OHICEH89@IRLEARN.BITNET (Sean Hickey) (11/15/89)
In Info-Atari16 digest #368 Greg Csullog says :- >Apparently DRI is going to release a multitasking GEM for '386 machines. >Atari ported GEM for 8088s to the 68000, can it port GEM OS/386 to the >68030 DRI already has a multitasking version of GEM ( GEM/XM ) that will even run (though very slowly ) on 8088 machines. It handles the actual multitasking quite effectively. It's doesn't take an ideal approach to the user interface Even though GEM programs can run in the background you can't have windows from more than one task on the screen at once. You must switch to the background task using the Desktop menu. Context switching is only carried out when certain GEM calls are used ( a bit like Desk accessories really ). I'm not sure if it multitasked DOS ( non-reentrant ) or if they used their own DOS-Plus/Concurrent DOS ( pretty like DOS except that they are re-entrant ) It will even dynamically swap programs in and out of memory as required. It was a bit of a flop as a product so hopefully this new 386 version will be much better, and that Atari or perhaps some 3rd party ( don't laugh - there is a third party implementation of GEM version 2.0 for the ST, by a Dutch compa ny I think ), will port it for the ST/TT. Padraig