shaneland.co.uk>
Message-ID: <20080107121729.55e37b9c.eekee57@fastmail.fm>

On Mon, 07 Jan 2008 11:20:36 +0100
Shane Martin Coughlan <shane at shaneland.co.uk> wrote:

> Ethan Grammatikidis wrote:
> > Hiyos. I tried to install freedos for the first time today. It went
> > quite well until I got to the boot splash screen choice. I decided
> > to pick option 2 - to choose which splash screen I wanted. Option 2
> > turns out to be broken, an infinite loop with bad arguments to the
> > choice command. (I could not get out of it with ctrl-c nor break,
> > incidentally. I'm running freedos under qemu 0.8.2) Is there any
> > way to pick up the install from where it left off?
> 
> This is a mailing list for the graphical user interface called GEM.
> We don't offer support for FreeDOS.
> 
> I think the best next step for FreeDOS support would be to visit the
> FreeDOS website at www.freedos.org

Ack! My apologies, I'm suffering from a prolonged bout of insomnia at present.

From topcatdrc at yahoo.com  Mon Jan  7 10:39:51 2008
From: topcatdrc at yahoo.com (Thomas Clayton)
Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 10:39:51 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [GEM Development] Trouble installing - broke at plah screen
	choice
In-Reply-To: <20080106043814.8a71d2cc.eekee57@fastmail.fm>
Message-ID: <394593.25404.qm@web33604.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Ethan,

While I'd love to offer advice, I've never USED FreeDOS so ...
it would be better if you got advice from someone who KNOWs something
about FreeDOS !  ;-)

BTW, are you any relation to Damien G. of BBC News "fame"?

Thomas Clayton

--- Ethan Grammatikidis <eekee57 at fastmail.fm> wrote:

> Hiyos. I tried to install freedos for the first time today. It went
> quite well until I got to the boot splash screen choice. I decided to
> pick option 2 - to choose which splash screen I wanted. Option 2
> turns out to be broken, an infinite loop with bad arguments to the
> choice command. 
> 
> (I could not get out of it with ctrl-c nor break, incidentally. I'm
> running freedos under qemu 0.8.2)
> 
> Is there any way to pick up the install from where it left off?
> _______________________________________________
> gem-dev mailing list
> gem-dev at simpits.org
> http://www.simpits.org/mailman/listinfo/gem-dev
> 


From jce at seasip.demon.co.uk  Mon Jan  7 15:21:19 2008
From: jce at seasip.demon.co.uk (John Elliott)
Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 23:21:19 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [GEM Development] FreeGEM 3.x drivers updated again
Message-ID: <E1JC1HT-0001r2-00@seasip.demon.co.uk>

Changes since last FreeGEM driver release:

- The 256-colour VESA driver should now work on systems where the window
 granularity is less than 64k.

- The 256-colour drivers should support colour user-defined fill patterns.

- One new driver (in pack 2): VESA, 1024x768 in 16 colours. I've tested this
 on a Cirrus Logic CL-GD5436 card and an ATI Mach32 chipset; I remain 
 unconvinced that this mode is widely supported. It doesn't seem to work
 very well under Virtual PC, for instance.
 
-- 
John Elliott

From topcatdrc at yahoo.com  Tue Jan  8 13:21:03 2008
From: topcatdrc at yahoo.com (Thomas Clayton)
Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 13:21:03 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [GEM Development] FreeGEM 3.x drivers updated again
In-Reply-To: <E1JC1HT-0001r2-00@seasip.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <260020.12841.qm@web33605.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

John,

Do you HAVE copies of the CL-GD542x x=6,8,9 driver? 
Yeah, I know, I should JUST look at the webpage.
The point of question, though, is: I've got copies IF you NEED them.
They do 16 colors at 800x600 and 1024x768 (512KB VRAM required).

Tom Clayton

--- John Elliott <jce at seasip.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> Changes since last FreeGEM driver release:
> 
> - The 256-colour VESA driver should now work on systems where the
> window
>  granularity is less than 64k.
> 
> - The 256-colour drivers should support colour user-defined fill
> patterns.
> 
> - One new driver (in pack 2): VESA, 1024x768 in 16 colours. I've
> tested this
>  on a Cirrus Logic CL-GD5436 card and an ATI Mach32 chipset; I remain
> 
>  unconvinced that this mode is widely supported. It doesn't seem to
> work
>  very well under Virtual PC, for instance.
>  
> -- 
> John Elliott
> _______________________________________________
> gem-dev mailing list
> gem-dev at simpits.org
> http://www.simpits.org/mailman/listinfo/gem-dev
> 


From jce at seasip.demon.co.uk  Tue Jan  8 14:15:25 2008
From: jce at seasip.demon.co.uk (John Elliott)
Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 22:15:25 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [GEM Development] FreeGEM 3.x drivers updated again
In-Reply-To: <260020.12841.qm@web33605.mail.mud.yahoo.com> from "Thomas
	Clayton" at Jan 08, 2008 01:21:03 
Message-ID: <E1JCMjF-0001nU-00@seasip.demon.co.uk>

> Do you HAVE copies of the CL-GD542x x=6,8,9 driver? 
> Yeah, I know, I should JUST look at the webpage.
> The point of question, though, is: I've got copies IF you NEED them.
> They do 16 colors at 800x600 and 1024x768 (512KB VRAM required).

  I apparently have one copy of each: SDA600.VGA and SDA768.VGA. The
advantage of the VESA ones is that in theory they should work on any cards
that do 800x600x16 and 1024x768x16. In practice, this seems to be the case
for the 800x600 one but not the 1024x768 one.

