Apricot GEM/1

One of the earliest releases of GEM was on the Apricot F1; the review in Personal Computer World compared prereleases of the F1 version and the PC version. These screenshots are of GEM 1.2 on the F1 (9 September 1985).

These screenshots have had their height doubled to compensate for the Apricot's 640x200 screen resolution.

The desktop looks pretty similar to GEM/1 on the PC. However, it shows in black and white even though the F1 is capable of colour; at this resolution, the F1 has only four colours (by default black, white, red and green) and the desktop is drawn in the fifth (black on systems with 4 colours or fewer; blue otherwise).

The PCDOS version of GEM/1 has a "Format disk..." on the 'File' menu; this runs the DOS FORMAT command on the selected drive. On the Apricot, this reads "Utilities..." and selecting it produces the message box shown above.

The utilities mentioned in the message are those shown in the file window on the first screen. This is CONFIG.APP, displaying serial port settings. For some reason both CONFIG.APP and GEMDISK.APP open a main window, despite the fact that it's never used for anything (all the functions bring up forms to enter data, like this serial port configuration screen).

Another screen from CONFIG.APP, this time from the screen setup.

This is GEMDISK.APP; here we see GEM proving that it is indeed running on a colour system. GEMDISK contains three functions - a formatter, a utility to copy whole discs, and and a utility to copy files from one disc to another with only one drive (this is a wrapper for SCOPY.EXE, also visible in the first screenshot).

F1 GEM contains an extra Desk Accessory - "Std/Alt Palette". The colours in the alternate palette are blue, yellow, red and black. The screenshots in Personal Computer World use this palette.

This is one of the screenshots from the Personal Computer World review. As you can see, it's very similar to the released version 1.2, but there are a few differences:

• The screen appears to be bigger - say 640x250 rather than 640x200. The F1 does support a 640x250 mode; possibly it can do 640x250 on a 50Hz monitor, but only 640x200 on a 60Hz monitor.
• The "close" button is an open square, rather than a big solid rectangle.
• The drive icons are on the left (as in Atari GEM) rather than on the right.
• The font used appears to have serifs.
• To delete files, you drag them to the "waste bin" rather than "trash"; and the icon of the bin is flat rather than pseudo-3D.
• GEM applications are .EXE files, not .APP files (the Output program is called OUTPUT.EXE, for example). Their icons aren't the ones that were finally used either.
• There are minor wording changes, such as a count of "files" rather than of "items".