Mike's PCjr Page

Ok, I'm approaching the point of no return here.

Once you get your Jr going, booting, floppy working, parallel port, Zip Drive, JrIDE, Dos5, V20... (that was a journey)
You get to the point where you are at, what am I in this for? I found that you cross over from "can this happen", to "it's happened" and I love the hackability of this platform.

Do you keep it OG or do you go full-on and hack it (Like clearly Chuckphd53 has) super job there btw.

Today I was thinking, Ok the floppy has given me what it can. Can I go internal on Zip. I know Zip is dead but still a solid platform? I haven't gotten into ATAPI (i'll look it up) but I can't help but think an internal Zip is way better (cooler) than the floppy (IF you aren't going to keep things OG)... So many thoughts

I hope you found the web pages and the forum helpful in your quest. Pretty much every topic you covered there was documented here years ago, and the jrIDE was pretty much born here. (I looked at one of my first posts here - it was in 2008! The bi-directional parallel port mod was documented on the web pages back in 2002. The LPT2 mod was back in 2005.)

I'm a big fan of the Zip drive on the Jr; I used it as a poor man's mass storage device for many years. The Iomega drivers work with a NEC V20 installed; otherwise you want the paid version of the PalmZip driver. I wouldn't get rid of the floppy drive though. A proper PC needs to be able to boot from a floppy disk once in a while.

Zip drives have some problems, the biggest of which is that the discs can't be reformatted when they go bad. The servo track is laid down at the factory and most of those discs are 15 to 25 years old now. If you lose the servo track there is no way to rewrite it, so the disc is a coaster. Compare that to floppies, which can be reformatted until you physically wear a hole in them.


Mike

Good to know. Yes, the PalmZip support is awesome and I have paid (in fact tipped).
People like Klaus do these things out of the goodness of their hearts and for what I have sunk into this quest the cost of the drivers that unlock everything is minimal.

I think my goal here is to keep everything "returnable to stock". Not going to do any motherboard mods. Sidecar mods are fine if I can get a dup that is stock.

I had the Racore drive 2 in college and would love to get my hands on one as that is "period correct". Probably not the HD version as the HD will be a problem ultimately and the jrIDE is just so awesome.

I have several new floppy controllers so I would consider some mods there.