IBM's PC Junior Turns 30, Too 178
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."
...end? (Score:4, Funny)
Also the sentence. :-)
Re:...end? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, Dice apparently accidentally the whole editorial staff.
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"editor" and "button clicker who approves a story" are not the same thing, nor have they ever been at Slashdot.
Re:...end? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh come on, the editors obviously add a lot of value by carefully all the submissions.
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Also the sentence. :-)
That was my fault; the word was missing in my Submission [slashdot.org]
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They are close on the Dvorak layout...
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While they are only two keys apart, they are on different hands. Not much chance of accidental key presses.
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Not as bad as the reviews made it seem (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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But with all that documentation you could fix anything that broke and people would still be driving 1980s era IBMs because they just worked.
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IBM and Intel rocked that model for another decade, if you look at the PS/2 line up, half of them were very nearly obsolete when they were released. Intel had it's SX chips..
What kind of reality distortion field do you think that team had? I don't mean this in an offensive way but the Mac was demonstrated and announced at nearly the same time, (with it's own "SX" style 16bit bus 32bit chip...) People talk about the Apple reality distortion field but I can't imagine what being on the PC Jr. team mus
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The mac's 68000 chip, though, was the same generation as the 8086.
Intel went from 8 to 16 bits, while motorola put 32 bits inside the 16 bit package at a time neither *had* a 32 bit bus available. They also indicated the expansion path (extra register length, etc.) that a fully flushed out 68k would have.
The 68k pushed what could be done, while the SX were deliberate limitations
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And the limitations were obvious. They *could* have just had a price reduced version of the PC, more plastic and less metal, less memory in a base system but still expandable, slower clock speed, etc. Then it would have been fully compatible but not in competition with the business PC. Instead the clones did this just a year or two later, and it was the clones who turned the PC into a dominant standard and not IBM.
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I didn't know anyone with a Jr, but I did have a friend with a Tandy 1000 of some flavor. It was pretty cool, but he always had software compatibility problems.
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I never ran into software compatibility problems with my 1000 (for non-game software), but it sucked that Tandy essentially put an EGA adapter in it, but then modified it enough that EGA software wouldn't work with it.. :(
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Yeah, we were like 10 at the time so I can pretty much only comment on game software :) IIRC, you had to have "TGA" support.
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but then modified it enough that EGA software wouldn't work with it..
The Tandy 1000 did not support the 640x350x16 mode that EGA boasted, nor did it support EGA's 64-color base palette (The Tandy 1000 just had a single static 16-color palette in 320x200 mode)
Tandy 1000 was a PCJr clone (Plantronics, not EGA) (Score:2)
I never ran into software compatibility problems with my 1000 (for non-game software), but it sucked that Tandy essentially put an EGA adapter in it, but then modified it enough that EGA software wouldn't work with it.. :(
It was not modified EGA at all. It had exactly the same video as the PCJr and output one bit per RGB + one bit luminance just like and compatible with CGA.
EGA was very different in memory layout and EGA monitors used two bits per component.
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Yes. My first computer was a Tandy 1000HX (but in the mid-90's after it was obsolete). I loved that thing - and there was no shortage of software that had a special mode for Tandy/Jr. graphics and the great 3-voice sound. Space Quest II looked and sounded outstanding for its time.
I never had any problems, though, and most of my games had special support for Tandy graphics/sound (few of them called it PC Jr. support - just Tandy).
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Yes, usually not an effective long-term strategy. That's what you get for making a soda salesman CEO... a flavor for every demographic. Apple seems to have learned from their past - rather than create a gimped version of your product for the low end, just stay out of the low end altogether. I can't decide if the 5C is an example of them returning to past mistakes or if it was simply an ugly product without enough of a dollar savings to justify the downgrade.
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For what PCs were at that time, it was probably the best you could whish for.
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Apple ProDOS had most of that, albeit it was 8-bit.
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Crikey, I remember running OS/2 level 1 on a CoCo 2 and having device driver, memory management and i/o subsystems far more advanced than pretty much any other home computer; all on an 8 bit processor with 64k of RAM.
