Mike's PCjr Page

Hello everyone! I love that this forum exists, and I certainly hope to participate in the discussion here.

My very first computer in 1985 was a PCjr. I spent every hour on it that I could, and learned a lot about computers on it. It spawned a life-long love of computing and lead directly to my career in IT. I still have my original PCjr, and a few others that I have picked up along the way in various states of repair.

A few years back, with space become ever more precious as our family grew, I agreed to "clean out my computer junk" after much prompting by my wife. I got rid of my 286 and later equipment, but I kept MOST of my PCjr stuff. Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to spend on it, and it's all just sitting in my basement waiting until the day I can give it the TLC that it deserves. I'm hoping that day is arriving.

I look forward to talking to you all!

Thanks!
Mike K.

welcome!

I have a similar story. My parents picked up a PCjr back in 84/85 era and since our home didn't have an office space, the machine went into my bedroom. I too learned a lot of things about computers on that machine, which turned into a love of programming, which lead to my career now.
I also played waaaaay too much Ultima III on it. Richard Garriott is to blame for my poor grades in middle school.

While I don't have my original PCjr anymore, I am now housing 3 of them.

That's funny! Ultima III was also one of my all time favorites and I spent way too much time on it. Another favorite was The Bard's Tale, which I manually edited with DEBUG to get the Tandy graphics to work on the PCjr. I had a few friends who had the original IBM PC (5150) - they loved to lord it over me about my "inferior" machine until I pulled out a game that really showed off the the jr's graphics and sound.

Besides Cartridge BASIC, I learned Turbo Pascal on my PCjr. While not a programer today, I definitely still enjoy coding, though I'm mostly a scripter these days - Perl, VBScript, and Powershell.

I also was introduced to the online world via the jr's 300 baud internal modem. Good times.

Mike K.