[GEM Development] Update to SETTINGS.APP

[Ben A L Jemmett]

On Tue, September 13, 2011 8:37 pm, John Elliott wrote:
> And here's the other little project I've been working on: a driver for
> the Hercules InColor card, because that's the only way you'll get a colour
> display higher than 640x200 resolution out of the Amstrad PC1512.
>
> <http://www.seasip.info/AmstradXT/pc1512hic.html>

Nice work, sir!  Always liked the idea of the Hercules InColor; when I had
a machine with an HGA card GEM looked pin-sharp on it.  (And wow, I've
never seen an SD model 'in the flesh', would've expected a beige blanking
plate on the left similar to the Winchester front panels I've seen on HD
models.)

Have been playing with my two Amstrads recently; the PC1512DD that
introduced me to computing and a PC1640HD30 I picked up later.  Alas the
floppy drive in the latter is dead and the hard drive was on its last legs
-- I just about managed to scrape some files off onto a handy NetWare
server but after GEM crashed hard during startup I had to kill the power. 
Non-self-parking heads are a bit of a drag...

At least both drives in the 1512 work, especially after a dose of head
cleaner; had a bit of a play with GEM for nostalgia's sake, but then the
machine started acting very weirdly with Lotus 1-2-3 bombing to DOS a few
seconds after starting and Infocom's Cornerstone going from "working fine"
to "crashing during database exports" to "totally failing to start".  I
idly suspect the RAM (Memtest86 is misnamed, it needs a 386!), might
reseat the chips at some point but for now they're both back in the garage
with the VAX and the Alphas and the AS/400 making them look a little
quaint.

Aaanyway...  Out of interest, does your InColor-equipped 1512 make the
interesting chirping noises that the stock one does when updating the
screen?  I never managed to track down whether it was coming from the
video circuitry or suchlike in the System Unit, or something in the
monitor.

-- balj.