Exploring A 1988 Atari PC & The GEM Desktop

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Жыл бұрын

Part 1: Jack Tramiel vs. IBM - The Atari PC Story: • Jack Tramiel vs. IBM -...
At CES 1987, two years after the Atari ST, Jack Tramiel's Atari unveiled their 8088 powered turbo XT PC range. In this episode I explore the Atari PC3 and check out GEM, the original desktop environment!
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#atari #retrogaming #vintagecomputing

Пікірлер: 77

@vwestlife Жыл бұрын

I bet after a low-level format, usually accessed by typing g=c800:5 in DEBUG, that hard drive will work fine. And yes, Blockout is intended to make that high-pitched noise -- it's supposed to represent light reflecting off of the logo, like in TV commercials and cartoons where something is so clean and reflective that it sparkles audibly.

@jscollett Жыл бұрын

This pc just shows so well how computers were in the 80s. GUIs were all over the place. Users making their own menus in DOS to show how awesome they could be to their friends. It was fun if someone got a new computer to see what kind of software it came with and how it was different than their friends. Excellent video dude!

@martinsmith251 Жыл бұрын

I was more a PCTools bloke rather than the Norton flavour. Spent a lot of time on Blockout. Nostalgia in bucket-loads. {park}

@erinwiebe7026 Жыл бұрын

This really takes me back. I had an Atari PC1 with the same PCM124 monitor in 1988. I later bought an external 3.5" floppy drive for it and I remember spending so many hours playing King's Quest IV in EGA on that amber monitor. I'd also spend many late nights talking to friends on local BBS's on my PC1. I still have my Telix & Telemate 5 1/2" floppies! The GEM desktop/write/paint apps were fun and I remember playing blockout too. It was one of the few high res EGA games I had, and I loved how crisp & sharp it looked on the PCM124 too.

@VincentGroenewold Жыл бұрын

Gem, before the lawsuits, looks very good actually! I never was interested in PC's in the slightest (until about 1998), but if I had seen this I might have..

@kravens001 Жыл бұрын

Most Dutch name ever. 👍

@thorstenczub6576 Жыл бұрын

Gem on atari was imo better then windows

@davidchait6010 Жыл бұрын

I actually had Gem back in the 80s, it worked fine.

@IntoTheVerticalBlank Жыл бұрын

Awesome job, Rees. That Atari PC124 monitor is really cool because it can display pretty much any Atari PC resolution, even EGA abd MDA in Amber - Atari did a good job with this, if only they could have got big box USA retailers to carry it. Possibly if they made an all in one Mac Style with GEM

@GarthBeagle Жыл бұрын

XTIDE is so much more quiet, but we miss all those wonderful loud nostalgic HDD sounds 😄

@JLsoft Жыл бұрын

3:50 - "Simple Pleasures" was just a shareware Solitaire (cards) collection. :)

@MotownBatman Жыл бұрын

BATTLE CHESS! I loved BC, My mom Xeroxed a copy of the manual at her office and brought a copy home for my Packard Bell 80286 KEEN1 was my first game, but this was one of the next

@BollingHolt Жыл бұрын

Very cool! I loved GEM Desktop. My first PC clone was (rare for here in the United States) was an Amstrad PC1512DD. Upgraded RAM to 640K, added hard card, used the heck out of that system. It came with MS-DOS and DR-DOS with GEM Desktop. I loved GEM desktop. I wish I still had that machine :(

@MatthewWaltonWalton Жыл бұрын

That was mine too! GEM was great, especially when I found out that BASIC-2 had a turtle graphics system (although it defaulted to working in radians for some reason)

@BollingHolt Жыл бұрын

@@MatthewWaltonWalton Too cool! What a coincidence!

@ronnyb5890 Жыл бұрын

i owned an atari 1040ST,for its time a great peice of tech,and surely for music production as it was the only system with onboard midi in/out,i also remember that akward cubasis 12 track thing 😁 as cubase 24 PRO was too expensive i also had a spectrum 48 and a 462 PC later on

@sonic2000gr Жыл бұрын

The Atari PC looked like the poor relative at the time. I had an STE but had the chance to see and work with this. GEM was so much better on the B&W ST hires monitor!

@FXGreggan. Жыл бұрын

Yeah PC wasn't really worth it until VGA came...

@ctrlaltrees Жыл бұрын

Very true, it's amazing really what the ST could do in 1985 compared to the PCs of the time. It was the early 90s before they finally caught up to the ST and Amiga and still much more expensive!

@bobweiram6321 Жыл бұрын

GEM on the PC was a whole different OS. It wasn't as smooth.

@sonic2000gr Жыл бұрын

@@bobweiram6321 8088 / 8086 were very underpowered compared to 68000. And the graphics capabilities were also sub par at the time.

