LGR - IBM PCjr Vintage Computer System Review

Review from the perspective of a somewhat casual collector: is the first "home PC" from IBM, the PC jr, worth buying today? A run-down of the history, pros and cons of the system and games, what to look for and be aware of when buying. 3-voice square wave sound forever!
Paratrooper
King's Quest
Leisure Suit Larry
Demon Attack
Boulderdash
Thexder
Lots more information and troubleshooting at:
www.brutman.com...

[@ClayHales]

I had one of these when I was growing up. My dad got one of the RAM side cars and replaced the RAM chips in it so I had 640K memory. The real cool thing was that the cartridge games didn't have any boot sounds, so I didn't have to worry about waking up my parents when I should have been sleeping.

[@tomypower4898]

Clay Hales Yes strings attached people

[@GlennHoeppner]

I grew up with this thing. Mine shipped with 128k RAM. Even when it was new there were about zero titles that worked with that small amount of RAM; most wanted 256k. But I did learn how to program BASIC on this, which eventually resulted in my career as a Software Engineer.

[@krisridge1985]

Same wow

[@krisridge1985]

I didn't learn basic I actually taught myself how to operate dos. I even managed to flash up nightbreed which I wasn't allowed to play. I remember aces high with whizz ball, tmnt, did you ever play anything on this? Two 4 inch floppy drives. Man those were the days.

[@GlennHoeppner]

We didn't really have any games. I had MS Flight Simulator 1.0 and a text-adventure game that was pretty awesome, but that was about it. We had a couple of floppies with a bunch of shareware on them. But yeah, I taught myself DOS too. It came with DOS 2.10 and the big pink hard binder of instructions.

[@RATsnak3]

wow 10 years old and this video still feels great. classic LGR.

[@Fuzy2K]

That's not a volume control, it's a silence control. The monitor was designed by mimes.

[@Islandswamp]

My Grampa worked at the IBM plant in Vermont and he bought this for the family because he got a deal on it. Some of my first gaming experiences were on this. I'd love to see you review some of the games.

[@Captofthisship]

Hearing that classic Sim city 4 jazz in the background just increases this video’s chill factor to ten.

[@MaximumRD]

Hmmm. I remembered when these debuted, I wanted one for sure.. Appreciate the honest review, I guess I will look towards TANDY then.

[@charlesconto3154]

I just found a sound blaster 16 while ripping apart a few 1990's PCs. That card is just awesome!

[@FireAngelZero]

love how this video is almost 7 years old and noone commented on the Les Claypool shirt you have on. saw him in concert a few years back and my buddy has the same shirt... giving you props sir

[@Charlesb88]

I just wanted to say that while the PCjr ROM cartridge’s severe size limitation of only 64 kB was a problem, the presence of two cartridges slots did provide some benefits. First, their where cartridges made by third-parties that would replace the system BIOS and other firmware with more advanced versions. There was also a number of patches from various vendors on ROM cartridge such as the single "combo-cartridge", licensed and sold by PC Enterprises, to support add-on hardware, bypass certain limitations of design, and keep up with changing OS requirements. Another nice feature of PCjr ROM cartridges was that you did I not need to turn off the computer before inserting or removing a cartridge unlike other home computers of the time. Unfortunately, in some cases, to run some software the was popular with the regular IBM PC business users (like Lotus 1-2-3) you you had to buy a special PCjr version of the software as the IBM PC version would not run on the PCjr and it came on a cartridge and a floppy disk that you had use at the same time to load it. Like booting an OS from a USB stick, ROM cartridges did have uses in the home computer market but high prices limited the size and thus their usefulness vs floppy disks. They did load much quicker then floppies and if cost was not so much of an issue I could imagine even even business of the era using them in certain circumstances where quick loading, higher durability, and lower power usage compared with floppy drives and disks (at least 5 1/4” disks) was a major benefit such as a DOS laptop of the era.

[@YEUWYU]

I could watch your vintage computer reviews all day, oh wait, Ive done that before

[@raydeen2k]

We had these in our high school computer class. The big prank everyone played at least once on the poor sucker sitting in front of them was to take the IR keyboard, point it at the unsuspecting victim's machine (usually while they were looking at printouts or assignments) and then mash a bunch of keys on the keyboard and then watch the other guy look up at his monitor and see garbage all over his screen. :)

[@tomypower4898]

raydeen2k Yes body!

