Easy ways to transfer data in and out of the PCjr?

[Franko]

I'm trying to figure out how to transfer files to and from my PCjr (and its 5.25" diskettes) to media that I can access on current-day laptops or desktops.

I'd love to have a 5.25" floppy USB drive. I bought a 3.5" USB drive from Amazon a few months ago, and it works great. However, I've searched and searched and haven't found anything similar for 5.25" -- I guess it's so old that product developers don't see too much of a market. Somewhere in a closet I may have an old 5.25" drive removed from another desktop. In order to use it I'd need to find an adapter I could use to connect it to a desktop or laptop. I did see a page on a site called deviceside.com for a FC5025 USB 5.25" Floppy Controller, but it's a few years old and it's not entirely clear if they're still selling it. Also, they make it very clear that the controller is for read access only, which is a shame because it would be nice to be able to write 5.25" floppies on a current-day system and then put them in the PCjr. If anyone has any ideas on this front, I'd be very interested.

Beyond that, are there any other easy/popular ways to get data in and out of the PCjr and/or its diskettes? Back in the 1980s I did write a telecom program that supported sending and receiving files to/from dialup bulletin board systems, but it would be complicated to get that all set up to support file transfers now.

[Chuckphd53]

HXC Floppy emulator uses a thumbdrive that can beset up for 100 720k 3.5" type floppies..you can select the disk 0-99 from the front panel buttons.

I have this on my Jr and it works ok, but still gives the old limitations of disk size transfers, but you can drop and drag from your windows machine many files to the thumbdrive then to the Jr

Mike B. has talked about am ether solution, I think we all would like to see this.

You can also use a Zip100 drive with PalmZip and a parallel port adapter, transfere files from another Win machine with same Zip100
this gives you a larger transfer and easy to work with on the Win machine.

Not sure if Win7/10 support the Zip100 IDE drives, but I have a Win 98 machine that has ether connectivity and I can get to other machines that way.
It still a bit of a workaround but the 100M file transfer is handy.

Also look into AlanH's Jr-IDE, it gives you a Nice Hard dive and Max Memory 736k with Clock feature for fast booting and running games etc...
I use the Zip100 to transfer to the JR-IDE Harddrive.

all this is still a bit of work, but it's the Jr, and we dont mind

Chuck

[Franko]

Thanks, Chuck, good ideas. I should be receiving a 3.5" backpack drive from eBay shortly that should solve my immediate issue. I'm very interested in the jr-IDE, PM'd Alan and hope that they're available at this point.

[Chuckphd53]

just a quick post..

here is my development system...

I have
Drive A=5.25
Drive B=3.5
Drive C= JR-IDE 512M DOM
Drive D= 3.5 Second unit
Drive E= ZIP100 drive....

I am using my 3Floppy board in this system that allows three drives with individual motor control
I also used a spare PCJR case and screwed the lid to the bottom after cutting off the feet so it would Lock into the Bottom unit.
Cut out the grill as you can see and 3D printed some holders for the drives and also printed some Red switch holders.
Still wondering what to do with the Infrared Keyboard Hole on top unit..
I took Mikes idea and put the JR-IDE led on the front of the case, mine is blue

The Red switches toggle between the 5.25/3.5 as making it drive A on the FLY ( you can toggle this without rebooting )
the other Red switch toggles the 5.25 to the USB HXC floppy emulator
I do this by simply allowing the DRIVE SEL on drive A to be swapped from the 5.25 to the USB emulator drive...

But even with all this a Ethernet link would be better...

PS the color, yeah....I know it looks 'old and faded' but in person it is more of a caramel color and actually pretty nice....

[Franko]

Chuck, looks great! A very complete system that seems like it would give you a lot of flexibility. As mentioned, I'm hoping to install a jrIDE if any are available at this point.

What 3D printer and CAD are you using? I have a Prusa kit about 2/3 built, and have been working on learning Fusion 360.

One immediate thing I need to do is to prep the PCjr to be turned on and used for extended periods. I saw some reference to a post or file here on what to do, but haven't been able to find that yet. As a starting point I thought I'd open the PCjr case and vacuum any dust carefully. I should also clean the disk drive if I can figure out what needs to be done there.

[Chuckphd53]

I have 5 Prusa's and a MakerBot, I use them here at work in our offices....
been 'making' for about 5 yrs and am pretty good at it......

see pics below (may have to zoom out if they are too big to view)
I have another system I am working on..
both have the PT-65B power supply from MOUSER.COM and the
mating board to the Jr Mother board power socket is from Shelby
akbkuku (he is on YouTube) has a couple videos of the Jr stuff...

the PT-65B is a great solution as it has plenty of power for all the Jr needs and drives...
gets rid of the boat anchors on the back end and uses a single ac power cable.

[Franko]

Interesting, the PT-65B looks like a great option. I noticed in unpacking my PCjr that I seem to have the original power supply, but for some reason I removed it from whatever case it came in and put it in an aluminum project box. No idea 30+ years later why I might have done that.

Meanwhile, I found the doc on cleaning the PCjr that I was looking for:

http://brutman.com/PCjr/Eugene_Club_Doc ... eaning.pdf

[Chuckphd53]

Maybe it was heat related !
I know I have memory loss also, bought my first Jr on sale in 85' and ran a BBS in the Houston Tx area...
it was fun..

[Trixter]

My preferred method is a Xircom parallel-port ethernet adapter. As long as your mass storage device doesn't also need parallel (mine is a jrIDE), you can run mTCP's FTPSRV and just feed it files until done.

For regular PCjrs, I have other systems outfitted with 5.25" DSDD drives that I make floppies on.

[Franko]

My preferred method is a Xircom parallel-port ethernet adapter. As long as your mass storage device doesn't also need parallel (mine is a jrIDE), you can run mTCP's FTPSRV and just feed it files until done.

I agree, ethernet and ftp would be slick. I'm looking around for a Xircom PE3-10BT -- so far I only saw one on eBay that was nearly $200, not what I was hoping for price-wise.