IBM's PC Junior Turns 30, Too

McGruber writes "Like the Mac, the IBM PC Junior first went on sale in late January 1984. That is where the similarities end — the PC Junior became the biggest PC dud of all time. Back on May 17, 1984, the NY Times reported that the PC Junior 'is too expensive for casual home users, but, at the same time, is not nearly powerful enough for serious computer users who can afford a more capable machine.' The article also quoted Peter Norton, then still a human programmer who had not yet morphed into a Brand, who said that the PC Junior 'may well be targeted at a gray area in the market that just does not exist.'' IBM cancelled the machine in March 1985, after only selling 270,000 of them. While it was a commercial flop, the machine is still liked by some. Michael Brutman's PCJr page attempts to preserve the history and technical information of the IBM PCjr and YouTube has a video of a PC Junior running a demo."

Comments

...end?

[QilessQi]

That is where the similarities —

Also the sentence. :-)

Re:...end?

[jeffb (2.718)]

Yeah, Dice apparently accidentally the whole editorial staff.

Re:...end?

[TangoMargarine]

Oh come on, the editors obviously add a lot of value by carefully all the submissions.

Not as bad as the reviews made it seem

[billcarson]

The keyboard was horrible, yes, but that was fixed within months (I think people could swap the keyboards for free?).
But for the money you got a lot more than the other home computers: a floppy drive, a computer that had a real
operating system, 128K of RAM!, compatibility with most PC applications, etc. Plus this was the computer that made
the Sierra Adventure games shine! (the enhanced graphics and sound made Leisure suit larry a lot better looking than its PC counterpart).
The BIOS interrupt changes may have caused some problems (the keyboard was mapped to the NMI, so you couldn't
touch it while transfering files f.i.) or compatibility issues, but that was only of minor concern at the time.
I still don't consider the PCjr a poorly engineered machine. There were better contenders in that category (some of the Franklin PCs, for instance)

Re:Not as bad as the reviews made it seem

[MightyYar]

I think people were most offended by the artificial limitations. Most computer companies were pushing their hardware to its limits in order to stay competitive, and here comes a PC with nice hardware that is artificially gimped to protect the more expensive products. It's one thing to be limited by engineering - quite another to be limited my marketing. With a typical product, you can subjectively debate the relative value - but in this case, marketing handed you a concrete, objective list of items that you were not getting for your money.

Re:Not as bad as the reviews made it seem

[Archangel Michael]

The PCjr has the distinction of the first IBM PC to be able to use more than 640k, due to the weirdness of the Video BIOS location. The anomaly is also the reason why people had to buy programs that said "PCjr Compatible". If I recall, my Dad's PCjr could address nearly 768k, without a Memory Manager doing funky stuff to jam TSR's into the space between 640k and 1mb.

AHhhhh good times!

Re:Not as bad as the reviews made it seem

[CohibaVancouver]

I'll never understand these antagonistic replies on Slashdot. I suppose it's across the internet, but gosh darn it, why are people so *angry* all the time? Guy says, in his opinion, and with the passage of time, that maybe the device wasn't as bad as everybody makes it out to be.

You almost treat his post as a personal attack against your mother and everything else you hold dear.

Why?

It's a just a guy posting some stuff on a forum that 0.1% of the general public reads. Who cares?

Elucidate me. Why do people like you get so upset, resorting to silly replies like "Go get a job at Dell?"

Fond memories

[Bayoudegradeable]

Dot matrix printer, Wizardry, Ultima IV (I think?), MicroLeague Baseball, Flight Simulator. A 12 year old that didn't know better sure enjoyed his PCJr

Had one. Liked it.

[Speare]

I had one, and I really liked it. It lacked DMA on the floppy drive so things were a bit slower during a file load or save. It only had one bay. Otherwise, it was basically the same as the PC (my dad had a low-serial-number model 5150). It had a couple more graphics modes than the standard VGA, enabling a lot of games to use 16 colors rather than 4. Nobody I knew ever used the "sidecar" bus for anything worthwhile.

PCjr and the Crash

[Pentomino]

I attended a panel of veteran video game programmers from the Phoenix area a few years ago. They asserted that the PCjr had a greater role in the video game crash of 1984 than people realize. Many software companies bought into IBM's hype that the PCjr would dominate the market, and put a lot of resources into PCjr development, and ended up going bankrupt when the PCjr failed.

Whats so special about 30th

[rossdee]

Whats so special about 30th anniversary? Is 30 some kind of magic number?

I believe in western culture that 25th anniversary is a special celebration for married couples, (silver) and also 50th (gold)
And some cultures have special significance of 15th bithday, and/or 21st birthday

Re:Whats so special about 30th

[rubycodez]

that's the magical median age when slashdotters leave their mother's basement

Re:Whats so special about 30th

[dj245]

Whats so special about 30th anniversary? Is 30 some kind of magic number?

I believe in western culture that 25th anniversary is a special celebration for married couples, (silver) and also 50th (gold) And some cultures have special significance of 15th bithday, and/or 21st birthday

It is roughly a generation. I've gone back in my family tree about 20 generations and 30 years is just about the average difference between parents and child. Yes, even back in medeival times.

I suppose you could consider it special because it means that people who grew up with computers of that era are now buying pocket supercomputers for their children.

What I remember most:

[DarthVain]

Wizardry being dark, and scary encounters.

What I remember most from Ultima was agonizing over the start questions :)
http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/562...
http://www.tk421.net/ultima/
http://www.beastwithin.org/use...

Re:Not that bad.

[hey!]

By the way, the video above shows the second generation keyboard. The infamous "chiclet" keboard had no labels on the keycaps. The letter labels were on the surface of the keyboard between rows of keys, in order to permit overlays. That was a clever idea, but it wasn't going to fly in an era where mechanical switch keyboards were the norm.

Of course today crummy keyboards are the norm; I bet the second generation PCJr keyboard beats what most people are using these days.