Mike's PCjr Page

LOL! In my research, I found that they only made enough units to go to, mostly, IBM business centers as demo units. Consumers didn't really start getting them until March.

We just got a mention on Slashdot. I hope it doesn't take down the forums: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/0 ... rns-30-too

Congrats, well deserved. "Luckily," Slashdot doesn't have the power it used to to bring sites down anymore.

Congratulations fellow PCjr owners!

That was fun. I don't think my web host even noticed ...

Brutman.com usually gets about 1800 visits a month. Today it got over 3000. I have Google Analytics on it so I'll be able to show the spike on a graph tomorrow.

As for the Slashdot article, the comments were not a complete puke fest. If I had known it was coming I would have put pictures of the jrIDE and some of the more recent projects front and center.

Luckily I'm a few weeks away from trying to run the site on a real PCjr. I'm still working on the HTTP server and one of my load tests was going to be to redirect brutman.com/PCjr to a real PCjr. If that had been running it would have been melted for sure.


-Mike

Brutman wrote:the comments were not a complete puke fest.

At least it wasn't as bad as
"PCjr is dumb computer. It can only do 16 colors, uses big floppy dicks that can't hold much and doesn't even the internet. It's expensive cheap plastic with crappy ttl ICs and I can't even play DOOM or Warcraft."
8P


But really, those comments seem to be the typical comments that follow an article that mentions the poor unwanted child.



Anyway, it's pretty cool that it brought such significant traffic. I was wondering why so many guests have been on the forum. I'm also looking forward to seeing the spike on that graph! XD

Eric wrote:

Brutman wrote:the comments were not a complete puke fest.

But really, those comments seem to be the typical comments that follow an article that mentions the poor unwanted child.

As we continue on our journey from enthusiasts and pirates to historians and archivsts, I've (only) recently become aware of the concept of anachronisms. I guess they happen quite a lot in all aspects of history, but I continue to be surprised about it happening in computer history, especially since we have electronic records of events, and published tech specs of the systems. For example, here are some quotes from the slashdot story comments:

"My Dad's PCjr could address nearly 768k" (not in 1985 it couldn't!)

"I swapped my chiclet infrared keyboard for the heavy-ass IBM keyboard right away" (the later keyboard was the same weight and just as flimsy, although maybe the OP was talking about an IBM keyboard with an adapter)

and the worst one:

"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." (citation needed!!)

Some of the comments were thankfully very insightful and accurate. My favorite: "The PCjr had three strikes against it right out of the box... Not cheap enough compared to the IBM PC; Late to market and fighting an entrenched Apple II family in the comparable price range; Too expensive compared to the VIC-20 and the C-64. Even without it's various technical and performance problems and unclear target market, it still would have had a tough time gaining traction."

Slashdot suffers from "first post" syndrome. People can post crap, a new article gets posted, and then they move on. Trying to refute something is futile because you won't get modded up after people move along.

The video game crash post was indeed utterly stupid, as a lot of the replies (my own included) pointed out. But it was too late .. everybody was chasing the new shiny.

Graphs to be posted later ...

Trixter wrote: Some of the comments were thankfully very insightful and accurate. My favorite: "The PCjr had three strikes against it right out of the box... Not cheap enough compared to the IBM PC; Late to market and fighting an entrenched Apple II family in the comparable price range; Too expensive compared to the VIC-20 and the C-64. Even without it's various technical and performance problems and unclear target market, it still would have had a tough time gaining traction."

That is definitely the problem in a nutshell for the PCjr... and I think if you consider it as a standalone product if priced properly it would have done quite well. I think there was very real concern on IBM's part that they'd cannibalize sales of the PC if they had priced it cheaper though, so that doomed it to failure.

One also doesn't need to look too far away from the PCjr at the Tandy 1000 which was quite successful in the home computer segment to see that it could have been a successful machine.

Just for giggles, the hourly traffic graph for the last month:

http://www.brutman.com/pics/Slashdot_Tr ... -01-28.jpg

Normally all of brutman.com gets 1800 visitors a month. On Tuesday an extra 3000 showed up, most in the first few hours.

No new forum registrations though ... (yet).