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Not really a full operating system though. More like a big set of system libraries and some utilities. Given the underpowered CPU it had and the severe memory limitations you could argue they couldn't do better. But you can quibble with that too. The PC DOS utilities were very underpowered from what they could have been, limited because it was assumed they were all loaded off of floppy disks. DOS was essentially derived from ideas of CP/M and it shows, it was never intended to be more than a dumb progr
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I wonder what the D stood for..almost like it was a system for operating a disk...
Oh well, I guess that's been lost to time~
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, 128K of RAM!,
I was too young to use computers then. Was that enough for everyone?
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It ought to be. :)
Re:Not as bad as the reviews made it seem (Score:4, Informative)
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!
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I thought that the keyboard was pretty good if you didn't know how to touch-type, it helped you not mash keys. Once you knew where the keys were, then it would just slow you down.
All I ever did with the PCjr was LOGO, for which it was a better platform than the Apple II. It was the first PC I used, though. Later, I was given an IBM PC with a 30MB HDD and an ISA card that brought it up to 448k RAM and added a RTC. Fancy!
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We got our PCjr in 1985 some time. It did not have the infamous chiclet keyboard that was so reviled. It was still a condensed keyboard [electronic...tsales.com] with no function keys, however.
The lack of function keys definitely made office and productivity software written for the PC more difficult to use since it became a two key press. The keyboard didn't work well with combination presses with the Fn key, either, so you often had to press Fn, wait a moment, then press the key that corresponded to the key you wanted. It was
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about 2000.
but a 486 in 1990 must have been horribly expensive.
I still remember the finnish computer catalog from around 1990. it only had 386dx's as the higher end though. but the point is, it still had 8086's as well and 286's - so the price range was from around 10 000(lowish end monthly salary) fim to 100 000 fim(some sort of a car).
now imagine buying a computer for 300 bucks vs 30000 - sure you can do it but you're really going to be just piling up a bunch of expensive extras to hit the mark and not go
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The keyboard was horrible, yes, but that was fixed within months (I think people could swap the keyboards for free?).
As proof that computer companies have always blindly followed in the footsteps of other computer companies and repeated their UI mistakes, the following computers preceded PCjr's bad keyboard design:
When the PC/jr came out, the Commodore 64, Commodore Vic 20, Apple II series, Texas Instruments and Mac computers all had decent keyboards but IBM decided to reinvent keyboards
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I wonder how many people who once hated one of those keyboards that had poor tactile feedback now type away merrily on their phone and pad touchscreens?
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no, it did NOT run the normal IBM PC apps that were popular and desired, the people who could afford the thing tried to run their business apps on it. and most games looked aweful on it
Was as bad as the reviews made it seem (Score:2)
The original "chiclet" style had tall, hard plastic keys which made touch-typing virtually impossible and a better keyboard was offered, but not for free.
The design limited the expansion, memory and speed of the system. For instance, with no DMA capability, the keyboard is disabled when accessing the floppy drive. Even worse, the serial port will drop data when the floppy
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ahhh yeah...the RAM!!
i remember...i taught my high school best friend (who currently now works in IT) how to create a DOS Ramdrive with "all that memory" in order to really speed up this billing program he used for his lawn service.
to his credit, from groking how the scripts worked and gaining an interest in computers, he ended up leaving the wonderful wacky world of lawn care and became (i believe) an IT security professional.
incidentally, he got the machine as a hand-me-down from his dad, who actually wor
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RAM disks were great on the Mac Plus too. Saving directly to floppy disk was gruesome and time consuming. Same goes for the other platforms of the day.
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Yeah! As I noted below, I'd use my PCjr's RAM disk to run Infocom adventures at lightning speed :) Beats waiting for the non-DMA floppy to access for every fargin' command you typed...
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I bought one soon after the new keyboard was issued. You didn't have to send back the old keyboard as a trade, you could just keep it or throw it away.
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The lack of dedicated graphics memory was an issue yes, but there were expansion packs for that.
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True, but a C64 with a floppy drive and monitor would exceed the 1000$ barrier as well.
