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

Re:...end?

[jeffb (2.718)]

Yeah, Dice apparently accidentally the whole editorial staff.

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

[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

Re:...end?

[TangoMargarine]

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

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.