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Last updated: 7 July 2014

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
• Trident's video drivers for GEM

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.
• 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

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John Elliott 17-10-2005