[GEM Development] DR operating systems

[Thomas Clayton]

While clearing out letters from last Dec. (when _I_ was busy moving), I found this one. 
I did a _little_ following-up

At http://www.digitalresearch.biz/ there was
"DR Flex/OS Now IBM 4690 Operating System" (links to)
 and found:
http://www-03.ibm.com/products/retail/products/software/4690/

They talk of 256MB and 1GB RAM and such in the PDF.. If X/GEM FlexOS is in ANY WAY x85-family Sw, then, indeed, it MUST be prot. mode!

John Elliot might find
http://www.abakion.de/grafik_treiber.htm
"SVGA - Treiber für FlexOS"
of interest. The preisliste (price list) asks for 297.50 Euros for one.

Hmmm.

Thomas Clayton


--- On Thu, 12/2/10, Ben A L Jemmett <ben at jemmett.me.uk> wrote:

> From: Ben A L Jemmett <ben at jemmett.me.uk>
> Subject: Re: [GEM Development] DR operating systems
> To: "'GEM Development'" <gem-dev at simpits.org>
> Date: Thursday, December 2, 2010, 8:46 AM
> [Let's see if this gets through this
> time -- after 14 years I've had to
> change my e-mail address, argh!]
> 
> >   GEM/XM is a version of GEM that can
> multitask DOS applications, that 
> > forked off from GEM proper somewhere between GEM/2 and
> GEM/3. XM/GEM I 
> > haven't seen, but there were vague rumours about
> versions of GEM that 
> > ran on UNIX or
> > OS/2 rather than DOS, and it's possible that refers to
> one of them.
> 
> XM/GEM doesn't ring any bells (the /XM suffix was used on
> several products
> -- to signify "Expanded Memory" perhaps? -- but I've never
> seen it used as a
> prefix).  However, there are references in the wild to
> X/GEM, which
> apparently ran under FlexOS.  I'm not sure how it
> differed from the GEM we
> know -- FlexOS was a protected-mode OS I think so maybe
> X/GEM supports
> marshalling between address spaces?  (Just a guess!)
> http://www.abakion.de/flexos.htm seems to describe
> FlexOS's lineage and
> mentions X/GEM as a subsystem.
> 
> A bit of digging turned up
> http://www.faqs.org/copyright/multiuser-dos-dr-net-system-builders-kit-relea
> se-212/ -- I'm not quite sure how to interpret it, but it
> lists "X/GEM for
> FlexOS, release 1.0" as a separate entity from "FlexOS 286"
> and "FlexOS
> 386".  Perhaps that means it was sold separately, or
> maybe just that it came
> with its own manual/disk set/etc.
> 
> http://www.abakion.de/Download/download.html has a
> screenshot of XBENCH -
> "X/GEM Benchmarks" -- my schoolboy German is too rusty to
> judge whether any
> of the links on that page lead to interesting information
> about X/GEM
> itself, but that should not pose much problem for Dr.
> Kasten!
> 
> One presumes that IBM don't include X/GEM in the current
> 4690 OS!  It would
> be highly amusing to be wrong, though.
> 
> Regards,
> Ben A L Jemmett.
> http://flatpack.microwavepizza.co.uk/