[@asumjessen2013]

"making you feel awesome while you insert it" -LGR 2010

[@AskemoX]

Oh lord... I just noticed Cool Crab in the background of an eleven year old video! :D You truly love that guy! :D

[@mcFreaki]

i regularly watch a bunch of your old and new videos, because i really like your voice

[@nicholassvitak8653]

Who doesn't?

[@joesnow7216]

The wireless keyboard uses infrared instead of an RF transmitter or bluetooth like later wireless keyboards do. The problem with infrared is that it requires a direct line of sight between the transmitter and the receiver so if you hold the keyboard just a little too far off to either side of the receiver, it stops working because the receiver can't talk to it anymore. People tend to like to move around when using a wireless keyboard, so the line of sight would be broken a lot. The keyboard wasn't actually broken, it just couldn't communicate with the PCjr when you moved it around too much.

[@chrischansfantabottlecolle4368]

I've just spent basically my whole day watching old LGR videos, and I regret nothing.. 😊

[@Ferruccio_Guicciardi]

I have an IBM PCjr in 1983. First ever imported to Latin America.

[@cornman-re5th]

You mean you had one?

[@16mmDJ]

I love your tone during this video. "cartridge port, what the balls?" Priceless.

[@k.g.alatore355]

IBM couldn't make a worthwhile consumer-grade machine if you held a gun to their heads, bless their souls.

[@jesuszamora6949]

+Kim Alatore They don't call them International BUSINESS Machines for nothing...

[@k.g.alatore355]

Well, true, but you'd think it'd have been an easy task to make a consumer-grade machine without filling it full of proprietary crap. To be fair, though, my first computer was an IBM Aptiva 2144, and I loved that thing.

[@jesuszamora6949]

Kim Alatore Haha, well, that's hardly the exclusive domain of IBM. Thank goodness Lenovo hadn't come around until there were a wealth of choices!

[@k.g.alatore355]

Lenovo stuff is actually good, though I am disappointed that they discontinued the classic ThinkPad design. I /know/ it was getting old, I /know/ we can't cling onto dated aesthetics forever, but it was timeless, like the Land Rover Defender or the M1911. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But, otherwise, their consumer-oriented machines are about as good as anything else out there. Nowadays most production computers suck just as much as the next one.

[@stevethepocket]

+The Gmork So basically they were the 1980s equivalent of present-day Apple.

[@Adeilate]

How many weird/obsolete/old/ect computers, i.e. computers in your collection, counting the ones that you show off, do you own? I kind of imagine your house being filled to the brim with odd machines and old video games, which is an awesome combination.

[@vwestlife]

Cartridges would've been a great way to distribute PC games if they had caught on. By the late '80s, ROM capacities had grown large enough that Atari re-released many floppy disk games on cartridge for the XE series, making them immensely faster-loading and more reliable. But alas, after the PCjr, the only PCs with cartridge ports were a few weirdo 286 PC/Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) combo machines sold in Europe and Japan.

[@Posty2k3]

Man... I just came across this channel and saw this video and boy did it set into a nostalgic spin. This was the first computer that we ever had in our house, and seeing that sampler menu... man. I remembered playing a football game that required the joysticks, and was so sad when the joysticks finally broke and I couldn't play it anymore. Thanks for the vid man. I used to love this thing :P

[@Platypi007]

I grew up using the PCjr! It was the second computer we had (after a Commodore64) and my family got it for a steal (my grandfather worked for IBM and when they discontinued it he picked up one for us and one for himself). I used it into the early 90s, learned the ins and outs of DOS, computer hardware and upgrades, BASIC, and just everything computers. I miss it , at times! IIRC, the "special keyboard cable" is a regular RJ-11 phone cord.

[@Adamsnadler214]

Platypi007 thank you, I may get one soon

[@ryand7713]

I totally forgot about the PCJr sampler! That brings back memories.

[@RobertUlrich]

Bought mine during the employee clearance sale. Lotus 123 on the cartridges was much faster than my standard office PC/XT.

[@gaarik]

Gods, I remember playing the original King's Quest on one of these when I was young. I had that, Wheel of Fortune, a Star Trek game, a couple of word processing and appointment schedule applications, and the BASIC cartridge. At the time, it seemed like so much more than what I actually had, and to be fair, it was 2nd hand from my father, who spent every red cent trying to afford his 386 and games and applications for that.

[@DLiberator78]

Great historic trip through the IBM PC. I never never that the PCjr sound and parts were used in the Tandy machines. Thanks for this trip down memory lane. It was nice seeing some of the games and programs for this machine as well as the incompatible ones.

