[GEM Development] GEM List Active

[John Elliott]

I coded this a couple of months ago, but I think at the time the list 
wasn't operational:

The V6355D <https://www.seasip.info/VintagePC/v6355d.html> is the 
chipset used in the Olivetti Prodest PC1 and the ACV-1030 video card. 
It's basically CGA, but with a couple of interesting features:

* Palette registers, allowing the 16 CGA colours to be given arbitrary 
RGB values (when output is to a composite monitor).
* Hardware mouse pointer (though oddly it's always on a 320x200 grid 
even in 640x200 modes).

I've accordingly written a GEM driver to support these features: 
SDACV9.CGA. I don't have a suitable composite monitor to hand so haven't 
been able to test the colour reassignment, but the hardware pointer 
seems to work OK. You can find it in pack 3 at 
<https://www.seasip.info/Gem/drivers3.html>.

My interest tends to be more with cards that support odd resolutions or 
colour depths (and ideally have GEM drivers), and they tend to be pre-VGA.

-- 
John Elliott

Cyprian Konador wrote:
> nice to see the list active again
>
>
> Regards
> Cyprian
>
> On Sun, 31 Aug 2025 at 07:58, TopCatDRC <TopCatDRC at yahoo.com 
> <mailto:TopCatDRC at yahoo.com>> wrote:
>
>     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
>     <http://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
>
>     >
>     >
>
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>
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