Citation, please
It just so happens that 1984 was the year that I bought my C=64, and it cost $150. And also (a little later) in 1984, after getting bored of loading Telengard from cassette, and really wanting to play Zork that I bought my 1541 from Toys R' US, for $150. That's $300. I don't recall the monitor prices (I used a used TV i picked up at a flea market), but I believe they were $300-$400.
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but it would have been around 450â for a C64 I guess. Nobody I knew that had a C64 used floppies, as the floppy drive
was too expensive. Everyone used tape around here.
According to Wikipedia the price for a C64+Disk drive was around 900$ at that time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
And that only gave you a computer with basic, limited expansion and no monitor.
I'm not denying that the PCjr
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Maybe there were price differences between the US and European markets?
Indeed.
Nobody I knew that had a C64 used floppies, as the floppy drive
In the US, many of the good games were on floppy so C64 owners needed 1541's
Re:Not as bad as the reviews made it seem (Score:5, Insightful)
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?"
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...why are people so *angry* all the time?
There comes a time when the jewels cease to sparkle, when the gold loses its luster, when the throne room becomes a prison, and all that is left is a nerd's love for his antiquated computing platform.
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Sponge Bath wins the internet for today.
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You almost treat his post as a personal attack against your mother
His mother was a TRS80, you insensitive clod!
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> I'll never understand these antagonistic replies on Slashdot.
You sound like tool, you get called a tool.
This has nothing to do with Slashdot. HELL. It doesn't even have anything to do with the Internet. That's something you should be aware of if you were computing when the PCjr wasn't just a historical footnote.
Fond memories (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ah yes the memories! I also remember my original floppy of MS Flight Simulator (no sure if it was 1 or 2) infected with ping pong. That was the good ol' times with funny viruses.
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A 12 year old that didn't know better sure enjoyed his PCJr
My parents bought a PC/AT [vintage-computer.com] when I was 14 or 15. It had a 1.2 meg floppy and a 20 meg harddrive. I learned a lot on that machine and was very happy with it because I just didn't know better. I lost my innocence in 1988 or 1989, when I saw the (discontinued by then) Amiga 1000 [oldcomputers.net]in person for the first time.
It is still hard for me to believe that the first Amiga came out only 18 months after the PC Jr.
What I remember most: (Score:4, Interesting)
Wizardry being dark, and scary encounters.
What I remember most from Ultima was agonizing over the start questions :)
http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/562... [gamefaqs.com]
http://www.tk421.net/ultima/ [tk421.net]
http://www.beastwithin.org/use... [beastwithin.org]
Not too bad...for a PC. (Score:2)
I bought one second-hand, circa 1986. It had the later, non-chiclet keyboard, and a Tecmar 256K expansion. I modded the Tecmar board to 640K and then it was functionally the equivalent of an XT with CGA graphics. Enjoyed it for a couple years before trading up to an Amiga 1000. Prior to Windows 95, I think most any PC was at a disadvantage in the home market.
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who has actually used one? (Score:2)
Not having access to other computers at the time I never realize how big of a joke/flop it was considered until I was older. I don't think i was harmed by the use of the Jr. Funny thing is that most people I have talked to that make fun of it never touched one.
Had one. Liked it. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Shouldn't have called it the PC jr. (Score:2)
PCjr and the Crash (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Doubt it. There were a handful of decent games provided on cartridge from Imagic and some games that took advantage of PCjr specific video or sound, like Kings Quest and MS Flight Simulator. That level of interest does not indicate an entire industry was hoodwinked.
Spinaker's educational games for pre-schoolers were terrible and they deserved to go out of business on their own merits. ;-0
Mike
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Commercial plop? (Score:3)
Commercial Flop? (Score:3)
Didn't IBM basically consider the entire PC product a commercial flop? Was it ever considered a success (ie profitable)? I thought they considered it a commercial loser, but a foot in the door for their larger boxes.
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Later on, when it came to the PS2 range, I remember going to an IBM presentation. They were trying to get the same software running on everything from the PS2 PCs to mainframe with unified architecture for programming, GUI etc. Trouble was, the actual machines were too far removed from what was by then a booming and standardised architecture so o
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It was a license to coin money. (Score:3, Informative)
Didn't IBM basically consider the entire PC product a commercial flop? Was it ever considered a success (ie profitable)?
