"I'm going to be adding as many side cards & ridiculous upgrades to this IBM PC Jr. as I can...first we're going to need to make ourselves a drink." LOL, no truer words have ever been spoken.
Great video! One thing: Zyll was not "clearly made for the PCjr", but was instead a PC game that supported the PCjr. On stock unexpanded PCjrs, it comes up in 40-column mode, as most PCjrs were expected to be connected to a television. IBM marketed PC and PCjr games in the same packaging; the only way to tell if it was a PCjr-specific title is by checking the hardware requirements on the back. PCjr support ranged from "use 16 color graphics and 3-voice sound" all the way down to "don't crash the system, just let it run the same way it does on the PC". Zyll was the latter.
The issue you had with the Cluster Attachment is probably a memory conflict. The Cluster Attachment uses C0000-C7FFF. If you set the jrIDE to use C8000-CBFFF, and the Expansion chassis to use CC000-CCFFF, this allows them to work with both the Cluster Attachment and Speech Attachment (which uses CE000-CFFFF). I also suggest having the Cluster Attachment after that Power Expansion attachment. And modding one of the Printer sidecars to LPT2 lets you add another sidecar to the setup.
Another great one Jeremy! I don't think there were many IBM PCjr reaching Europe, so this was super fun to experience. My first PC experience was with a friend who's dad had an Amstrad PC with dual 5.25 floppy drives only. This was back in 1988 and I distinctly remember we played Maniac Mansion, Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer and Digger in glorious CGA colours and PC speker torture sound. IBM had some good ideas, but like most big corporations they turned it into a turd by trying to control and limit the consumers. It never has worked, and it never will - at least not in the long run. When my friend's brother got an Amiga 2000, we didn't bother with PCs anymore, and my first computer became an Amiga 500 in 1989. That lasted only until 1991 when I got a 386SX-25 and I've been a PC guy ever since. When computer games became more advanced with strategy games like Civilization and Railroad Tycoon, the Amiga was simply too slow to bother with anymore... Keep on keeping on. Great videos!
Thank you so much for this video, Jeremy! I had a PCjr as my first computer and I bought one this week to relive the experience. This has been so helpful to know what you were going through as I try to get mine working as well. Much appreciated!
Nice PCjr and video. Since you have the racore expansion with racore floppy controller there could be compatibility issues with the gotek. Good luck and thanks for sharing your PCjr adventure. ;)
Nice DOScember video Jeremy! Disk rot is a real thing for sure, however it could also be your PCjr floppy drives need to be cleaned and serviced. Have you tried that yet?
@@JeremysRetroBar I've recently kind of taken an interest in the evolution of sound capabilities for PCs in the 80s (just curiosity-wise) Was it basically the IBM PC beep speaker, then the IBM PC Jr and Tandy 1000 sound chip, and then the Ad Lib card in 1987, and then Creative Sound Blaster steals the market away from Ad Lib? Is that pretty much the history of PC sound in a nutshell?
@@TheSulross Yeah, I'd say that really sums it up. I know there were other weird sound options like Disney Sound Source and some weird parallel port sound cards. LGR has covered a bunch of the weirder sound solutions.
You already have an idea controller. Why not use an ide to cf adaptor? Then just set it up in bios. Only downsize is you can only use size the bios will support so won’t be very large. No need for the xtide . I’ve done this with many old 386 and 286 machines. Also did you try to look up hd specs. You may just need to type hd info into bios and may just work if you can hear it spin up.
Hi Jeremy, interesting to see that jr-IDE interface! To use the DOM with a more modern PC could you buy a short male-to-female 40-pin IDE *extension* cable? Cut the wire for pin 20 in the ribbon and splice in a connection for 5V to supply power to the DOM? Then plug the extension into an IDE equipped motherboard and take the 5V supply from (for example) a floppy power connector.
I'm surprised the memory in the Racore drive expansion didn't conflict with the RAM on the jrIDE. Has this computer been working well since you completed it? I have a similar one on the way.
