Did you see Clint hit that huge warehouse in Texas, and one of his salvages was - brace yourself - A PCjr dev machine from Sierra?! How crazy is that! Hope the HD works.
@@jayfor80s I've been too far out of the loop! I used to regularly visit Electronic Discount Sales in Arlington before they shut down. Love playing with vintage tech!
Operating a PC Jr is definitely a labor of love, not practicality. But then again, the same can be said for all vintage electronics to an extent. Great video
Microsurgeon in the background! I didn't even know it HAD a PC Jr port. Until today, I only knew of the Intellivision and 99/4a versions. I grew up on a 99/4a, and I'm always pleased to see the game turn up.
I don't know why anyone would thumbs down your videos. You make everything so clear and concise anyone could fallow your with no need for looking up words on Google. I recently just started watching your videos and I thoroughly enjoy and understand everything you do.
I had this machine when i was 13 and thought it was the greatest thing ever. I wish i still had it for sentimental reasons and would love to have another one.
Terrific to see someone with your amazing skill level showing a computer that dads & grandparents were given in the mid-1980s. Folks who had never seen a computer.
My first ever experience with a home computer was with an IBM PCjr and I've been hooked ever since. Nice to see it being shown some love here. Thanks Adrian.
Use format /a: to make your allocation units larger when you format. This will help with the free space calculation times as its looking at free clusters to do the calculation. I believe /a was available from DOS 4 on when the went from Fat 12 to 16. I believe in DOS 7 (Win95) it was changed to /z for "cluster" size.
Hey!..Thanks for your very well made videos! I have a 64 w all the "stuff". I'm in IT for a very large tax corporation and really enjoy watching these vids about vintage PCs. Between you and another You Tuber I have gained an interest in these older PCS and how they can be repaired (I'm also an electronics tech.), You cover many computers that I am very familiar with and have actually used in the 70s and 80s. Neat stuff! Keep up the very nice work! Thanks again and God Bless.
Thanks for the tip with LS batch :) I have a 512MB partition as well on my XT and it takes forever. Please note that "big" volumes and partitions are managed from DOS 3.31
Loved every second. I review modern single board computers, but am so jealous seeing you work with this. I started with a 286 so long ago. Loved it so much. Still love the games from then more than modern ones. Thank god there's DOSBox. Greetings, NicoD
I always liked these machines. I loved the expansion cards back in the day, it was so exciting plugging something into the side of your computer and making it better.
I still have 3 of these beasties in my horde. I got my first one while I was still an IBM Customer Engineer (73-88), I bought it through an employee program for $400. I enjoy this nostalgic look back on my first PC.
my dad worked for Radio Shack and owned a Radio shack store and was a top salesman in Ontario for them, we regularly used to trade our tandy machines back to upgrade to the new models as the 3000 + 4000 machines came out. i think i had multiple tandy 1000's aswell, there was a radio shack headquarters here in barrie ontario canada right near the famous molson beer plant .. the buildings owned by the source i think stilll..
I may have mentioned this on another video of yours, but it is odd to think that for a brief period, Tandy of all companies, held down a corner of the computer industry, first with the TRS model systems, and then with the Tandy 1000. They took IBM's failure of the PCjr and turned it into a success. I distinctly remember seeing just about every popular game in the mid to late 80s (or so it seemed) with "Tandy 1000 or compatible" versions.
Tandy HX 1000 in my opinion, is the gold standard of the era. They had the price, the form factor and the software support of video/sound. Today they are excellent machines to tinker with to play old games.
@BWERK I remember reading Compute! magazine and other pubs back in the day and one of the big issues that reviewers and owners had with it was the actual name - "PC" -jr. Consumers tended to focus on the "PC" part rather than looking at the whole, and assumed they were getting a fully x86 compatible machine. Something that they could run WordPerfect or Lotus123 (and I know that was one of the cartridge apps that was made for it) from the office on. But the Jr was a load of cut corners and design compromises in an attempt to crack the home market that Commodore, Apple and Atari (in that order) had pinned down. By the time you'd spent enough to make it a useful computer, you were approaching the cost of a full-blown 5150, or an Apple Macintosh. If you were to bide your time for one more year you could pick up an Amiga 1000, superior in all ways to the Jr. for the same cost. So it really was not a good buy. If you absolutely positively *had to* tap the Jr. software market, a Tandy 1000 was $100 cheaper.
Viewers can see your admiration of old tech and using modern parts to repair older machines. It's good you were insistent the machine is not the best for newbies because of the multiple issues you faced. Way to go!
The PCjr was a good machine you just needed the right addons, my dad had one with the Racore drive two plus DMA and expanded out to 640k. You could run it as a PCjr or a PC. You said in an earlier video that you didnt have a power brick so back in Jan I msged you on vcfed and offered to trade you your long pcjr power board for a standard one + a power brick + floppy controller card all working but never heard back so I guessed you were not interested. Love the vids, keep them coming =)
Love the PCjr coverage. The reason DIR always takes the same time is because that portion is DOS code, and DOS is always loaded in the first 128k. also, smaller partition sizes do not make DIR faster, but rather the smallest number of clusters per partition makes it faster. Create a partition slightly greater than a power of two, and dos will halve the number of clusters for that partition (for example, make a 520mb partition instead of 512).
@@adriansdigitalbasement Yep, and your solution of only doing dir /b is a good workaround, although I usually get it out of the way by putting a DIR in my autoexec.bat. Otherwise, some random program will query free space and you'll think the computer locked up. As much as I love the PCjr (I've given several talks on it), I agree that it is not for the new vintage computer enthusiast, and that a Tandy 1000 system is a better option.
TRAINing the world for sure. Any details on it? Is that device still available? I need to buy a few and ship them to the Amiga and C64 guys on RUclips, no more jamming a pick under the chip. Heh.
