The IBM PCjr, Part 1: The road to hell is paved with good intentions

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On the 40th anniversary of the IBM PCjr, we revisit the machine regarded as one of the biggest flops in the computer industry. The media would like you to believe that the PCjr failed because of its infamous keyboard, but that's not the full story. In this multi-part retrospective, we're going to examine the entire lifecycle of the PCjr, and determine the real reason it failed. Along the way, we'll cover its true strengths and weaknesses, the legacy it left on the computer game industry, and the community of hackers that keep its memory alive into the 21st century.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:51 Series Overview
01:25 The state of the home computer market by 1982
03:35 IBM's proposed target market
04:21 PCjr Sales Training VHS
05:28 Anticipation of success
06:20 PCjr announced November 1st 1983
07:55 Hand-on at COMDEX 1983
10:54 Why the shipping delay?
12:57 Books, Magazines, and "Guaranteed" Success
14:34 What's next?
Acknowledgments:
Massive thanks to these fine folks, who granted me the use of their research, photos, or video for use in this retrospective series:
‪@danbcast‬
‪@mbbrutman‬
Doctor Octal
‪@Epictronics1‬
---
Want to support me, and help me make more videos like this? Consider becoming a patron: / theoldskoolpc
Gear I use to make my videos: kit.co/mobygamer/4k-youtube-o...
Contact info:
Twitter: @MobyGamer
Email: www.oldskool.org/personal

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29 июн 2024

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Комментарии : 90

@Keith80027 8 месяцев назад

I remember this time well as I was an Electrical Engineer at IBM. I was an engineer on a team in Austin that built an early prototype using the 6800 instead of the Intel cpu. Boca won the design with their Intel design.

@TheOldskoolPC 8 месяцев назад

Fascinating! Was your prototype built using the 6800, or the later 68000?

@Keith80027 8 месяцев назад

It started with 6800 because 68000 was not available then. I think it was 1977 when the team started the design.@@TheOldskoolPC

@lorensims4846 8 месяцев назад

It's fascinating that the PCjr came out at the same time that the original Macintosh was introduced.

@user-zd7id9rx3f 8 месяцев назад

I think I remember a magazine cover at the time that showed both machines.

@BrassicGamer 8 месяцев назад

Thanks, Jim. This is the most interested I've ever been in the PCjr. Looking forward to part 2.

@PhillyMJS Месяц назад

My grade school got a computer lab full of these in 1986, when I was in 7th grade. I had had a Tandy 1000 at home for a while by then and knew more than the teacher. I bought a PCjr in the 90s out of nostalgia and still have it, though I haven’t hooked it up in decades.

@jordan.ellis.hunter 2 месяца назад

Amazing part 1, looking forward to part 2!

@kingforaday8725 4 месяца назад

To all the "youngsters" out there. This was an absolutely fascinating time. What had been in the realm of science fiction was now available to the average person! Being in education at the time going to conventions was like a kid going to Santas workshop! So many selections, IBM, Commodore, Apple, Atari, TRS, the clones. Then there was the software, peripherals, addons, books, magazines, etc. Granted in reflection was was a heck of a lot of hype but the illusions of grandeur was fascinating!

@TheOldskoolPC 2 месяца назад

I remember it well. I was in the Winnetka school district (same birthplace of "the jungle gym" and other educational pioneers) and we were inundated with technology to help us learn. We were very fortunate.

@tschak909 8 месяцев назад

Thanks Jim, for doing this. I've tried to explain so much of this to people, it's rather hard to establish the context for the perfect shitstorm that gripped the entire personal computer market from 1983 to 1984, and laid waste to so many of these home computers in an instant.

@tschak909 7 месяцев назад

This video has inspired me to do a comprehensive deep dive on the Coleco Adam, for the exact same reasons.

@PixelPipes 8 месяцев назад

Wonderful start, and that Comdex footage is a REAL treasure! Super looking forward to future parts!

@RacerX- 8 месяцев назад

Wow, great start to the series. I am really looking forward to the following parts. Your videos are fantastic, keep up the good work.