Both RAM banks are active since you cannot disable the RAM on the JR-IDE (well unless you reprogram the CPLD). Each RAM bank stores what is written and since they both return the same values on read, nothing bad happens.
Ah I see the Racore expansion kit. My PCjr had that too. I didn't have the driver disk with it. But still wasn't bad for WordStar for my high school term paper. DOS 4.01 was useless though. LGR had his PCjr going nuts from his florescent lights interfering with the IR sensor. Lol!
@@JeremysRetroBar yeah. I liked that idea of a wireless keyboard. It has a 6-8 ft range but it has to be aiming right at the sensor. I had the second version of the keyboard. It wasn't bad to type on. Much better than that atrocious chicklet one!
Have you tried transferring files over the serial connection? Now that you have the adapter, you should be able to use any machine with a serial port (or a modern computer with a serial-to-USB adapter) to copy files. You should be able to get 5 KB/s, not great, but will transfer a disk worth of software in a minute or so :)
This is the one thing I didn’t try. I did try Laplink, but it wouldn’t run on the PCjr because of the weird way it allocates ram. Retro tech Chris sent me a link to one of his videos for the regular serial connection that I’ll definitely try.
![TEEDEE TADA - DIAMOND NARAKORN X LEGO LYKN [Special Dance Performance]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QgtZedFeumA/mqdefault.jpg)
"I'm going to be adding as many side cards & ridiculous upgrades to this IBM PC Jr. as I can...first we're going to need to make ourselves a drink." LOL, no truer words have ever been spoken.
😆
Great video!
One thing: Zyll was not "clearly made for the PCjr", but was instead a PC game that supported the PCjr. On stock unexpanded PCjrs, it comes up in 40-column mode, as most PCjrs were expected to be connected to a television. IBM marketed PC and PCjr games in the same packaging; the only way to tell if it was a PCjr-specific title is by checking the hardware requirements on the back.
PCjr support ranged from "use 16 color graphics and 3-voice sound" all the way down to "don't crash the system, just let it run the same way it does on the PC". Zyll was the latter.
The issue you had with the Cluster Attachment is probably a memory conflict. The Cluster Attachment uses C0000-C7FFF. If you set the jrIDE to use C8000-CBFFF, and the Expansion chassis to use CC000-CCFFF, this allows them to work with both the Cluster Attachment and Speech Attachment (which uses CE000-CFFFF). I also suggest having the Cluster Attachment after that Power Expansion attachment. And modding one of the Printer sidecars to LPT2 lets you add another sidecar to the setup.
Thanks for the detailed description.
Another great one Jeremy! I don't think there were many IBM PCjr reaching Europe, so this was super fun to experience. My first PC experience was with a friend who's dad had an Amstrad PC with dual 5.25 floppy drives only. This was back in 1988 and I distinctly remember we played Maniac Mansion, Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer and Digger in glorious CGA colours and PC speker torture sound. IBM had some good ideas, but like most big corporations they turned it into a turd by trying to control and limit the consumers. It never has worked, and it never will - at least not in the long run.
When my friend's brother got an Amiga 2000, we didn't bother with PCs anymore, and my first computer became an Amiga 500 in 1989. That lasted only until 1991 when I got a 386SX-25 and I've been a PC guy ever since. When computer games became more advanced with strategy games like Civilization and Railroad Tycoon, the Amiga was simply too slow to bother with anymore...
Keep on keeping on. Great videos!
Superb, Jeremy! I love it! This is a very nice Tandy 1000 clone, haha :) Oh... right, it was the other way around!
Haha exactly.
Hah Chris! I was thinking the same thing! Nice Tandy 1000 clone LOL!!!
Great DOScember video! I wish that Computer Reset had an eBay store.
Subscribe to that 😅
Great video, really dig your channel! Thanks for posting!!!
Thanks!
Insane! Never knew the PCjr had that much potential...