I have no idea what you are talking about, but I love it. I'm not savvy, but this is thoroughly interesting. Although I don't understand the jargon, I get the gist. This is really cool.
I had one of these as a kid and your video makes me want to get another and do the same things you did to this one and get back to some old DOS gaming on such a fun little machine!
thanks for walking me down memory lane with the old 8086's... I miss my XT-Plus. I need to find myself an old machine or an old 386 or something to play around with.
Hi Adrian, I don't often comment on videos but I just wanted to say I really enjoy your videos and the level of effort you put in shows in the final video. Also, I had a few of these systems and the pcjr carts. I gave them away because like you I found them so incompatible with software that they were not much fun to play with.
Here's a science fictional scenario for budding time travelers: In the present, you write low level code (in Assembler or machine code) based upon current scientific knowledge or an evolutionary algorithm that does sophisticated things with very little computing resources. With your software in hand you get into your time machine and go back to the early 1980's, where you find an IBM PC to run your software on. You absolutely blow the minds of everyone that you give a demonstration of what your software can do. Computer scientists are totally mystified about how it works.
I remember all the Sierra game installations of a particular era asked you if you had an IBM PC compatible keyboard or a Tandy 1000 keyboard. The Tandy 1000 had a remapping of the keys as well.
I also paid $60 for my PCjr. I got it from the original owner and it came with a bunch of goodies. I have a 2nd external FH floppy drive and an internal Tecmar Captain type board that replaces the CPU to provide 640KB of RAM and RTC.
@@adriansdigitalbasement at least you watch your own videos! It was kinda funny to hear you speak over yourself. One could easily be overwhelmed with double the great info!
23:11 wowwww man i havent seen this print shop screen since the mid 90s!!!! total flash back!! OMG "theDraw"!!! that was my favourite app, i used to draw ANSI graphics for my remoteAccess BBS, back in the 386/486 days
Very informative! And I agree with your recommendations. The Tandy 1000 machines had a lot of great games and compatibility with software for the era. Thumbs up!
About that original RAM card DRAM refresh - in the C64, the 50/60Hz AC frequency was used as a timer for the user port (a timer on one of the I/O chips, forget their name). Possibly something similar happening here, too? Trace out the AC input and see if a component of the AC is brought into the digital area? I notice there's no other oscillator on the board, so maybe they cheated that way.
Years ago we found a cast off PCjr with an optical mouse - and the grid plate it needed to work. Also have the wired keyboard cord. Alas, we never managed to get the thing working as we don't have any PCjr software - we were a Commodore household back in the day, switching to Mac in the late-90s...
I know this video is old but for those of you who have this setup and want to use a very large partition, there is a nice utility/TSR that ChartreuseK created called FREESP that speeds up that fir DIR sync considerably. I use it on my IBM PCJr with a 2GB partition and it is very fast now. github/ChartreuseK/FREESP
For your RAM expansion, you could probably make a new board using a modern SRAM chip... doesnt need any refreshing and would be very low power, so it'd likely work from the PCjr's supply directly
There was a way to piggyback additional RAM onto the chips in an IBM RAM sidecar. Lots of fiddly soldering and wiring for the address and select lines.
Great PCjr video series. I bought a new PCjr and soon recognized it as a major mistake. Too many compatibility issues with the IBM PC. IBM could have been a major player in the home PC market, but released this POS instead. A chicklet keyboard, sidecars, and expensive monitor (which I didn't buy)...what was IBM thinking?
I once bought a 32 GB CF card from AliExpress to replace the IDE HDD of an older (from around 2004). The HDD still works fine but the CF card is long dead since then (didn't even last two months). It was one of those unbranded ones that only says CF card.
This may solve the mystery of the floppy controller lock up.... The new power supply comes on too quick in one of the voltages and causes a lock up. The new version of the floppy controller chip has an extra diode, cap, and resistor in the reset circuit in the chip, that I am pretty sure that is what fixed the problem. I think the original power supply steps in the voltages one at a time. Wow those PC-jrs are freakazoid fun.
@@adriansdigitalbasement I am going to have to remember to download a copy of it. I have an old Packard Bell Pentium someone gave me, and I want to setup a BBS on it sooner than later. I'd love to find one of those wifi232 "modems", but the guy who made them isn't making them anymore :/
PC Enterprises sold kits to mod the PCjr video and audio to be Tandy 1000 compatible. The video mod is easy. There's one or two traces to cut, piggyback a specific 7400 series chip into another one, solder some of its pins to the chip it's on top of and solder a couple of wires from that chip to other chips. Instructions for this mod are easy to find online. I only bought the kit once from PC Enterprises, the other two PCjr's I modded by pulling the chips off some old ISA cards. Any PCjr specific or Tandy 1000 game will work on the PCjr - with the exception of a few that require both Tandy video and audio. One was a Hoyle's card game collection. I was stuck playing it in the red green black yellow CGA palette, one of the few games to use that instead of cyan magenta black white. Since the PC Enterprises video mod kit was crazy overpriced for a couple $ in parts (if you bought the chip and wire new) I figured their audio mod was probably an overpriced simple hack. But to this day I've not been able to find any info on that mod. They had to have sold some of those kits. Someone must know what their mod entailed. That card game reported something about not detecting Tandy audio when Tandy mode was selected in its settings.
My cousin had a Tandy 1000 (forgot which variant) back in the days. When I just got my Insight 386 (back when Insight sold computers and hard drives), I was somewhat let down of the CGA graphics compared to the Tandy CGA. Fortunately newer games were coming out in VGA, which was even better.
For all of you PC Jr fans BG Micro has a LOT of PC Jr NOS parts on hand now. They have been advertising them in the last few emails sales notices I have received.