@PixelPipes Жыл бұрын

Great video as always Rees, and I love seeing these old machines in action

@RetrogradeScene Жыл бұрын

That block out looks really familiar!!

@kryan Жыл бұрын

Well, I am *very* looking forward to the GEM documentary. Should come in at around three hours, right? *cooks some popcorn*

@mrkitty777 5 ай бұрын

It ends in 1994 with the murder of Gary Arlen Kildall. From that time it's obvious Bill G becoming the new Napoleon invading every country at earth.

@FhargaZ Жыл бұрын

We found our original Atari st color monitor. Now we need the computer 😅

@p_mouse8676 Жыл бұрын

What I really like to run on those older machines, is to run Quickmenu together with XtreeGold.

@georgemaragos2378 Жыл бұрын

Hi, same here but i ran brown bag power menu and xtree, untill i got my 386 then xtreegold

@MoreFunMakingIt Жыл бұрын

This video is a banger. Also next time we meet up I need to play you at backgammon for money.

@evertonshorts9376 Жыл бұрын

I was playing block out on my ST a few days ago. It was on a Pompey Pirates disk.

@amberselectronics 10 ай бұрын

Think that hard drive just needs a good old low level format ❤

@armorgeddon 2 ай бұрын

10:38 You should find out if the original owner is still alive and write to him if you can find out his current address! I guess he would really enjoy seeing his old PC on KZfaq. Regarding Norton, you forgot Norton Commander which was one of if not *the* file manager on DOS. My uncle bought his Atari PC3 in 1988 and I still remember that there was a sample picture on the hardware showing a tiger which of course fit the colors of that PCM124 monitor very well *but* it took ages to load. I remember leaving the office for the living room and my uncle would shout across the house once the picture had fully loaded. I guess it was in GEM Draw, but I'm not sure. Our favorite game, which conincidently also fitted the monitor's color very well was Digger. You should try it out, it's still one of my favorite games ever. My uncle gave that PC to me in 2007 (it's got the darker grey case elements which I think means earlier model than yours) or so but it was then that I last booted it up. It's in storage now but I'm looking forward to set it up again in the near future.

@dave4shmups Жыл бұрын

Great follow up video on this PC! That old hard drive sounded like some kind of generator!

@c7261 Жыл бұрын

I never thought I'd see a Den Harrow reference in a cracktro! "Future Brain" was an italo-disco classic with (as is often par for the course with italo-disco) hilarious English misuse and questionable themes. Quite the interesting find. I really enjoy these data recovery projects. Great video as always! 💘

@armorgeddon 2 ай бұрын

Question is though if that cracker group got it's name from that song. Italo-disco is great anyway :-)

@fryke Жыл бұрын

I remember vividly when a local electronics store first had such an Atari PC, while I had the 1040 STfm at home. I thought: Finally a PC worth trying out! It booted, and I quickly came to the conclusion that PCs were just a very much far worse solution than an Atari ST, as GEM clearly was restricted (didn't know about the politics/copyright issues at 15...) and the amber/black screen, while kinda nice, was so much worse than my Atari SM124. Glad I find out by this video why GEM was restricted.

@daKaosjr 10 ай бұрын

Ah yes, the 'affability intensifies' (at 6:11) when playing the stock music of the Journey to Japan intro by a rather affable man...

@79RockShox Жыл бұрын

Takes me back this does, we had an Amstrad 1640CD when it 1st come out that used to run GEM, absolute beast with 640K RAM, 40MB HDD and a whole 3 colour CGA lol.

@SproutyPottedPlant Жыл бұрын

Ah GEM! I had an Amstrad 1512 with GEM that came on 3 or 4 floppies, no hard drive and spent a long time trying to get it to fit on 1 floppy and also make it behave like Atari ST GEM! If only I knew about the Before the lawsuit edition 😅

@mattsword41 Жыл бұрын

looking forward to the GEM video :)

@LeeDonel Жыл бұрын

Great video. Thank you

@mavericmorph5358 Жыл бұрын

Jesus, this takes me back. Used to have one. Along with the Spectrum range.

@fra4455 5 ай бұрын

Great video✌

@ripkurgen2030 Жыл бұрын

loved DR-DOS and GEM, i used to work for Digital Research in the UK they had an HQ in hungerford west berkshire, i was only 16 but had a part time job in their duplication lab. Shame i didnt keep all that free software i had at the time :(

@tradinglive Жыл бұрын

I have the same PC3 setup with an adlib clone soundcard and a Greek 15-pin stick... the game I loved on this amber screen was "The Prince of Persia"... it looks (and sounds) really amazing, but it is a little bit slow... Note, that you can replace the 8088 CPU with an NEC V20 and gain a +25% speed boost .. however, soldering is needed

@tellyjoossens4186 Жыл бұрын

Have a pc3 and a pc4lc over here. In the pc3 I replaced the CPU with a socketed v20 and got noticable speed boost, even the vga card I put in there is faster and so is disk access (xt to ide adapter). After that I installed another crystal. Got it up to almost 10mhz. More isn't possible, the system will panic ( too bad because I've put a 16mhz v20 in it). Is running like this for years now.

