OK - I've spent a few hours looking at this, and these are the results. (To the rest of the developers: This is an update to yesterdays email) It is possible to run GEM (3) using 'xdos'. It should be possible to run it using 'dos', but only if you have a supported graphics card. However, I've only been trying using 'xdos'. First things first: You'll want to be using one of the developer copies of DOSEMU. No version of DOSEMU has decent support for any 16 colour mode, but the developer versions have support for the 2 colour (monochrome) VGA mode. Feel free to try the 16 colour modes but you'll find the following: 1) incredibly slow screen update 2) Blatantly wrong colours (GEM is *not* supposed to be red ....) 3) Poor screen refresh resulting in badly drawn/covered/hidden items 4) Illegible fonts The monochrome VGA works perfectly. For those who don't have GEM installed you can find links at http://www.deltasoft.com/. I found I couldn't use any of the installable versions but I did work out a way to install the disk images without having to make a set of floppies. This method requires a "real" version of DOS. It cannot be achieved using the supplied copy of DOS/C. This is how I installed GEM (using 'xdos'): 1) Copy all the disk images to a single directory, eg 'gem__system' in /tmp. The name of this directory *must* be 11 characters long. 2) Change all of the volume labels in GEMSETUP.MSG to the name from 1) (Search for HVOL_PTR in the file) 3) Start DOSEMU & map directory in 1) as a: (eg 'lredir a: linux\fs\tmp\gem__system') 4) Run gemsetup.exe from a: 5) Select 'IBM VGA Monochrome (640x480) or Compatible' 6) Select 'Bus Mouse (Requires file MOUSE.COM)' 7) Select 'SAVE AND EXIT FROM GEM SETUP' 8) Continue to the end of the installation 9) Upon completion run 'gem.bat' from root directory of your installation drive. [1) & 2) are necessary because GEMSETUP uses the disk labels to check if it has the correct disk] Then you should be able install any other applications you want. For most of these you can probably just copy all the disk images to a single directory and 'lredir' this directory as a: drive. (Most GEM applications expect to be being installed from floppy) If you are prompted for another disk just continue. I have installed (and tried) First Word Plus and GEM Publisher -- both appear to work fine. I haven't tried printing yet. The version of First Word Plus that I tried (V2) wanted it install GEM Paint but didn't include the disks. Doesn't appear to be a problem yet. For reference, I've tried to get 'Artline 2' working (it comes with a version of Gem/4). However, it won't run under DOSEMU. (It just terminates DOSEMU with an exit value of 2.) I've also run ViewMax (3?) but haven't yet remembered enough of my DR-DOS to be able to persuade it to read the INI file, so it insists on using the VGA-16 mode. Apart from that its nice to have GEM back -- I last had GEM back in '92 when I ran it under EGA. ViewMAX was more recent -- Somewhere I still have my original DR-DOS 4 disks. Alistair PS. For those desperate to use a higher resolution then the trident drivers listed on John Elliott's WWW pages (http://www.seasip.demon.co.uk/Gem/) work with xdos, but, because they use 16-colour mode you'll have the same problems outlined above) PPS. John (and everyone until he fixes it 8-) - trident have lowercased their URL.
