From: Philippe DALLEMAGNE <Philippe DOT Dallemagne AT ensem DOT u-nancy DOT fr>
Message-Id: <199810190940.LAA10636@ensem.u-nancy.fr>
Subject: Re: GEM GUI
To: opendos AT delorie DOT com
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 1998 11:40:31 +0200 (MET DST)
In-Reply-To: <199810161633.MAA00627@internet1.net> from Chad Fernandez at "Oct 16, 98 12:42:43 pm"
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL20 (25)]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com

Hi,

>How does it look like Unix?  Unix is command line.
>What will the new "desktop metaphor" look like?  What you describe doesn't
>sound like anything I am used to using.

Well, it looks like the Motif user interface, which usually (but not exclusively) runs under Unix flavours.
Remember that Motif offers a set of standardized Widgets (like in the Mac Toolbox or the Windows SDK) which can be used by applications which are designed to run under Motif.
So Motif gives an "appearance" to which NDO is "similar".

>I did mananage to get rid of the registration billboard that kept coming up :-)

Yes, it is very easy. But you miss most of the functionalities, drivers and applications (you only have the word-processor, yet powerful).

>I didn't realize that the 8088 and the 8086 were that much different.  What
>kind of computers were the 8086's installed in?  Will an 8088 replace an
>8088 in an XT or PC with any advantages?

The 8086 appeared before the 8088. The 8086 was quite expensive, as well as the surrounding hardware (controllers, MMU, gates, etc.)
The 8088 is a 8086, but it communicates with the outside through a 8 bits wide path, which makes it slightly slower. In fact, it was cheaper to do so, but later this did not make a big difference in price, so the 8088 was progressively abandonned.
I don't think you can consider the 8086 for a 8088 replacement, because, AFAIK, the pinouts were different, and the advantage would be very thin.

>It would be nice if they had a driver fro my Diamond video card for 16M
>colors :-)  I found a generic 256 color driver and it didn't seem to change
>anything.

Which Diamond ? If it is recent (Stealth 64 and later), NDO can provide a way to display 16M colors using the VESA standard (which is provided diretly by the card itself or through software given by the manufacturer or third-party free/shareware).
The 256 color driver does not change anything in the Destop colors, but it gives you the ability to display more colors, in a picture, for example.

bye.

Philippe