That's a lot of keyboard complaints... As I expect from any Jr. video. If you want even better than the Enhanced Jr. keyboard, but still vintage... Cherry actually made an aftermarket wireless Jr. compatible mechanical keyboard back in the days.
I,ve never seen those side carts, it looks abit odd, while it sounds cool to slot multiple side carts together to add extra ram, but since they’re DRAM and connected in paralell, it’s no surprice they could randomly crash overtimes, or because it didn’t connected properly or because those Dram chips didn’t refresh stuff in synch and they’re sloow as well, and then you also have to make sure those those DRAM chips are shared & located by software correctly and hoping they don’t interfere & comflicting eachother,,, So i think such modern upgrade is waaay better, faster, more leliable and well worth it, great job!!!!
If you can find the keyboard cable to go to the back of the machine (making it not wireless), that might help with the keyboard not being recognized, as I don't recall any issue with that using an XT to PCjr keyboard adapter (presumably Racore made, since that what keyboard and expansion mine had, but no identifying marks on the box itself.)
Personally I would change the value of TEMP. I wonder what they were thinking when they decided it would be a good idea to dump all the temporary junk in the same directory as the OS by default.
I really wish people did stuff like this for computers today. Imagine being able to buy a pc with a 9900 non k with memory and everything, but then being able to plug a gpu side card in if you want to use a graphics card. Or if you want 10g lan, thunderbolt, etc. it would be awesome to be able to do that. You can add memory, drives, anything. It’s perfect for people that aren’t super literate in tech.
If your using a V20 processor with the XTIDE Bios, update to the AT version of the XTIDE bios. It will run faster because the V20 has some features of a 186 AT processor. Worked great in my 1000EX.
Disk drive routines work faster with an RAM disk cache. The problem with the space checking on old dos is it constantly reads the drive to do the calculations. So accessing RAM for that will speed it up. You only need a cache size big enough for the directory. I know this worked on Tandy machines, but I have no idea on PCJr
I remember back when the Jr. came out not being interested in it for two main reasons, the first was its chicklet keyboard -- just, No!. The second was because it was so obviously hobbled so that it couldn't compete with the IBM XT or AT computers. Clones were starting to come out and were a much better deal, even if their physical designs weren't as nice.
Nice! Wow I wish I would have held on to my PCjr, tinkering with it would be great . I never understood what was meant by shared memory, Thanks! I'm surprised there's no work around for the keyboard.
Only recently discovered your channel and have just watched this PCjr series. I was wondering why in the beginning you didn't just look for a basic transformer (16V I think it was) to try it out? If you have a Variac you could just find something close and trim it to what was needed (18V or 22V might be other useable standard values that could be trimmed down for testing)
Great video! I loved my PC Junior, great memories. I thought the cartridge thing was genus and ahead of its time, I guess it went nowhere :) Loved it anyway
Now that you have the CF card PCB installed correctly, are you sure that you need that 5V jumper wire since the jumper setting for 5V on pin 20 might have worked if you had plugged the CF card PCB in correctly?
Great Series i had PCjr when i was a kid, Asked my parents for an Amiga 500 and they got me the used PCjr lol. I was so mad, i couldn't find any games that were as good as the Amiga, I remember i had DJ vs Larry bird basket ball had like 3 colors i think was horrible, I think the best game i found was the Kings Quest that you showed in the video. other than that i couldn't do crap with it. kept it till it died when i was a teenager and i bought my 1st Amiga a CD32 omg it was so awesome compared to that PCjr. Even though Amiga's were on their way out by then, :(
I have an IBM/PS2 386. IDE cards for the old MCA slots are pretty rare. So i have currently no alternative than using the 30mb anciant HDD or a SCSI Drive. But seeing this PCjr running on a compact flash gives me the hope that there will be a workaround someday.
@@adriansdigitalbasement I do have SCSI controller. But there are two things that borher me. The first thing is, that the 32bit MCA slots are currently busy with a XGA Video Adapter and a Memory Expansion Card. The second one is, that the SCSI controller only offers a internal 68pin connector which took me forever to find a cable for. There is also a ESDI Riser card for the floppy and the HDD but there is no way to find some alternatives. I'm clueless. Maybe i should leave out the XGA card and search for a 68 to 50pin SCSI adapter.
Great video dude. Love the pacing and the fact that you show mistakes :) Curious to know if there's a TSR that could 'translate' keyboard presses somehow?
@@adriansdigitalbasement ISTR there being a module that plugged in place of the IR receiver to connect a regular PC or XT keyboard, it likely fixed the issues you demonstrated.
You could wire the PALs to an EPROM pinout and that way read them. There exists software that can then reduce the "image" back into logic equations, that you use to program a replacement GAL. The only problem... you need a working PAL in order to be able to read it. So unless some has an identical sidecar... repairing will be difficult.
I think you are right - the PCjr is just a neat blip in computer history, but not very useful. I think a person would get more mileage out of a Commodore 64 than the PCjr. Glad you got it working, though!
adrian - re adding a second cf disk drive : similar to the ide/cf card you used, you could use a card w/ 2 cf 'slots'. there's even a jumper to set which cf is 'master', which is 'slave'. in today's world, we should find less-potentially-offensive descriptors. perhaps simply 'first' & 'second' would suffice. i'll try to send you one. abide
*Darth Vader:* "Adrian! Now that The Emperor just got Killed....Again, but this Time for Real. I Think... But I Digress! We Could Use a Man of Your Skills and Knowledge to Help Us Out in Our Hour of Need. *We Would be Honored if You Would Join Us!"*
Wish I kept my PCjr, as a kid all I really did with it was teach myself BASIC. I didn't even know about those expansion boards, if so there would have been a lot more to do with it
A random 1 o'clock in the morning thought, you can get from AliExpress an IR blaster that you can train and use through your phone, Google Assistant or Alexa. Wonder if it would work to emulate the keyboard. Imagine shouting 'Alexa, run Kings Quest 2 on the PCjr' and watching the commands spew out on to the screen via the blaster. 🤓
In old arcade machines (Z80) withGAL chips, they are powered by DC 5v, 12v, 24v, 36, -12v AND AC 9v. The 9v AC is used for timing (think it uses it as a clock in addition to the 2 crystals on the board (50hz in the U.K.)) removing or faulty 9vac psu causes our machine to reset all the time and come with random error messages, maybe the 9vAC was used for other reasons in addition for power?