Thank you so much for this video, Jeremy! I had a PCjr as my first computer and I bought one this week to relive the experience. This has been so helpful to know what you were going through as I try to get mine working as well. Much appreciated!
Nice PCjr and video. Since you have the racore expansion with racore floppy controller there could be compatibility issues with the gotek. Good luck and thanks for sharing your PCjr adventure. ;)
That’s exactly my thought. I’m glad you liked the video.
Nice DOScember video Jeremy! Disk rot is a real thing for sure, however it could also be your PCjr floppy drives need to be cleaned and serviced. Have you tried that yet?
You are correct. I probably need to do that as well. Some of the software I’ve tried in different computers with similar results.
Great video. Dang, totally missed DOScember!
at least the Tandy 1000 unit sales success made it worthwhile for game publishers to support the graphics and sound capabilities of the IBM PC Jr
Yeah in Ken Williams book he says that if Tandy had not been successful Sierra would have gone out of business in 1985.
@@JeremysRetroBar I've recently kind of taken an interest in the evolution of sound capabilities for PCs in the 80s (just curiosity-wise)
Was it basically the IBM PC beep speaker, then the IBM PC Jr and Tandy 1000 sound chip, and then the Ad Lib card in 1987, and then Creative Sound Blaster steals the market away from Ad Lib?
Is that pretty much the history of PC sound in a nutshell?
@@TheSulross Yeah, I'd say that really sums it up. I know there were other weird sound options like Disney Sound Source and some weird parallel port sound cards. LGR has covered a bunch of the weirder sound solutions.
You already have an idea controller. Why not use an ide to cf adaptor? Then just set it up in bios. Only downsize is you can only use size the bios will support so won’t be very large. No need for the xtide . I’ve done this with many old 386 and 286 machines. Also did you try to look up hd specs. You may just need to type hd info into bios and may just work if you can hear it spin up.
Cheers!
Hi Jeremy, interesting to see that jr-IDE interface! To use the DOM with a more modern PC could you buy a short male-to-female 40-pin IDE *extension* cable? Cut the wire for pin 20 in the ribbon and splice in a connection for 5V to supply power to the DOM? Then plug the extension into an IDE equipped motherboard and take the 5V supply from (for example) a floppy power connector.
Good point.
To connect your DOM, try a simple but tall 2x20 pin header going into an IDE cable. Just try to mash it together enough to make contact.
I think this would be a mirror image of the pin order.
I'm surprised the memory in the Racore drive expansion didn't conflict with the RAM on the jrIDE. Has this computer been working well since you completed it? I have a similar one on the way.
Both RAM banks are active since you cannot disable the RAM on the JR-IDE (well unless you reprogram the CPLD). Each RAM bank stores what is written and since they both return the same values on read, nothing bad happens.
Ah I see the Racore expansion kit.
My PCjr had that too. I didn't have the driver disk with it. But still wasn't bad for WordStar for my high school term paper.
DOS 4.01 was useless though.
LGR had his PCjr going nuts from his florescent lights interfering with the IR sensor. Lol!
That’s funny. I totally forgot it has the IR sensor.
@@JeremysRetroBar yeah. I liked that idea of a wireless keyboard. It has a 6-8 ft range but it has to be aiming right at the sensor.
I had the second version of the keyboard. It wasn't bad to type on. Much better than that atrocious chicklet one!
hi the ibm pcjr keyboard know use ibm 5150 and 5160 and higher same ibm series?
Have you tried transferring files over the serial connection? Now that you have the adapter, you should be able to use any machine with a serial port (or a modern computer with a serial-to-USB adapter) to copy files. You should be able to get 5 KB/s, not great, but will transfer a disk worth of software in a minute or so :)
This is the one thing I didn’t try. I did try Laplink, but it wouldn’t run on the PCjr because of the weird way it allocates ram. Retro tech Chris sent me a link to one of his videos for the regular serial connection that I’ll definitely try.