@armorgeddon 2 ай бұрын

What is a Greek 15-pin stick?

@tradinglive 2 ай бұрын

@@armorgeddon I am referring to a Greek joystick of the 80s which was built like a tank

@armorgeddon 2 ай бұрын

@@tradinglive Ah ok, got it. Thanks for answering!

@TheBasementChannel Жыл бұрын

I’m in the Commodore PC camp.

@SabretoothBarnacle Жыл бұрын

Nice video❤

@pauledwards2817 Жыл бұрын

Oh I do miss my amber screen. Not used anything better since.

@79RockShox Жыл бұрын

That d-sub adaptor, perhaps for plugging a joystick in on the paralell printer port or similar? Not seen one of those for years.

@MarkTheMorose Жыл бұрын

Or a gender changer, or to join two cables together.

@datassetteuser356 Жыл бұрын

Oh wow, that was the harddrive making that noise? Gosh, it sounded like a driving game on an Atari 2600 😅. Ah well, but the amber monitor is just beautiful. Nothing says "look at me, I'm a PC from the 80s running productivity software" more than these monochrome screens. That and Block Out.

@qqryqq123 Жыл бұрын

any chance on a gem 1.2 install on atari pc how-to...?

@idahofur Жыл бұрын

Wasn't is a ega (vga?) wonder card? or something like that. It would allow you to connect a monochrome monitor and run all different types of graphics?

@hardlyworgen71 Жыл бұрын

Was that a shoutout to LGR at about 14:00 ?

@NigelDraycott Жыл бұрын

Came here to say exactly this

@valenrn8657 Жыл бұрын

Amiga's Workbench 1.0 was Apple-immune.

@WhatHoSnorkers Жыл бұрын

The Sunny D monitor!

@Trusteft Жыл бұрын

To see your old enemy and want it in your life. Funny. Shame about the issues, but still good. Very good video as always. I suddenly have the desire to see an Atari PC with a CD-ROM drive.

@slaapliedje Жыл бұрын

I have an Atari PC4 with a cdrom drive in it. It is connected via an Awe64 Gold. It currently has 5mb of RAM, because the first four slots are soldered in... Atari apparently did it before Apple! The other four slots are SIPP. I plan on desoldering those and replacing them with 8x 1mb 30pin SIMMs.

@Trusteft Жыл бұрын

@@slaapliedje So weird, but thanks for the info!

@theserpentes 7 ай бұрын

GEM 2.0 is evidential example how 80-90's were horrible to the human technology revolution because all the patent wars. Those were killing innovations and just causing lot of trouble. That is the good side of GNU project, that lot of that was eventually overcome, decades later.

@mrkitty777 5 ай бұрын

Which genius is responsible? Bill or Steve?

@mvpheat 3 ай бұрын

Oregon Trail?

@bazza5699 Жыл бұрын

i was just about to head off to have me dinner.. then i noticed this.. lolol looks like curry n chips infront of the computer for me then :)

@drzeissler Жыл бұрын

Mostly I stick to 3.2 but on better machines I use 5.01...don't think that 7.1 has a smaller footprint. GEM 1.2 is the way to go!

@lilmisssandi Жыл бұрын

i want ur mouse mat xx

@jbsmith966 Жыл бұрын

don't laugh too hard! this was top of the line latest and greatest stuff in 1988. Envy of the neighborhood if you had one. Now in 2023 your cell phone is more powerful than these early desktops.

@markae0 Жыл бұрын

I bought the Atari PC back in 1988 and this is not it in the video.

@spacelabgames Жыл бұрын

damn...that hard drive noise is just barbaric.

@loganjorgensen Жыл бұрын

Lol, yeah even just watching the trailer that Tetris movie looks like sensational BS.😉I appreciate that you tried to use the original install but yikes with that noisy spotty HDD, I was quickly thinking "Flash drive replacement please.".😬 It's a nice computer, I'd have been happy to have that in 1988. I feel like the whole monochrome era is largely overlooked with PC & gaming history Ie. like it never happened, need more monochrome emulator filters.🥰

@armorgeddon 2 ай бұрын

DOSBox Staging has those now.

@loganjorgensen 2 ай бұрын

@@armorgeddon That's good to hear, glad they're keeping on top of those features.😁

@10MARC Жыл бұрын

PC's were so horrible and boring at that time. I cannot imagine why they ended up being successful. Amiga, ST and Mac's were so much more useable and useful in every way. I don't think the PC environment became useful until Windows 98. Even Windows 95 was sad...