[GEM Development] GEM List Active

[TopCatDRC]

First and foremost,receiving this message. means The List is /still/ in 
existence and functions. :-)

Hi All !

A year(+?) ago [April 2024, yep, definitely PLUS], Armand Colleye and I 
exchanged some off-list letters about DR-GEM Scan which he had a 
/Deustch/ copy of and sent me. So I finally had gotten A copy to examine.

In May, I started going through boxes in my storage unit (needing to 
down size) and found one, plus part of another, with my DR-GEM material 
and the other DR-DOS and their other Op. Sys.es. I found I'd made - 
decades ago - lists of the diskettes and often, serial numbers, not the 
actual 'products' (names) per say. I thought of sending this list-serv a 
copy of them. They're hand-written. I have scanned them. My memory says 
'attachments not allowed'. Is it correct?

Planning upon culling and/or discarding (mostly the latter). There was 
to be two to months ahead (May/June) time to sort thru it all. As it is, 
interruptions took place for months, about two weeks till Vintage 
Computer Fest- MidWest (https://www.vcfmw.org/) when, EITHER the 
Computer History Museum (https://computerhistory.org/) will take 'em OR 
(forgot other org.s name) OR they'll be DISCARDed.

Most appear to have an existence at bitsavers.org or The Internet 
Archive. The font 'products' are exceptions. Likely some other auxiliary 
items are exceptions, as well. (programming / language related)

Armand asked me, "Do you know who has GEM Pascal 1.72?".
Armand, I definitely looked-for it among my items and did not find any 
Pascal.

John and Gene, (one or both of you), had interest in actual early VGA 
cards. I do have a 'set' of those with various chip sets. Any specific 
one(s) still interest you? (All of them?) Have some driver diskettes for 
them (some where), too.



Sincerely,

Thomas Clayton


On 8/30/2025 6:02 PM, John Elliott wrote:
> Stumbled on this while looking for something else: a paragraph of news 
> from Popular Computing Weekly 1986-12-11:
>
> > DR predicts Gem on a chip
> >
> > Digital Research is hailing the arrival of the Intel 82786 chip next 
> spring as the saving of the PC standard. The IBM machine has 
> traditionally fared badly against the likes of the Apple Macintosh 
> because of its poor graphics handling, but the new chip, which DR says 
> will initially be available as an upgrade card for PCs and 
> compatibles, is set to change that.
> > The 82786 contains an internal graphic processor subsystem and a 
> display processor as well as a dynamic Ram video memory controller. DR 
> is launching Gem 786 to take partial advantage of the new chip by 
> running Gem faster, but the company predicts that graphic systems like 
> Gem will be built into the new chip in future.
> > This plus the new chip will allow PCs to run graphics systems 
> faster, and to use far higher resolution monitors for the likes of 
> design and desktop publishing applications.
>
> https://worldofspectrum.org/archive/magazines/popular-computing-weekly/50/5/1986/12/11#6 
>
>