-- 
John Elliott 

From jce at seasip.demon.co.uk  Tue Jan 15 14:32:58 2008
From: jce at seasip.demon.co.uk (John Elliott)
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 22:32:58 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [GEM Development] GEM/5.0 video driver disassembled
Message-ID: <E1JEuL4-0001hd-00@seasip.demon.co.uk>

  Just to round off the collection, I've disassembled the one and only GEM/5
video driver that I've got, and added that to
<http://www.seasip.info/Gem/drivers.html>. As with the GEM/4 drivers, any
areas of code that changed substantially just got a quick mechanical
disassembly.
  Unless any more GEM/5 drivers turn up, it'll be pretty tricky (with the
existing bits) to make GEM/5 versions of anything that doesn't work on the
EGA/VGA 16-colour principle.
  Heigh-ho, what to do now...

-- 
John Elliott

From jce at seasip.demon.co.uk  Sat Jan 19 16:50:55 2008
From: jce at seasip.demon.co.uk (John Elliott)
Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 00:50:55 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [GEM Development] GEM/5.0 video driver disassembled
In-Reply-To: <E1JEuL4-0001hd-00@seasip.demon.co.uk> from "John Elliott" at Jan
	15, 2008 10:32:58 
Message-ID: <E1JGOOl-0002pU-00@seasip.demon.co.uk>

I wrote:
>   Heigh-ho, what to do now...

  Well, I reorganised my driver download pages. There are now four pages:

* The main FreeGEM video drivers;
* The experimental set, compatible with GEM/4;
* An even more experimental set, compatible with GEM/5;
* Source for original DRI drivers.

  The GEM/4 set has 23 drivers:
- 11 of them stand a sporting chance of working properly with Artline.
-  9 of them aren't totally compatible with Artline, but work fine with
  other GEM programs.
- 13 of them are completely untested.

  The GEM/5 set has a mere 8 drivers - four VESA/VGA ones, and four EGA
ones. So, with a suitable graphics card, you can now run GEM/5 at 800x600 or
1024x768 (still only in 16 colours, though).

  Incidentally, there seems to be a bug in current releases of the
'universal' EGA/VGA driver (SDUNI9.VGA / SDUNI10.VGA / SDUNI11.BS). It works
fine in colour modes, but in mono modes the menus stay on the screen and
don't get removed. I shall look into this at some point.

-- 
John Elliott

From ben.jemmett at ukonline.co.uk  Sun Jan 20 05:13:28 2008
From: ben.jemmett at ukonline.co.uk (Ben A L Jemmett)
Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 13:13:28 +0000
Subject: [GEM Development] GEM/5.0 video driver disassembled
In-Reply-To: <E1JGOOl-0002pU-00@seasip.demon.co.uk>
References: <E1JGOOl-0002pU-00@seasip.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <1200834808.479348f868ae6@webmail.ukonline.net>

Quoting John Elliott <jce at seasip.demon.co.uk>:
>   Incidentally, there seems to be a bug in current releases of the
> 'universal' EGA/VGA driver (SDUNI9.VGA / SDUNI10.VGA / SDUNI11.BS). It works
> fine in colour modes, but in mono modes the menus stay on the screen and
> don't get removed. I shall look into this at some point.

I think I've seen this behaviour before somewhere...  *thinks*  Ah yes, the
Amstrad PC1512 driver when running on something that isn't a PC1512 (i.e.
640x200x2).  Perhaps a bug triggered if the driver reports 16 colours but only 2
work?

-- 
Regards,
Ben A L Jemmett.
http://flatpack.microwavepizza.co.uk/

----------------------------------------------
This mail sent through http://www.ukonline.net

From jce at seasip.demon.co.uk  Sun Jan 20 06:33:17 2008
From: jce at seasip.demon.co.uk (John Elliott)
Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 14:33:17 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: [GEM Development] GEM/5.0 video driver disassembled
In-Reply-To: <no.id> from "Ben A L Jemmett" at Jan 20, 2008 01:13:28 
Message-ID: <E1JGbEb-00017i-00@seasip.demon.co.uk>

> I think I've seen this behaviour before somewhere...  *thinks*  Ah yes,
> the Amstrad PC1512 driver when running on something that isn't a PC1512
> (i.e. 640x200x2).  Perhaps a bug triggered if the driver reports 16
> colours but only 2 work?

  Found it. I obviously missed copying some changes across when I brought
that feature in from ViewMAX. It was comparing against num_planes (ie, the
maximum number supported, which is 4) rather than against true_planes (ie,
the number actually in use).
  
  Anyway, fixed and re-uploaded in all three driver sets. 

-- 
John Elliott

From olivier.landemarre at utbm.fr  Mon Jan 21 03:39:47 2008
From: olivier.landemarre at utbm.fr (Olivier Landemarre)
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 12:39:47 +0100
Subject: [GEM Development] Video of a GEM 68K computer
In-Reply-To: <E1JGbEb-00017i-00@seasip.demon.co.uk>
References: <E1JGbEb-00017i-00@seasip.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <47948483.6070101@utbm.fr>

Hello

Here something not directly link to PC Gem, but link to GEM, because it 
is a 68K GEM

I have made a small divX video of my own system (I have write the AES 
part of it from scratch)
This is 640*480 TC video, it is readable by mplayer if there is some 
trouble to read it. It take 16Mo for near 10 minutes of video at 5 
frame/sec.

http://myaes.lutece.net/myaes2avi.zip

Sorry if you have no interest on it, I think it can interest some 
people, just for fun, on this mailing list.

Regards

Olivier