They're not terriby useful on 8088 machines. The redirection dirivers don't work so you're dependant on either patching software or newly written games that support it directly.
Interesting that you would recommend the Tandy 1000 for its supposed 100% compatibility... back in the day, our computer labs were 90% Tandy 1000's and I recall them having all sorts of compatibility issues, either locking up or having issues due to their superior, but peculiar video card. I personally had an early Zenith IBM PC-compatible, and it was _much_ more compatible and stable than the Tandys... it also cost 2-3 times as much. That said, I'm sure with software improving to work with more systems over the years, the Tandy is now a perfectly acceptable compatible computer... and I'm not knocking it... they are relatively common and you can easily find parts for them... not quite the situation for Zenith fans like me.
@@adriansdigitalbasement I wish I did, but it's been too long. Last time I sat down in front of a Tandy 1000 was likely June of 1989. During this time frame, we used to use a different, uh... 'borrowed' game or utility every week, so we were inadvertently testing the compatibility constantly. and stuff that wouldn't run right got discarded pretty quickly and other stuff we just worked around. Looking back, its odd to think how common it was to reboot a frozen computer... and it was considered normal, accepted behavior to have an application that would crash 10% of the time. LOL! I seem to recall the Tandy's had a special version of DOS that only booted on the Tandy, perhaps that caused issues. I don't think I ever used a Tandy 2000 or PCjr, so we didn't have any software meant specifically for PCjrs. Several of my cohorts had a huge disdain for the PCjr. I went from a TI99/4a directly to a Zenith full of memory, so I considered myself fortunate.
Hi,Nice Machine, I have a Tandy 100 EX and have it running with DOS 3.31. (Support 400Mb disk)Will you get hardware from Computer Reset ? They have apparently plenty of PC Junior Hardware.
Now, just need to convince myself spending $80 on that jrIDE board makes sense. It's actually very tempting. I don't think I even have any 5.25" disks, so my PCjr hasn't had much to do yet. 😅
The beautiful thing about a hard drive adaptor in these kinds of things is you can bypass the original install media entirely. Just pull the card and copy files directly to it on another PC. it's possible to install a USB floppy emulator in these old PCs, but the hard drive approach can actually be preferable in some ways, since locating PC disk images of original games with the copy protection intact is far rarer than abandonware dumps.
dos 4.0 is the last dos that works on the pc jr, the 1990 IBM PS/1 model 2011 has dos 4.0 in rom.... I bet it is not a coincidence! BTW it is incredible the good old 2011 is so forgotten that nobody makes any expansion or mod for it... IT IS LITERALLY PcJr 2.0!
AkbKuku made his own PCjr power supply alternative. It is an adapter to connect a tiny atx power supply. Or a full size one from outside the case. Im sure you knew about it but some might not.
The CF card connector has very delicate pins so, I guess, You may have some problems while inserting the CF. This because you can't check the allignment very well when you slot in thru that box and then have broken pins.
PCjr? Wow. I owned one at one time. It ended up seeming like a serious WASTE. I did manage to get early internet exposure to a network called Delphi in the early days of Chat Rooms. However, I did manage to sell it for $100, including an adapter for an IBM Selectric Typewriter! Live and learn.
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Did you see Clint hit that huge warehouse in Texas, and one of his salvages was - brace yourself - A PCjr dev machine from Sierra?! How crazy is that! Hope the HD works.
Indeed
@@adriansdigitalbasement
You should really do a colab with Clint or someone in that area, like David Murray, or just arrange to go yourself.
@@adriansdigitalbasement I joined the FB group, and I'm keeping an eye when it will be open. It's a 3 hour drive, but that's worth it for me!
@@ThriftyAV Man you should have been at Computer Reset months ago.
@@jayfor80s I've been too far out of the loop! I used to regularly visit Electronic Discount Sales in Arlington before they shut down. Love playing with vintage tech!
Operating a PC Jr is definitely a labor of love, not practicality. But then again, the same can be said for all vintage electronics to an extent. Great video
Microsurgeon in the background! I didn't even know it HAD a PC Jr port. Until today, I only knew of the Intellivision and 99/4a versions.
I grew up on a 99/4a, and I'm always pleased to see the game turn up.
I don't know why anyone would thumbs down your videos. You make everything so clear and concise anyone could fallow your with no need for looking up words on Google. I recently just started watching your videos and I thoroughly enjoy and understand everything you do.
I had this machine when i was 13 and thought it was the greatest thing ever. I wish i still had it for sentimental reasons and would love to have another one.
Terrific to see someone with your amazing skill level showing a computer that dads & grandparents were given in the mid-1980s. Folks who had never seen a computer.
My first ever experience with a home computer was with an IBM PCjr and I've been hooked ever since. Nice to see it being shown some love here. Thanks Adrian.
My first computer was a PC Jr, I learned assembler on this machine
You old men with your old computers! My 286 takes only a FEW SECONDS to calculate the free space on its 1.3 GB hard disk!
A properly decked out 286 is a teropedo!
It's always good to see old tech upgraded. It's even more awesome when someone documents their findings and publishes them openly!
Thank you for your content...lost my job today and at least I still smile watching your videos ❤️
Use format /a: to make your allocation units larger when you format. This will help with the free space calculation times as its looking at free clusters to do the calculation. I believe /a was available from DOS 4 on when the went from Fat 12 to 16. I believe in DOS 7 (Win95) it was changed to /z for "cluster" size.