[@cathrinelord]

I want to see him buy a bunch of side cards and see how many it can actually run with before it errors.

[@ericw4279]

I barely recognized that this was an LGR video, I didn’t hear the word “thing” or “things” even once! 😜

[@thebigt42]

In my Junior year of high school (1987) I took a AP Computer science class. We learned Turbo Pascal on PC JRs. The first thing I learned was if I wrote a program and complied it on my home PC (Leading Edge Model M) the complied version did not run on the PC JR. A note on the wireless keyboards. In a lab environment the wired version was required because the wireless keyboard could type on other computers in the lab.

[@TheBrazilRules]

It is pretty cool that it had sound in that time and age.

[@TheBrazilRules]

Maxim Therrien I mean it has some pretty good speakers.

[@CaminoAir]

These reviews are great. Lots of info with great presentation.

[@tschak909]

The Boulderdash version shown is the original IBM PC version. The PCjr version had much enhanced graphics and sound, but was not distributed on the same disk as the PC version. An example of it currently lives in the MAME softlist for ibmpcjr.

[@SamuraiClinton]

Simcity 4 music in this video? WOW! I was so addicted to SimCity 4, especially the Rush Hour expansion pack and user mods!

[@airencracken]

This was my first computer as a child. This was in the 90s and my folks got it at a yard sale. I remember getting a few PC games that would never work. Heh. Fond memories.

[@mbbrutman]

@Dant2142 The parallel port sidecar is not bi-directional, but lots of devices (Zip drives, parallel port to SCSI adapters, Backpack floppy drives, etc. can use nibble mode to read data from the parallel port. There is also a fairly easy conversion method to make the parallel port sidecar bi-directional, which improves the read speed by a factor of two. The parallel port sidecar can also be modified to serve as LPT1, so it is possible to put two parallel ports on a system.

[@Supernovacore]

My uncle worked for IBM through the 80s and 90s. I am now 25. We had a PCjr when I was a kid. It was SO SHITTY that we didn't have another computer in the house until 1999 when I was a freshman in Highschool.

[@AngusBeer]

8:00 Demon attack looks cool :D

[@ion-shivs]

My friend had one of these... We loved playing King's Quest on it. I remember the keyboard with the mushy keys on it.

[@JesuszillaS]

oh my god Boulder Dash sounds like Crazybus

[@nychold]

King's Quest, the original King's Quest....awesome.

[@rherbert57]

My first computer was a Jr. I bought it in January 1986 to run a baseball simulation game, and MS Visual Basic. Unfortunately, the Jr was incompatible with VB 2.1, so I was forced to upgrade to a 286. The astute among you will know that the Jr had been discontinued six months before I bought it. It's been my mission to stay with or ahead of the curve ever since.

[@KaySaschnitt]

Again, very well done... full of information, very entertaining to watch! Keep on keeping on! :)

[@davidbarker5957]

This my first computer., bought new for $3000. (Robbery!) My 7th grade son learned computing and DOS on this machine. I modified it for 640K and 2 disk drives. When IBM quit selling the PCjr, I bought close out mother boards and other pieces from which I put together computers for my brother and sister. It gave them a start in computing as well. So the PCjr served a good purpose, even if it was expensive for my first machine.

[@kazu83]

I recognize the music from Sim City 3000 (or maybe it is from Sim City 4 ? ). Great review as always.

[@CRAZYHORSE19682003]

I can never understand how the supposed marketing experts can be so wrong. People are not going to buy purposely downgraded models of anything in significant numbers. IBM would have been better off offering a bare bones PC in a smaller form factor case with a TV adapter to cut costs of the IBM AT for the home market. Leave in the ability to expand the unit and it would have sold like hot cakes.

[@ericdunbarremebertheadultb9754]

David Smith NJ mo s€

[@nathanread5019]

I love the sim city 4 music playing in the background!

[@Horzuhammer]

Great wall of PCjr tickled my funnybone.

[@benebutterbean2737]

The PC-Jr might not have been a great gaming computer but worked very well as a word processor, and I learned to program in BASIC (or BASICa?) using it. When my wife was working on her master's thesis, the PC-Jr was a much better alternative to a Selectric or paying someone else to type it for you.

[@MOHAirborneFan]

Wow, you sound so different now! Can you do a re-review?

[@LGR]

MOHAirborneFan I might someday!

