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In 1982, Digital Research released CP/M-68K for the Motorola 68000. This was initially written in Pascal following DRI’s acquisition of the MicroSYSTEMS company

In 1982, Digital Research released CP/M-68K for the Motorola 68000. This was initially written in Pascal following DRI’s acquisition of the MicroSYSTEMS company in Solana Beach. This port was originally made for the Atari ST, but Atari chose to go a different way Odd, I hadn't heard the Pascal bit before. And the C/assembly source for CP/M 68k is out there to see (e.g. https://github.com/dwildie/cpm-68k https://github.com/dwildie/cpm-68k) Further, while Atari did go a different direction, it wasn't that different. DR's "GEMDOS" is like a fusion of MS-DOS and CP/M 68k, designed to play the same role on the 68k that PC/MS-DOS did for GEM on the 8086. There's I think bits in there that came from the CP/M architecture and codebase (program loader, for one). GEMDOS not only ran on the ST but was built first on the Apple Lisa (and some Motorola VME machines too, I believe.) Past discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39368972 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39368972

95014_refugee 2y ago
... and the open-source clone (EmuTOS) has been widely ported since.
chasil 2y ago
My major experience with GEM was Xerox Ventura Publisher. Ventura and Aldus Pagemaker were the two desktop publishing contenders on the PC. Pagemaker used Windows. Ventura ended up going to Windows as well (no surprise there). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corel_Ventura https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corel_Ventura
- rbanffy 2y ago
  Notably, back then you couldn't get GEM on a PC without it being bundled with another program.
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    Atari shipped a PC clone that came with GEM + GEM Desktop
    - rbanffy 2y ago
      But that was the 2-window GEM desktop, right?
kabdib 2y ago
The Atari involvement wasn't until August 1984 or after. We never saw any Pascal source code for CP/M-68K (it had been ported to C by then, I suppose). CP/M-68K was awful, GemDos was a little better (written largely by Jason Loveman at DRI), but it had its own issues. The new program loader was one of the improvements we wanted.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  Thanks for chiming in. Always appreciate your recollections.

95014_refugee 2y ago

... and the open-source clone (EmuTOS) has been widely ported since.

chasil 2y ago

My major experience with GEM was Xerox Ventura Publisher. Ventura and Aldus Pagemaker were the two desktop publishing contenders on the PC. Pagemaker used Windows. Ventura ended up going to Windows as well (no surprise there). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corel_Ventura https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corel_Ventura

rbanffy 2y ago
Notably, back then you couldn't get GEM on a PC without it being bundled with another program.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  Atari shipped a PC clone that came with GEM + GEM Desktop
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    But that was the 2-window GEM desktop, right?

kabdib 2y ago

The Atari involvement wasn't until August 1984 or after. We never saw any Pascal source code for CP/M-68K (it had been ported to C by then, I suppose). CP/M-68K was awful, GemDos was a little better (written largely by Jason Loveman at DRI), but it had its own issues. The new program loader was one of the improvements we wanted.

cmrdporcupine 2y ago
Thanks for chiming in. Always appreciate your recollections.