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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: ncafferkey on September 14, 2003, 12:59:32 PM

Title: Sample GEM (IMG) images wanted
Post by: ncafferkey on September 14, 2003, 12:59:32 PM: Hi,

I'm writing a datatype for GEM (IMG) images as used on the Atari ST and, to a lesser extent, the PC. But it's amazingly difficult to find examples of these files on the net, so I'm wondering if anyone here can help me out. I already have a lot of monochrome/bilevel images, but if you have any colour images, could you please contact me at caffer_at_cs.ucc.ie

Thanks,
Neil Cafferkey
Title: Re: Sample GEM (IMG) images wanted
Post by: carls on September 14, 2003, 01:07:18 PM: If you own a PC, you could download FreeGEM (available here (http://gem.shaneland.co.uk/)) and doodle something with the included paint program (the "About" requester says it's from the eighties IIRC, so it should be the real thing).

I downloaded it the other day just to play around with it. It ran a little slow on Windows 2000 but it worked!
Title: Re: Sample GEM (IMG) images wanted
Post by: ncafferkey on September 14, 2003, 01:28:27 PM: Thanks, I did download that or something similar, and it had some samples, but they're not the type I'm looking for. They have a fixed 16-colour palette (EGA) whereas the Atari images have a variable palette like IFFs (there are also 16- and 24-bit images without a palette). The most likely source on the PC side is Ventura Publisher 4, which I think uses one of the Atari subformats for its clipart.
Title: Re: Sample GEM (IMG) images wanted
Post by: carls on September 15, 2003, 11:26:28 PM: If you have an Atari emulator, there might be something interesting here: http://www.dhs.nu/files_gfx.php (http://www.dhs.nu/files_gfx.php)

Oh, and besides, if you contact the site maintainer (http://evil.atari.org/ (http://evil.atari.org/)) he could probably help you out... For all I know, he's an Atari demo coder so he should know about image formats :-)

I don't know him, but he seems to be pretty active.
Title: Re: Sample GEM (IMG) images wanted
Post by: DonnyEMU on September 16, 2003, 12:10:56 AM: I suggest you check out the following product, it will help you do what you are asking..

Atari Running on Any Machine (http://aranym.sourceforge.net/)

It's very reminiscent of Amiga's own UAE emulator, but it's designed for people who aren't so much wanting to emulate old hardware as to have a solution for running GEM on a PC and it works well with well behaved TOS/GEM programs and brings that platform into the age of current machines (it runs DivX and supports way better graphics and speed than any old gem/atari machine could,.

Official features are:
MC68040 compatible CPU (including optional MMU!)
MC68881 compatible FPU
JIT Compiler for CPU and FPU (speeds up CPU+FPU up to 10x!)
ST-RAM 14 MB
Fast-RAM configurable 0-3824 MB
Host accelerated fVDI graphics (large highcolor/truecolor resolutions)
Access to Host OS filesystems using BetaDOS or MiNT native XFS driver
Ethernet networking via host using MiNT-Net XIF driver
TOS 4.x XBIOS compatible sound (16-bit 48 kHz stereo sound)
Parallel port (bidirectional)
MFP, IKBD, ACIA, VIDEL, BLITTER, FDC, IDE, DSP MC56001

Please note although these features sound great it's not an attempt to emulate any previous atari machine.

Here are some screen shots:

(http://aranym.sourceforge.net/scrshot/gembench.png)

(http://aranym.sourceforge.net/scrshot/samotari.jpg)
Title: Re: Sample GEM (IMG) images wanted
Post by: ncafferkey on September 16, 2003, 08:54:09 PM: Thank you both. I was hoping to avoid setting up an Atari environment, but I might have no option.