The GEM Desktop is a GUI, mostly remembered from the Atari ST which used it as its default user interface. GEM bears a not accidental resemblance to the Macintosh desktop, with icons and a menubar at the top. Before Windows 3 became popular on DOS PCs, GEM was one of the many alternate DOS GUIs that were available. Whereas other DOS GUIs such as Norton Commander focused on presenting DOS concepts such as file copying and directory manipulation in a more friendly way, GEM went a bit further with fully windows applications that ran on the GEM desktop.

Inspired by a post on the Internet Tablet Talk forums, showing Windows 3.11 running in DOSBOX, I thought I'd have a go with something. I used to own an Atari ST and so GEM seemed a nice thing to try.

Making it work was very simple...

1. Install DOSBOX onto your Internet Tablet
2. Start it up and check it works (it's under 'Extras')
3. You now need a copy of GEM Desktop. What I did was go to this website and download the Mac DOSBOX archive (if you don't use a Mac, go for the Linux one instead, the Mac one comes as a .dmg disk image that you probably can't use on a non-Mac system)
4. Extract the archive, you'll find either a 'c' folder (on the Mac) or a 'c_drive' folder (Linux). This contains a DOS install and the GEM stuff. We will call this the 'gem folder'.
5. Copy the folder onto your N810/N800 (either over SSH, on a memory card, or using the USB cable)
6. Start DOSBOX

Configuring DOSBOX

Once DOSBOX is running it needs a bit of tweaking to make GEM work better. The first thing is to 'mount' your gem folder by typing in following to make a C: drive in your DOSBOX:

								mount c /path/to/gem_folder
	

My GEM folder is stored on /media/mmc2/c (that's the internal memory card) so I would type in

								mount c /media/mmc2/c
	

Now type 'c:' to change to the mounted C: drive we just made. Before we start GEM, we need to configure the screen size for something that will fit on our N810's screen. DOSBOX crashes if it cannot open a screen of the correct size, and at the moment GEM will attempt to make a 1024x768 screen which is bigger than our Nokia's 800x480 display.

1. At your C: prompt, type 'setup' and press Enter
2. A text-based configuration screen will appear. Choose option 1 (Change video driver)
3. Choose option 1 again for 640x480
4. Press Enter and then option 6 to exit to DOS

Starting GEM

Now, from your C: drive, just type gem and press enter. If all goes well, you should see a green screen and after a few moments, the GEM desktop with some windows on.

Explore and have fun :)

My Mouse Isn't Working!

Yes, if you run DOSBOX non-fullscreen, the mouse won't be very accurate at all. If you run DOSBOX fullscreen, slide the stylus across the screen into each corner and the mouse pointer should be OK then. Tapping the screen is OK, but double-taps sometimes take a few tries to be registered.