By the end of 1982 IBM was selling a PC every minute of the business day. Although the PC only provided 2-3% of sales. IBM found that it had underestimated demand by as much as 800%, and because its prices were based on forecasts of much lower volume, the PC became very profitable. By 1983 the IBU had 4,000 employees and became the Entry Systems Division based in Boca Raton, and the PC surpassed the Apple II as the best-selling personal computer.
By 1984 IBM had $4 billion in annual PC revenue, more than twice that of Apple and as much as the sales of Apple, Commodore, HP, and Sperry combined. A Fortune survey found that 56% of American companies with personal computers used IBM PCs, compared to Apple's 16%.
IBM Personal Computer [wikipedia.org]
then the "clones" moved in (Score:2)
Not that bad. (Score:2)
They really were not that bad, but those "chicklet" keyboards were awful. Yes, they were way overpriced, but those people who had the cash, and were interested in buying one, were turned off by those terrible keyboards. IBM eventually started selling them with keyboards comparable to those on their PC, but it was too little, too late.
Re:Not that bad. (Score:4, Interesting)
By the way, the video above shows the second generation keyboard. The infamous "chiclet [google.com]" 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.
I learned to spell playing KQ (Score:2)
I learned to spell playing King's Quest I, which is still fond in my memories. My mom wrote down a list of the words I would need to interact with the (frankly, pathetic) parser in the game, and left it to me to remember and figure out which word was which and how to use them. We bought several other games
Whats so special about 30th (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Funny)
that's the magical median age when slashdotters leave their mother's basement
Re:Whats so special about 30th (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Looking forward to the Slashdotting! (Score:2)
Regards, Mike (yes, the one that owns the page referenced in the summary) ...
$100 Tablet continues the dream and folly (Score:2)
The $100 tablet with as much power as iPad is the equivalent dream. Its getting close, but not quite there here. Some are selling underpowered tablets under $200 and shooting themselves in the foot just like the PC Junior. But we'll get there soon enough.
Three classic strikes (Score:3)
The PCjr had three strikes against it right out of the box...
Even without it's various technical and performance problems and unclear target market, it still would have had a tough time gaining traction.
PC Jr in HS CS labs in 1989... (Score:2)
We were using the PC Jr for Pascal in late 80s HS CS classes. They were completely adequate and had that distinctive higher end IBM look and feel. There were a bunch of terrible beige box PCs at the time and the IBMs actually looked ok and seemed to work fine for what we did.
My favorite though was the Compaq luggable beast. About 40lbs in a suitcase form factor, the thing was a beast! Dad splurged for dual 5.25" drives and we eventually got a 30 MB 1.5 slot HDD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Portab [wikipedia.org]
We had a PCjr (Score:2)
Got one back in 84 for Christmas IIRC. I ended up using it through to the end of my 2nd year of university, so a bit over 7 years. Of course by that time we'd maxed out the RAM & added a second external floppy. Best hack I had at the time: making a 360K RAM disk and copying the contents of any Infocom game floppies to it so they'd run lightning quick! Otherwise each command had to access the floppy, slowing everything down.
Of course what I really wanted was an Amiga, but we couldn't afford it. :)
My first computer, and introduction to programming (Score:2)
This computer has a lot of fond memories for me. Having grown up very poor, we couldn't afford something like this. My uncle gave us his old one so my mother could do word processing from home. I used it to play games all the time until the floppy drive died. After that, the only thing I could do on it was load up the BASIC cartridge. If I wanted to do anything on the computer, I'd have to program it first, and the moment the computer turned off lose it forever. I would get the computer magazines that
It was a great machine. (Score:2)
The PCjr was my first computer growing up. If it had a shortcoming it was only the existence of the PC. But before EGA came along it was the only way in the PC world, to enjoy 16 color graphics. Also, with a 3-channel speak it offered a better audio experience than you got out of the IBM PC's speaker. Ours came with two keyboards, the chiclet keyboard everyone complained about and a replacement with conventional keys. As a kid, I preferred the look of the chiclet keyboard, but the keys had too much travel f
My first computer (Score:3)
October 31, 1985
Three things of note that happened that day:
1 - We got in a crash with a parked car while delivering newspapers.