Hey!..Thanks for your very well made videos! I have a 64 w all the "stuff". I'm in IT for a very large tax corporation and really enjoy watching these vids about vintage PCs. Between you and another You Tuber I have gained an interest in these older PCS and how they can be repaired (I'm also an electronics tech.), You cover many computers that I am very familiar with and have actually used in the 70s and 80s. Neat stuff! Keep up the very nice work! Thanks again and God Bless.
I always enjoy a visit to Mr. Black's cozy Digital Basement in his Portland home.
infinitecanadian thumbs up for your username
@@pilotkid2011 Thanks!
21:20 That's a damn nice chip puller!
Thanks for the tip with LS batch :) I have a 512MB partition as well on my XT and it takes forever. Please note that "big" volumes and partitions are managed from DOS 3.31
Loved every second. I review modern single board computers, but am so jealous seeing you work with this. I started with a 286 so long ago. Loved it so much. Still love the games from then more than modern ones. Thank god there's DOSBox. Greetings, NicoD
I always liked these machines. I loved the expansion cards back in the day, it was so exciting plugging something into the side of your computer and making it better.
I still have 3 of these beasties in my horde. I got my first one while I was still an IBM Customer Engineer (73-88), I bought it through an employee program for $400. I enjoy this nostalgic look back on my first PC.
fun trip down memory lane. I spent HOURS in TheDraw back in the day, making fancy screens for BBSs.
Tandy really did make the machine IBM should have.
my dad worked for Radio Shack and owned a Radio shack store and was a top salesman in Ontario for them, we regularly used to trade our tandy machines back to upgrade to the new models as the 3000 + 4000 machines came out. i think i had multiple tandy 1000's aswell, there was a radio shack headquarters here in barrie ontario canada right near the famous molson beer plant .. the buildings owned by the source i think stilll..
I may have mentioned this on another video of yours, but it is odd to think that for a brief period, Tandy of all companies, held down a corner of the computer industry, first with the TRS model systems, and then with the Tandy 1000. They took IBM's failure of the PCjr and turned it into a success. I distinctly remember seeing just about every popular game in the mid to late 80s (or so it seemed) with "Tandy 1000 or compatible" versions.
@BWERK cost. Expansion. Lack of software support. It failed to fit it's consumer budget model goals. Tandy sure did.
Just watch this video -- that's why. It wasn't any easier back when it was new. And it was $$$ expensive.
Tandy HX 1000 in my opinion, is the gold standard of the era. They had the price, the form factor and the software support of video/sound. Today they are excellent machines to tinker with to play old games.
@BWERK I remember reading Compute! magazine and other pubs back in the day and one of the big issues that reviewers and owners had with it was the actual name - "PC" -jr. Consumers tended to focus on the "PC" part rather than looking at the whole, and assumed they were getting a fully x86 compatible machine. Something that they could run WordPerfect or Lotus123 (and I know that was one of the cartridge apps that was made for it) from the office on. But the Jr was a load of cut corners and design compromises in an attempt to crack the home market that Commodore, Apple and Atari (in that order) had pinned down. By the time you'd spent enough to make it a useful computer, you were approaching the cost of a full-blown 5150, or an Apple Macintosh. If you were to bide your time for one more year you could pick up an Amiga 1000, superior in all ways to the Jr. for the same cost. So it really was not a good buy. If you absolutely positively *had to* tap the Jr. software market, a Tandy 1000 was $100 cheaper.
@@ninjamaster3453 You got the right of it.
I ended up buying a Tandy 1000SL back in 89. Fun computer and played many games on it. Ended up replacing it with a 486DX 33 2 years later.
Viewers can see your admiration of old tech and using modern parts to repair older machines. It's good you were insistent the machine is not the best for newbies because of the multiple issues you faced. Way to go!
The PCjr was a good machine you just needed the right addons, my dad had one with the Racore drive two plus DMA and expanded out to 640k. You could run it as a PCjr or a PC.
You said in an earlier video that you didnt have a power brick so back in Jan I msged you on vcfed and offered to trade you your long pcjr power board for a standard one + a power brick + floppy controller card all working but never heard back so I guessed you were not interested.
Love the vids, keep them coming =)
Of course by the time you'd done that you'd likely have been cheaper just getting a Tandy and having done with it.
Love the PCjr coverage. The reason DIR always takes the same time is because that portion is DOS code, and DOS is always loaded in the first 128k.
also, smaller partition sizes do not make DIR faster, but rather the smallest number of clusters per partition makes it faster. Create a partition slightly greater than a power of two, and dos will halve the number of clusters for that partition (for example, make a 520mb partition instead of 512).
@@adriansdigitalbasement Yep, and your solution of only doing dir /b is a good workaround, although I usually get it out of the way by putting a DIR in my autoexec.bat. Otherwise, some random program will query free space and you'll think the computer locked up.
As much as I love the PCjr (I've given several talks on it), I agree that it is not for the new vintage computer enthusiast, and that a Tandy 1000 system is a better option.
Such an adventure with this series. So many ups and downs.
Enjoyed the video as always. That chip puller looks great!
TRAINing the world for sure. Any details on it? Is that device still available? I need to buy a few and ship them to the Amiga and C64 guys on RUclips, no more jamming a pick under the chip. Heh.
@@adriansdigitalbasement i haven't seen one of those OK ones since the 80's. is OK still around?
I have no idea what you are talking about, but I love it. I'm not savvy, but this is thoroughly interesting. Although I don't understand the jargon, I get the gist. This is really cool.
I had one of these as a kid and your video makes me want to get another and do the same things you did to this one and get back to some old DOS gaming on such a fun little machine!
thanks for walking me down memory lane with the old 8086's... I miss my XT-Plus. I need to find myself an old machine or an old 386 or something to play around with.
