GEM pagesIntel GEM main page
Last updated: 1 November 2008
What is GEM?
A graphical environment for the IBM PC and the Atari ST. PC GEM was a fairly widely used GUI until the release of Windows 3.0.
GEM has had various owners over the years, but in approximate order:
- Digital Research
- Novell
- Caldera (later known as SCO)
- Caldera Thin Clients (later known as Lineo)
- It probably then ended up with Devicelogics rather than Metrowerks, but I've seen no confirmation of this.
A few years back, when Caldera Thin Clients were the owners, they released source for GEM/3 and ViewMAX/3 under the GPL - see the Links section.
Information
- A comparison between GEM and ViewMAX.
- Screenshots of the GEM desktops.
- Discussion of the different GEM versions.
- Patching the driver files for different mouse types.
- A brief description of the software interrupts used by GEM (you can also find it in the Interrupt List, version 60 or later).
- A list of all GEM VDI calls.
- A list of all GEM AES calls.
- Definitions of structures used by the AES.
- Some file formats.
- How to draw a form that looks like the ones in ViewMAX.
- Definitions of the colours used by GEM
- Why GEM/1 doesn't work in VGA mode
Software
- Some software is stored at this site.
- You can download some alternative system fonts.
- All the GEM drivers I could find.
Links
- GEM open-source developer site
- The Atari archives can occasionally come up with information relevant to PC GEM. In particular, I recommend Professional GEM, a series of articles on GEM development. They're aimed at Atari GEM, but PC GEM is similar enough that nearly all the information comes across.
- Shaneland OpenGEM is a distro of Intel GEM that's probably the best choice to install on modern PCs.
- It may be possible to find drivers for Trident's video cards. The files are called UC51-DOS.EXE and UL61-1.EXE. They may show up in a Google search: UC51-DOS.EXE or UL61-1.EXE. Or the similarly-named files at mpoli.fi, or the archive at textfiles.com may be suitable.
- Google for GEMVP.ZIP for a GEM driver for Carrera cards.
- A mirror of the Gemworld site containing all sorts of GEM versions and programs, plus the otherwise-unavailable Artline and Artline II.
- Downloadable binaries of GEM applications (no source).
- David Given's DOS software archive has a few bits and pieces for GEM.
- Heinz Rath's pages contain a VESA 800x600 driver, the ViewMAX/3 desktop, and the start of a web browser for GEM.
- QuickMap is a program for the entry and manipulation of geographic data. It uses GEM drivers for display and printing; though it looks just like a normal GEM application, it has actually re-implemented most of GEM internally.
Lost Links
The following have vanished from the Web since this page was created. If anyone knows of a current page with them, let me know:
- Paradise 8514/A Plus drivers (8514drvr.exe) - formerly on Viglen's FTP site
John Elliott 17-10-2005