Thanks to a lucky Craigslist find, I now own the ultimate desktop gaming battlestation: the legendary IBM PCjr
Thanks to a lucky Craigslist find, I now own the ultimate desktop gaming battlestation: the legendary IBM PCjr
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For anyone who isn’t a big retrocomputing nerd and/or wasn’t around in the early 80’s, the [IBM PCjr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PCjr) was IBM’s ill-fated attempt to compete with Apple for home users in 1984. IBM was tremendously successful at marketing desktop computers to “serious” business users, but struggled in the consumer market. Thus was born the PCjr, featuring a weird mashup of concepts.
It was reasonably priced, came with a wireless keyboard, supported color graphics, had cartridge slots for games and apps along with a built-in floppy drive. It also supported hardware upgrades via bolt-on “sidecars” that you’d literally stick onto the side of the computer – a fully-upgraded PCjr could be nearly a foot wider than a standard system!
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the PCjr was a *massive* flop – it was just too weird for this world. The keyboard is terrible, the wireless function of the keyboard is flaky, and most damning of all, the system is only “somewhat” IBM PC-compatible, despite literally being an IBM PC. It only lasted on the market for a year and is barely remembered now.
In any case:
1. A couple years ago, a cross-town pal let me know that a bunch of random computer stuff was being tossed into a dumpster from a house that was being gutted. I ran over and jumped into the dumpster and found a bunch of cool stuff, including a complete-in-box copy of King’s Quest for the PCjr! It’s been sitting on my shelf as a display piece ever since 🙂
2. I spotted a local Craigslist ad for a PCjr yesterday. I spent my lunch break meeting up with the seller, and I’m delighted to have it on my desk at home now. Even cooler: this particular Junior was previously owned by Dr. Dale Jurich, who used this machine to create and test the “[PC POOL](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gj68cWIEMo)” game that I was *obsessed* with as a kid. I was already excited to have a functional PCjr, but now I’m DELIGHTED to own a machine that had an important role in creating one of my most-played childhood games.
It’s so tiny