Hi Adrian, I don't often comment on videos but I just wanted to say I really enjoy your videos and the level of effort you put in shows in the final video. Also, I had a few of these systems and the pcjr carts. I gave them away because like you I found them so incompatible with software that they were not much fun to play with.
Here's a science fictional scenario for budding time travelers: In the present, you write low level code (in Assembler or machine code) based upon current scientific knowledge or an evolutionary algorithm that does sophisticated things with very little computing resources. With your software in hand you get into your time machine and go back to the early 1980's, where you find an IBM PC to run your software on. You absolutely blow the minds of everyone that you give a demonstration of what your software can do. Computer scientists are totally mystified about how it works.
I remember all the Sierra game installations of a particular era asked you if you had an IBM PC compatible keyboard or a Tandy 1000 keyboard. The Tandy 1000 had a remapping of the keys as well.
13:57 512MB RERORY CARD, my favorite! Ordered a couple of those recently.
Your efforts on your corrections and work is amazing. Thanks!
I also paid $60 for my PCjr. I got it from the original owner and it came with a bunch of goodies. I have a 2nd external FH floppy drive and an internal Tecmar Captain type board that replaces the CPU to provide 640KB of RAM and RTC.
Glad you fixed the glitch in the first upload.
@@adriansdigitalbasement no worries, happens to the best of us.
@@adriansdigitalbasement at least you watch your own videos! It was kinda funny to hear you speak over yourself. One could easily be overwhelmed with double the great info!
23:11 wowwww man i havent seen this print shop screen since the mid 90s!!!! total flash back!! OMG "theDraw"!!! that was my favourite app, i used to draw ANSI graphics for my remoteAccess BBS, back in the 386/486 days
Very informative! And I agree with your recommendations. The Tandy 1000 machines had a lot of great games and compatibility with software for the era. Thumbs up!
I remember when Tandy 1000s were sold brand new at Radio Shack. I wasn't that old, but I was still in elementary school.
About that original RAM card DRAM refresh - in the C64, the 50/60Hz AC frequency was used as a timer for the user port (a timer on one of the I/O chips, forget their name). Possibly something similar happening here, too? Trace out the AC input and see if a component of the AC is brought into the digital area? I notice there's no other oscillator on the board, so maybe they cheated that way.
Years ago we found a cast off PCjr with an optical mouse - and the grid plate it needed to work. Also have the wired keyboard cord. Alas, we never managed to get the thing working as we don't have any PCjr software - we were a Commodore household back in the day, switching to Mac in the late-90s...
14:00 Nice "DIGITAL RERORY CARD". Or maybe it should be "ERRORY".
I know this video is old but for those of you who have this setup and want to use a very large partition, there is a nice utility/TSR that ChartreuseK
created called FREESP that speeds up that fir DIR sync considerably. I use it on my IBM PCJr with a 2GB partition and it is very fast now. github/ChartreuseK/FREESP
For your RAM expansion, you could probably make a new board using a modern SRAM chip... doesnt need any refreshing and would be very low power, so it'd likely work from the PCjr's supply directly
which is exactly what the JR-IDE has done :)
There was a way to piggyback additional RAM onto the chips in an IBM RAM sidecar. Lots of fiddly soldering and wiring for the address and select lines.
Good on Alan ("eeguru" on the Vintage Computer Forums) for donating that jr-IDE.
Great PCjr video series. I bought a new PCjr and soon recognized it as a major mistake. Too many compatibility issues with the IBM PC. IBM could have been a major player in the home PC market, but released this POS instead. A chicklet keyboard, sidecars, and expensive monitor (which I didn't buy)...what was IBM thinking?
I once bought a 32 GB CF card from AliExpress to replace the IDE HDD of an older (from around 2004). The HDD still works fine but the CF card is long dead since then (didn't even last two months). It was one of those unbranded ones that only says CF card.
This may solve the mystery of the floppy controller lock up.... The new power supply comes on too quick in one of the voltages and causes a lock up. The new version of the floppy controller chip has an extra diode, cap, and resistor in the reset circuit in the chip, that I am pretty sure that is what fixed the problem. I think the original power supply steps in the voltages one at a time. Wow those PC-jrs are freakazoid fun.
The Draw!!!! Holy cow, I forgot about that program! That's what I used to use to make all my BBS screens! Great video, Adrian!
@@adriansdigitalbasement I am going to have to remember to download a copy of it. I have an old Packard Bell Pentium someone gave me, and I want to setup a BBS on it sooner than later. I'd love to find one of those wifi232 "modems", but the guy who made them isn't making them anymore :/
@@adriansdigitalbasement I may just have to do that! Thanks!
21:30 ok, that got me pretty good -- didn't see that coming for a
Great video series. I knew nothing about PCjr’s before this series. Now I know to give them a WIDE berth. Hahaha.
Ya I had one back in the day. Pretty useless.
PC Enterprises sold kits to mod the PCjr video and audio to be Tandy 1000 compatible. The video mod is easy. There's one or two traces to cut, piggyback a specific 7400 series chip into another one, solder some of its pins to the chip it's on top of and solder a couple of wires from that chip to other chips. Instructions for this mod are easy to find online. I only bought the kit once from PC Enterprises, the other two PCjr's I modded by pulling the chips off some old ISA cards.
Any PCjr specific or Tandy 1000 game will work on the PCjr - with the exception of a few that require both Tandy video and audio. One was a Hoyle's card game collection. I was stuck playing it in the red green black yellow CGA palette, one of the few games to use that instead of cyan magenta black white.
Since the PC Enterprises video mod kit was crazy overpriced for a couple $ in parts (if you bought the chip and wire new) I figured their audio mod was probably an overpriced simple hack. But to this day I've not been able to find any info on that mod. They had to have sold some of those kits. Someone must know what their mod entailed. That card game reported something about not detecting Tandy audio when Tandy mode was selected in its settings.
