The PCjr Lives On In EchoMail S.I.G.!

By: Dan Osborn and Phil Kaiser


The EchoMail areas have become "Special Interest Group"
mail areas carrying help and information about various
interests to users around the "world."  The IBM-PCjr is one
Special Interest Group.  Here is some information taken
from that echomail area: Jr-Msg.

There are about 400,000 PCjrs floating around the United
States and Canada.  Someone said "It'll never make it"..
"You can't do anything with it",  "It's too expensive to 
Expand".....etc..... Well, IBM continues to supply parts
and support for them.  There are software packages that 
make use of PCjrs superior graphics abilities.  Those with 
EGA can now see 16 colors in Hi-Res...the PCjr owners have
seen them since day one.

It was noted that the PCjr has a better monitor than the
regular PC and there have been discussions of how to
attach the PCjr monitors to PC and XT's.  Possibly even to
an EGA card.  No facts on this one yet.

During 1986-87, several developments occurred that
keep the Junior in the mainstream of the MS/PC DOS
world.  These same developments have been discussed
in the echomail area called Jr-Msg.

The supposed maximum rate of data transmission for the
Junior was 4800 bps .. but, a data transmission rate of
over 10,000 bps using a NULL modem cable was discovered
by one of the users and posted in Jr-Msg.  Nothing new for
a PC or XT owner.  But very surprising for a PCjr.

One company released a 9600 baud Serial Card.  Think we knew
about that last year.  Telebit or USR here we come!

The Jr's single disk drive caused many people to
ignore it when looking for an inexpensive 8088 based machine.
But, during the last year a way to attach Bernouli Boxes
to the Jr made it into an attractive starting point for
someone wanting to develop a system "a little at a time."

The 4.27 mhz clock speed made the Junior seem like the
slowest thing around, especially since the memory on the
motherboard has wait states bringing the Norton speed
rating to .7 of a normal PC.  However in the last year
several people have discovered ways of increasing the
CPU speed.  There are upgrade kits for less than $100
that will take the PCjr to 8 mhz and there are rumors
around that there are some jrs "out there" running at
20mhz!

Software incompatibilities have been a bane to PCjr
users, especially those who wanted to bring their work
home.  There have been notes in the PCjr echo area on
fixes to run DBase III+ and MS QuickBasic 3 and Auto CAD
on the PCjr.

I think what we are getting at is The PCjr is alive and well
in the world of PC's, XT's and AT's as well as all the clones.
If you have a PCjr and really want to know more about it, what
you CAN do with it or just what others have done with it....
Ask your sysop to pick up an echomail area called Jr-Msg.  
Contact Matt Mayer at 115/212 or Phil Kaiser at 104/904.

                                                                                                                         