[@Locomamonk]

Lazy Game Reviews I love this review, I hope you expand this review instead of completely replace it

[@jmetal88]

Nice video. I got a free PCjr a couple of weeks ago and I've been wanting to see what it's capable of. I'm still looking for a keyboard and a power adapter for mine though, but I did hook up an old transformer I found in the garage to make sure it powers up.

[@johncrafton8319]

This was what my folks got for the family computer instead of the Commodore 64. To be honest, I learned a TON on that system, and had a leg up when it came to the industry's wholesale transition to to DOS-based systems. That said, it was seriously a pain in the butt. I found myself often having to re-code certain PC games (and Tandy 1000 variants) to work on it properly.

[@Carutsu]

Thanks for the historical review. Keep up the amazing work!

[@truebassB]

I think the best feature of this is the Sound! As most of the rest are just better on 5150.

[@NikkiWrightVGM]

SimCity 4 background music ftw Love your hardware reviews man, keep scouring the yard sales and get more outdated but interesting stuff for us to see! ^_^

[@MoultrieGeek]

I used one of these in the US Navy. My chief bought it for home but then brought it to the ship. I copied an operations manual from another ship using whatever word processor we had and passed it off as our own. Took forever since spell check took roughly 30 seconds to find a recommended replacement word, per word. Yikes. That and that damn IR port was constantly being blocked and since I'm a touch-typer I wouldn't notice until I looked at the screen several minutes and several paragraphs later. Good times.

[@Logan912]

Awesome Les Claypool shirt! I've just finished reading the Primus biography not too long ago, and it's a very interesting read if you're into that sort of behind-the-scenes thing.

[@jholttn]

I had the IBM PCjr as a kid when I was like 15, I even had the 300bps modem and used it to dial into CompuServe and other BBS(s) LOL.. Those were the days.. I played Kings Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, used the BASIC cartridge for programming. It was limited, I would buy a program or game for it, come home and it wouldn't be compatible. So yeah ultimately frustrating... I had a few memory expansions that I kept adding to the side. I can't remember, but I thought there was a limit for the memory.

[@herojh]

Great review! That was my first computer way back then. I loved it like mad, especially with the games that were made for it. So, I was definitely a Sierra fan. There were some games that did still work on the jr that worked on the PC, but it was unbelievably frustrating how many didn't. Defender of the crown worked, but only in 4 color. Others would crash a lot, like Falcon.

[@matt8264]

I remember playing the original Kings Quest on PCjr.

[@MrROTD]

I wasnt aware of pc until around 95, the first computer i used was a trs-80, I got a commodore 64 used it for years, then unisys computers at school. then i bought an amiga to do graphics and the games were awesome. then Commodore went poop so I got a windows 95 pc with Lightwave 3-d. it was soooo expensive then. now my laptop can run 3 d Max stock, crazy. Thanks for doing these vids, it isnt nostalgoia to me its mostly new stuff to me.

[@LOLZpersonok]

You sure have a lot of these old machines And I recognize that song playing when the video first started. It's from SimCity 4 :)

[@VintageJunior]

@Dant2142 Wrong - it does accept input, even though just at half the speed. But it can be easily modified to a bidirectional one. Check out the site linked in the vid description.

[@kwd-kwd]

they used to sell a second disc drive that was as big as the CPU and you had a "double stack" Pc Jr ad it was expandable to 640K

[@kilikman]

Bless Clint, you sounded so young!

[@LGR]

kilikman A different microphone and less experience will do that!

[@stonethemason12]

that pc junior music is kewl

[@SkorpyoTFC]

Before this review, the only commentary I knew about this thing was the satired "Banana Jr." from old "Bloom County" strips.

[@heinrichgrobler2645]

were really good graphics for its time

[@CatFace8885]

Music form SimCity 4? Yes! That game was my childhood :D

[@newcoleco]

Ah! Memories!... thanks for the review! it's great!

[@SpencerLemay]

You should set up all your stuff and do a massive tour.

[@eggaweb]

Great wall of PC Jr, Classic!

[@JKWesser]

SC4 Soundtrack? I think it is... You're awesome!

[@TheGwarGaru]

Great review, as always!

[@Mr1p0d]

The soundchip sounds like an NES or the Sega Master System. Good review

[@ThePNWRiderWA]

I was in school working on a degree in CompSci when it launched they were really expensive. The biggest things that hurt it was the keyboard it launched with and comparisons to the early Apple series. It did not help when the Mac launched soon after. They were difficult to write code for as it was not the same as IBM or the early clones. My first job was at a computer game company and it came up about porting games to it and it had such little market share it was a easy decision.

