Unlike my floppy drive box, only a single goat has pissed on my PCjr box
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The D port is where you can connect a display. You can use a special cable to attach a normal CGA monitor. You can purchase such a cable for $20 from someone who got it from Computer Reset for $3
@gloriouscow I wish I knew why I was spending so much time and money trying to save my flood victim PCjr
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A strange property of the gaping M port is that no light can escape it. This is normal.
The M port was for a modem but this was a stupid move on Ibm's part because the Internet hadn't been invented yet.
@gloriouscow that's the "manicure" slot. You can drop fingernail clippings in there, just like you would put razors in that slot in your medicine cabinet.
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The D port is where you can connect a display. You can use a special cable to attach a normal CGA monitor. You can purchase such a cable for $20 from someone who got it from Computer Reset for $3
The most famous orifices on the PCjr though have to be the cartridge slots. They're a pair of dust magnets located directly under the floppy drive.
Inserting a cartridge into one of these will immediately reboot the system without confirmation. Be sure to do that while Daddy is working on a spreadsheet.
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The most important port on the IBM PCjr is the LP port, which is for the light pen.
From left to right, we have the joystick ports, J J, after which JJ Abrams was named.
Nobody knows what the L port is for. If you hook a speaker to it, sometimes you hear voices in forgotten languages.
The K port is for the keyboard.
The T port is where you connect a better computer, your Tandy 1000
@gloriouscow LP is where the gas is filled
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The most famous orifices on the PCjr though have to be the cartridge slots. They're a pair of dust magnets located directly under the floppy drive.
Inserting a cartridge into one of these will immediately reboot the system without confirmation. Be sure to do that while Daddy is working on a spreadsheet.
@gloriouscow Thank you for the memories
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The most famous orifices on the PCjr though have to be the cartridge slots. They're a pair of dust magnets located directly under the floppy drive.
Inserting a cartridge into one of these will immediately reboot the system without confirmation. Be sure to do that while Daddy is working on a spreadsheet.
The first thing a new PCjr owner is going to want to do is remove the frungus modulator. You don't need this, it was only added for compliance with French law
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The first thing a new PCjr owner is going to want to do is remove the frungus modulator. You don't need this, it was only added for compliance with French law
Oh wait my bad we do need that, put that back.
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The first thing a new PCjr owner is going to want to do is remove the frungus modulator. You don't need this, it was only added for compliance with French law
@gloriouscow
I may be way overthinking things here. But reading between the lines I almost suspect you may not be 100% satisfied with the design decisions and manufacturing execution of this piece of hardware. -
@gloriouscow
I may be way overthinking things here. But reading between the lines I almost suspect you may not be 100% satisfied with the design decisions and manufacturing execution of this piece of hardware.@jannem I don't know what you're talking about. The peanut is the best thing people with MBAs ever forced engineers to make
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Oh wait my bad we do need that, put that back.
@gloriouscow This thread on the Tandy 900 is amazing!
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The most famous orifices on the PCjr though have to be the cartridge slots. They're a pair of dust magnets located directly under the floppy drive.
Inserting a cartridge into one of these will immediately reboot the system without confirmation. Be sure to do that while Daddy is working on a spreadsheet.
@gloriouscow i don't believe i've ever seen a PCjr cartridge in my life, not even online. i think i searched to see what they look like and got no results -
The first thing a new PCjr owner is going to want to do is remove the frungus modulator. You don't need this, it was only added for compliance with French law
@gloriouscow nah, the first thing a PCjr owner is going to end up doing is ordering a replacement keyboard (assuming they got the chiclet style one)
and the second thing they're going to do is order a tandy 1000 -
Here are the two IR Leds and the jack for connecting a keyboard cable. Let us look closer
@gloriouscow ah, that's right, IBM really did think they could pull off a wireless keyboard in the 80's -
Look right in here. Right up in this connector that can make your terrible wireless keyboard a terrible wired keyboard
@gloriouscow or you could plug a phone handset into there to presumably talk to your keyboard! -
@gloriouscow JJ's namesake is not hard to find in good condition, and often still BNIB! #retrocomputing
@timixretroplays @gloriouscow we really did think as a species that this was an acceptable joystick design, huh -
@gloriouscow I tried to make my pcjr keyboard wired, using the cable. But it turns out the protocol is deeply stupid so I never got it working
@foone @gloriouscow i have no idea why IBM thought using what looks like an RJ11 port but probably isn't actually wired like one was a good idea for connecting keyboards. my IBM 3151 terminal is similar, but it uses an RJ45 cable instead. thanks to it, you can buy an IBM model m keyboard with a fucking ethernet cable coming out of it -
@timixretroplays @gloriouscow we really did think as a species that this was an acceptable joystick design, huh
@mjdxp @gloriouscow honestly it's more comfortable and ergonomic than many significantly more modern controllers
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@foone @gloriouscow i have no idea why IBM thought using what looks like an RJ11 port but probably isn't actually wired like one was a good idea for connecting keyboards. my IBM 3151 terminal is similar, but it uses an RJ45 cable instead. thanks to it, you can buy an IBM model m keyboard with a fucking ethernet cable coming out of it
@mjdxp @foone @gloriouscow Keyboardio uses it for the connector between the two halves of their split keyboards. (They come with an adorable little 5 cm cord that you can use if you put them together in a stand)
It's a nice little serial connector for things you don't have to unplug very often.
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@gloriouscow I wish I knew why I was spending so much time and money trying to save my flood victim PCjr
@LeadedSolder because every peanut deserves a second chance
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@gloriouscow i don't believe i've ever seen a PCjr cartridge in my life, not even online. i think i searched to see what they look like and got no results
@mjdxp@labyrinth.zone @gloriouscow@oldbytes.space i wish my family had kept the pc jr we had when i was growing up
i think we had at least 3 cartridges for it: cartridge basic, electric desk (office suite), and a game that might have been crossfire
but we never used them because they were very limited/outdated compared to their disk counterparts. we had a ton of mostly pirated software on disk lol