My cousin had a Tandy 1000 (forgot which variant) back in the days. When I just got my Insight 386 (back when Insight sold computers and hard drives), I was somewhat let down of the CGA graphics compared to the Tandy CGA. Fortunately newer games were coming out in VGA, which was even better.
For all of you PC Jr fans BG Micro has a LOT of PC Jr NOS parts on hand now. They have been advertising them in the last few emails sales notices I have received.
That's a lot of keyboard complaints... As I expect from any Jr. video.
If you want even better than the Enhanced Jr. keyboard, but still vintage... Cherry actually made an aftermarket wireless Jr. compatible mechanical keyboard back in the days.
I,ve never seen those side carts, it looks abit odd, while it sounds cool to slot multiple side carts together to add extra ram, but since they’re DRAM and connected in paralell, it’s no surprice they could randomly crash overtimes, or because it didn’t connected properly or because those Dram chips didn’t refresh stuff in synch and they’re sloow as well, and then you also have to make sure those those DRAM chips are shared & located by software correctly and hoping they don’t interfere & comflicting eachother,,,
So i think such modern upgrade is waaay better, faster, more leliable and well worth it, great job!!!!
I used QEMM in MS DOS 5.0-6.22, but what you got is pretty good.
If you can find the keyboard cable to go to the back of the machine (making it not wireless), that might help with the keyboard not being recognized, as I don't recall any issue with that using an XT to PCjr keyboard adapter (presumably Racore made, since that what keyboard and expansion mine had, but no identifying marks on the box itself.)
I like the snazzy chip extractor.
Personally I would change the value of TEMP. I wonder what they were thinking when they decided it would be a good idea to dump all the temporary junk in the same directory as the OS by default.
I really wish people did stuff like this for computers today. Imagine being able to buy a pc with a 9900 non k with memory and everything, but then being able to plug a gpu side card in if you want to use a graphics card. Or if you want 10g lan, thunderbolt, etc. it would be awesome to be able to do that. You can add memory, drives, anything. It’s perfect for people that aren’t super literate in tech.
If your using a V20 processor with the XTIDE Bios, update to the AT version of the XTIDE bios. It will run faster because the V20 has some features of a 186 AT processor. Worked great in my 1000EX.
Disk drive routines work faster with an RAM disk cache. The problem with the space checking on old dos is it constantly reads the drive to do the calculations. So accessing RAM for that will speed it up. You only need a cache size big enough for the directory. I know this worked on Tandy machines, but I have no idea on PCJr
I remember back when the Jr. came out not being interested in it for two main reasons, the first was its chicklet keyboard -- just, No!. The second was because it was so obviously hobbled so that it couldn't compete with the IBM XT or AT computers. Clones were starting to come out and were a much better deal, even if their physical designs weren't as nice.
you putting the heatsinks on the new processor was funny for some reason
Nice! Wow I wish I would have held on to my PCjr, tinkering with it would be great . I never understood what was meant by shared memory, Thanks! I'm surprised there's no work around for the keyboard.
Great video. It may not be the most compatible but I think you've taken it to the max. Great to see it restored and being used. 👍
Only recently discovered your channel and have just watched this PCjr series.
I was wondering why in the beginning you didn't just look for a basic transformer (16V I think it was) to try it out?
If you have a Variac you could just find something close and trim it to what was needed (18V or 22V might be other useable standard values that could be trimmed down for testing)
Great video! I loved my PC Junior, great memories. I thought the cartridge thing was genus and ahead of its time, I guess it went nowhere :) Loved it anyway
Now that you have the CF card PCB installed correctly, are you sure that you need that 5V jumper wire since the jumper setting for 5V on pin 20 might have worked if you had plugged the CF card PCB in correctly?
Great Series i had PCjr when i was a kid, Asked my parents for an Amiga 500 and they got me the used PCjr lol. I was so mad, i couldn't find any games that were as good as the Amiga, I remember i had DJ vs Larry bird basket ball had like 3 colors i think was horrible, I think the best game i found was the Kings Quest that you showed in the video. other than that i couldn't do crap with it. kept it till it died when i was a teenager and i bought my 1st Amiga a CD32 omg it was so awesome compared to that PCjr. Even though Amiga's were on their way out by then, :(
I'm going to bet they originally designed these board for use with Micron chips, those long persistence DRAM chips in the Apple IIc.
I have an IBM/PS2 386. IDE cards for the old MCA slots are pretty rare. So i have currently no alternative than using the 30mb anciant HDD or a SCSI Drive. But seeing this PCjr running on a compact flash gives me the hope that there will be a workaround someday.
@@adriansdigitalbasement I do have SCSI controller. But there are two things that borher me. The first thing is, that the 32bit MCA slots are currently busy with a XGA Video Adapter and a Memory Expansion Card. The second one is, that the SCSI controller only offers a internal 68pin connector which took me forever to find a cable for. There is also a ESDI Riser card for the floppy and the HDD but there is no way to find some alternatives. I'm clueless. Maybe i should leave out the XGA card and search for a 68 to 50pin SCSI adapter.
Great video dude. Love the pacing and the fact that you show mistakes :)
Curious to know if there's a TSR that could 'translate' keyboard presses somehow?
@@adriansdigitalbasement ISTR there being a module that plugged in place of the IR receiver to connect a regular PC or XT keyboard, it likely fixed the issues you demonstrated.
You could wire the PALs to an EPROM pinout and that way read them. There exists software that can then reduce the "image" back into logic equations, that you use to program a replacement GAL. The only problem... you need a working PAL in order to be able to read it. So unless some has an identical sidecar... repairing will be difficult.