[@GenJeFT]

My dad gave me his old IBM PC Jr. The thing is fun and mostly works but its fully upgraded and requires 2 power supplies to work correctly making it difficult to set up and use in a limited space.

[@NightSprinter]

Man, so strange seeing Clint without his glasses.

[@walterchapman2094]

I'm amazed at how much memory it takes to run games on it. As amazing as C64 games were at the time, I bet it was a bit of a letdown to those who shelled out so much for one of these things. The games do look pretty good when they run though. It goes to show that you should never rush to buy a product when its first released. Wait to see how it does.

[@bjoran83]

Awesome review as allways, keep em coming!

[@ksjoet]

It's for sure Simcity 4 music! Played too many hours of that game and I can recognize it almost immediately. Just like the Simcity 2000 and Transport Tycoon Deluxe music.

[@TampaKurt]

Turning the volume knob clockwise raises the volume? Isn't that normal?

[@bodeasm]

The music is from SimCity 4, can't remember which one exactly. Favourite game all time.

[@ronaldsanchez1341]

that was my 1st pc although I was using an Apple and a TRS-80 in the testing labs at ORTHO PHARMACEUTICALS back in 1985...

[@brandonb1681]

I remember the TRS-80 with that horrible chicklet keyboard. Good times.

[@Lachlant1984]

I'm assuming when you showede the startup screen you had the computer connected to your video capture card. Why does the PC Jr have 2 cartridge slots? Were some games and programs released on 2 cartridges taht needed to be inserted in order to make programs run?

[@WedgeBob]

I remember walking into Radio Shacks when they sold Tandy PCs, and always felt oohed-and-ahhed about them. It certainly seems that Tandy succeeded in what the PCjr failed to be. Although one has to wonder if even the original Macintosh 128K might have been a better computer for the money over the PCjr, as iconic as that one was.

[@ModernDayRenaissanceMan]

I had this & thought it was amazing

[@nngnnadas]

They switched the volume knob direction but not the icon's?

[@rosalieclark7578]

I owned one when I was a kid in 1984

[@AmyraCarter]

Yeah, I've had the unfortunate luck to have ever dealt with an IBM PCjr... Actually...the whole thing may be a mess but there are ways to improve it. I've actually had worse experiences when it comes to computers (Tandy machines are awesome by the way).

[@Joethaboss66]

What sound is the music from boulder dash because it's not the PC speaker and it's not the PC jr's game?

[@monkeywithocd]

The one my dad used to have had a second floppy drive above the main unit. I'm guessing it was installed via one of those "side cars" mentioned in the video. What would that be called, or is it too rare for me to be likely to find it?

[@vVANQUISHERVv]

Great video man 🙏🏻

[@robbyrobot3303]

Are the games for this valuable? I found a copy of Sierra's "The wizard and the Princess" for it and cannot find any copies for sale online

[@mazharsaid4812]

In 1989 the acorn archimedes had sound in lander but on today's machines theres no sound in lander do you maybe know why thanks

[@herojh]

cont... I was about 11 at the time I think. I was the coolest cause I had 512K RAM. lol. It was 2 x 128 sidecars plus one 256 sidecar PLUS the printer sidecar! So the computer doubled in length almost, hah. For Kings Quest 4, that came on 3.5" disk, so I had to send away to Sierra for a special PCjr version which came on like 13 floppy's. That game looked and sounded great though. Good times. thanks for the review.

[@teeth771]

Excellent review! Thanks :)

[@lgnarchives1622]

SimCity 4 Music lol

[@bodeasm]

exactly, it was strange at the begining, rubbing my head from where do I know the music... :)

[@sterlinsilver]

My dad's freind gave me his old pcjr not too long ago... Its complete with computer, monitor, optical mouse/pad, 2 joysticks and dozens of compatible floppydiscs. It works, I'm just not good with computers- I'm more for how it looks on my shelf!

[@llantup]

The company I worked for back then decided to invest in using the IBM PCjr for some of their clients as a less-expensive data collection device. It was complete shite. That chicklet keyboard was a major pain in the you-know-what. And the modem? You didn't mention the modem. When most people were using 9600 baud modems for dial-up, and compressing for speeds up to 19.2k baud, the PCjr was stuck using a 300 baud modem. Oy. The nightmares this thing brings back!