2 - My mom felt so guilty about crashing that she offered my brother and I the option to stay home from school "If we felt bad." (Yes, we both stayed home.)
3 - My parents bought our first computer: an IBM PCjr.
While I remember all three events with clarity, I don't think I would remember #1 & #2 quite so viscerally if the computer hadn't shown up that day. Having that computer in my house profoundly affected my life in ways that I probably don't understand.
The first day we had the computer in the house, and didn't have the basic cartridge to run any programs, I would boot it over and over to "play" with the little man that would come out and place the key on the screen you had just pressed on the keyboard. I tried all sorts of combinations: multiple, concurrent key presses; speedy consecutive key presses; top left to bottom right; ... you get the idea. It seems silly now that I spent so much time on such a trivial task, but it was amazing to me to be able to press a key and see something change on the screen.
When my cousin who worked at Bell Labs came over and programmed the first line of Beethoven's 5th symphony to play on the PC speaker using Basic, I was hooked. I tweaked his program over and over to change pitch and duration of each note, then revert it back.
And Jumpman. Oh, Jumpman! My parents hated that we played that game so much because we would fight about it, but we would also sit and watch each other play for hours. Of course, it really, really ticked me off when I would play for 3 hours, set the high score, then my oldest brother would come along and blow away my score in one game. Resetting the top score matrix was a big no-no, but my fingers may have slipped once or twice...
All in all, even if it was a failure as a system, it affected me and my career. I write code for a living because of that computer. I am not saying that I wouldn't have had the same experience with a Commodore 64 (which I owned for one blissful weekend until my Mom made me sell it back to the kid I bought it from because I only played Space Invaders even though I swore I would use it to write programs), but it all started with a PC Junior.
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The Colleco Adam? That was a design nightmare.
Isn't that the one that would degauss any tapes that you left inserted, because it generated a small EMP when the power switch was flipped?
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And you could open the drive door while the tape was moving, destroying it in the process.
A friend once pulled a cartridge out of a Sinclair microdrive when it was operating. We never realized there was that much tape inside them until we saw it spewed out all over the floor.
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Don't forget that the Adam's smarts were in the printer. If that needed work (and printers of that sort were quite unreliable back then) the whole system was unusable.
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ADAM! (Score:2)
But it all comes in one box!
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I have a Tandy in my basement that will turn 30 this November. Still runs too, but they don't seem to make new software for it anymore...
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I was 13 when I got my hands on a 10 year old Tandy 1000. My first computer, and I didn't care that it was outdated because Windows 95 hadn't quite come out yet. Deskmate really was great for the time.
Deskmate doesn't need real Tandy DOS to run. What you need is DOSBox. It has support for emulating the Tandy 1000 hardware:
http://www.vogons.org/viewtopi... [vogons.org]
I've had good success even with some of the full color games with 16-color Tandy graphics support and 3-voice sound (e.g. Sierra adventure games)
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I definitely should have said this in my other post. I laugh and laugh at the Mac's chiclet crap. They're horrible to use for touch typing, just one step above a membrane keyboard. Yet everyone "loves" them because Steve Jobs told them to.
I swapped my chiclet infrared keyboard for the heavy-ass IBM ke
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I definitely should have said this in my other post. I laugh and laugh at the Mac's chiclet crap. They're horrible to use for touch typing, just one step above a membrane keyboard. Yet everyone "loves" them because Steve Jobs told them to.
The keyboards on the MacBooks are just fine. Actually very nice, because the amount of finger action needed to type is minimal. Returning your compliment, it's clear that you have been brainwashed by Google and Samsung to make such a statement.
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funny since what kind of kb's do google and samsung sell... ?
and "fine" if you mean "not totally unusable for touch typing". what sucks 100% 200proof monkeyballs on them is quite simply this: half of the fucking characters one needs to type eventually AREN'T FUCKING PRINTED ON THE FUCKING KEYS for aesthetic reasons! so good luck hunting where £ is the one time you need it!
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The Commie already had it's retrospective articles.
It was certainly a much more populist machine, oddly enough given it's nickname.