Fascinating - does subLOGIC Jet 1.0 give any joy in the enhanced form of the computer ?
I think you are right - the PCjr is just a neat blip in computer history, but not very useful. I think a person would get more mileage out of a Commodore 64 than the PCjr. Glad you got it working, though!
Thanks Adrian, great informative video. Sidecars huh. I guess you do learn something new every day. 👍
adrian - re adding a second cf disk drive : similar to the ide/cf card you used, you could use a card w/ 2 cf 'slots'. there's even a jumper to set which cf is 'master', which is 'slave'. in today's world, we should find less-potentially-offensive descriptors. perhaps simply 'first' & 'second' would suffice. i'll try to send you one. abide
*Darth Vader:* "Adrian! Now that The Emperor just got Killed....Again, but this Time for Real. I Think... But I Digress! We Could Use a Man of Your Skills and Knowledge to Help Us Out in Our Hour of Need. *We Would be Honored if You Would Join Us!"*
Wish I kept my PCjr, as a kid all I really did with it was teach myself BASIC. I didn't even know about those expansion boards, if so there would have been a lot more to do with it
A random 1 o'clock in the morning thought, you can get from AliExpress an IR blaster that you can train and use through your phone, Google Assistant or Alexa. Wonder if it would work to emulate the keyboard. Imagine shouting 'Alexa, run Kings Quest 2 on the PCjr' and watching the commands spew out on to the screen via the blaster. 🤓
In old arcade machines (Z80) withGAL chips, they are powered by DC 5v, 12v, 24v, 36, -12v AND AC 9v. The 9v AC is used for timing (think it uses it as a clock in addition to the 2 crystals on the board (50hz in the U.K.)) removing or faulty 9vac psu causes our machine to reset all the time and come with random error messages, maybe the 9vAC was used for other reasons in addition for power?
You could put an OPL2LPT with that parallel port card!
I have one of those that I'm not using and I live in Portland! He can totally have it!
They're not terriby useful on 8088 machines. The redirection dirivers don't work so you're dependant on either patching software or newly written games that support it directly.
Interesting that you would recommend the Tandy 1000 for its supposed 100% compatibility... back in the day, our computer labs were 90% Tandy 1000's and I recall them having all sorts of compatibility issues, either locking up or having issues due to their superior, but peculiar video card. I personally had an early Zenith IBM PC-compatible, and it was _much_ more compatible and stable than the Tandys... it also cost 2-3 times as much.
That said, I'm sure with software improving to work with more systems over the years, the Tandy is now a perfectly acceptable compatible computer... and I'm not knocking it... they are relatively common and you can easily find parts for them... not quite the situation for Zenith fans like me.
@@adriansdigitalbasement I wish I did, but it's been too long. Last time I sat down in front of a Tandy 1000 was likely June of 1989. During this time frame, we used to use a different, uh... 'borrowed' game or utility every week, so we were inadvertently testing the compatibility constantly. and stuff that wouldn't run right got discarded pretty quickly and other stuff we just worked around. Looking back, its odd to think how common it was to reboot a frozen computer... and it was considered normal, accepted behavior to have an application that would crash 10% of the time. LOL!
I seem to recall the Tandy's had a special version of DOS that only booted on the Tandy, perhaps that caused issues.
I don't think I ever used a Tandy 2000 or PCjr, so we didn't have any software meant specifically for PCjrs. Several of my cohorts had a huge disdain for the PCjr. I went from a TI99/4a directly to a Zenith full of memory, so I considered myself fortunate.
Hi,Nice Machine, I have a Tandy 100 EX and have it running with DOS 3.31. (Support 400Mb disk)Will you get hardware from Computer Reset ? They have apparently plenty of PC Junior Hardware.
Now, just need to convince myself spending $80 on that jrIDE board makes sense. It's actually very tempting. I don't think I even have any 5.25" disks, so my PCjr hasn't had much to do yet. 😅
The beautiful thing about a hard drive adaptor in these kinds of things is you can bypass the original install media entirely. Just pull the card and copy files directly to it on another PC.
it's possible to install a USB floppy emulator in these old PCs, but the hard drive approach can actually be preferable in some ways, since locating PC disk images of original games with the copy protection intact is far rarer than abandonware dumps.
dos 4.0 is the last dos that works on the pc jr, the 1990 IBM PS/1 model 2011 has dos 4.0 in rom.... I bet it is not a coincidence!
BTW it is incredible the good old 2011 is so forgotten that nobody makes any expansion or mod for it... IT IS LITERALLY PcJr 2.0!
You're almost making me like the PCjr!
Ahh the ubiquitous 512Mb Rerory card lol
RUclips keeps recommending fellow PDX area folks to me.
I approve.
Creepy, RUclips, but still, I approve.
AkbKuku made his own PCjr power supply alternative. It is an adapter to connect a tiny atx power supply. Or a full size one from outside the case. Im sure you knew about it but some might not.
He has one installed right now
Oh lol sorry for my ignorance and poor memory.
I grew up with the PCjr, Still have 4 complete NIB PCjr's
I found those innodisk CF cards in some thinclients as well
Have you ever tried SD card to CF card adapters on your old computers? I bought one of these adapters, i haven't got it yet it is on the way.
I had an IBM Pentium 120 with a 20GB HDD, yeah it was good for its time.
The CF card connector has very delicate pins so, I guess, You may have some problems while inserting the CF. This because you can't check the allignment very well when you slot in thru that box and then have broken pins.
PCjr? Wow. I owned one at one time. It ended up seeming like a serious WASTE.
I did manage to get early internet exposure to a network called Delphi in the early days of Chat Rooms.
However, I did manage to sell it for $100, including an adapter for an IBM Selectric Typewriter!
Live and learn.
A bodge wire from pin 21 to 5v would make the CF to IDE adapter not need a jumper wire between the two boards!