@kevinwng 8 месяцев назад

Fantastic watch. Thanks for doing this Jim!! Looking forward to the next part!

@RetroHackShack 8 месяцев назад

Really nice job on this one! I have a PCjr repair series in the works, so this goes well with it.

@excessionary 8 месяцев назад

Excellent video; Your commentary is always valued, and the (high quality) original footage is both informative and a wonderful time capsule from this era of IBMs history. I look forward to the next video(s).

@jeffm2787 7 месяцев назад

Had one of these, 640k , 8Mhz V20. Made it do far more than the 5150.

@f15sim 8 месяцев назад

Awesome video Jim. I'm looking forward to the remaining installments!

@PCRetroTech 8 месяцев назад

This is going to be a fantastic series. It's so beautifully produced. You must have found just about every advert for the PCJr in existence, Jim. This was such a pleasure to watch!

@TheOldskoolPC 8 месяцев назад

And I have two dozen more adverts! Thank IBM, as they went overboard with promotional materials for the PCjr.

@davidgari3240 8 месяцев назад

@@TheOldskoolPC Uhhhh... Thanks, IBM... ?

@anarchohelenism 6 месяцев назад

This channel slaps.

@jasonblalock4429 8 месяцев назад

I had one of these as a kid, since my dad worked for IBM and got it on clearance after the Jr line flopped. Always had a fondness for the grey beast, even if it did have many problems. And at least I got one with the improved keyboard, haha! Looking forward to seeing if you've dug up any stories I don't already know. Although I've long wondered why the hell they used a faux Charlie Chaplin as their mascot. That was such a weird choice.

@TheOldskoolPC 8 месяцев назад

I will cover the oddity of using Chaplin's The Tramp in part 3!

@RetroDawn 7 месяцев назад

@@TheOldskoolPC Can't wait for the rest of these! I have 2 Peanuts, myself.

@jaredbrown691 7 месяцев назад

Subscribed. Incredible video with behinds the scenes trade show footage! I picked one of these up a few years ago and it can do a lot despite ibm purposelly needing it as it to impact 5150 sales. Will be doing the Tandy mod next. Can’t wait for part 2!

@cyningstan 6 месяцев назад

I really enjoyed this video and look forward to the rest of the series.

@TechPony 7 месяцев назад

As someone who recently acquired and restored a PCjr I love learning all of its history.

@Epictronics1 8 месяцев назад

looking forward to part 2!

@UXXV 7 месяцев назад

You are awesome! Been going through a ton of vcf panel talk vids lately!

@jim_64s8-bitprojects5 8 месяцев назад

Great part 1. Looking forward to the rest - especially your take on the keyboard!

@TheOldskoolPC 8 месяцев назад

Just as a warning... my take is not typical!

@IBM_Museum 8 месяцев назад

I see some friends in that Computer Reset photo @0:41 - I was there that day, and should have snuck into the side.

@RetroDawn 7 месяцев назад

Note that, while Apple's fortunes dropped from Q3 82 to Q3 83, Commodore's fortunes boomed during the same time, with sales of the C64 skyrocketing, and sales of the VIC-20 still growing, as well.

@ryanpaterson3987 8 месяцев назад

Nice work Jim, fantastic video! It's interesting that it seems even in the Comdex footage they were still showing the PCjr with the IBM Color Display (5153?) and not the PCjr Color Display (4863) everyone knows today.

@TheOldskoolPC 8 месяцев назад

That's because the PCjr monitor wasn't available until 1984. Also, the 5153 if placed on top of the PCjr would cause the floppy drive to stop working :-O so you can see all of the 5153 monitors to the side of the PCjr units, even in the advertising.

@fattomandeibu 4 месяца назад

The big issue, at least here in England, is that computers that didn't make the magical £300 or less price wouldn't sell. At £800 it was never gonna work. People will point out the BBC Micro, but the government subsidised 50% of the cost of sales of BBC machines to schools, not many people had one at home. That's why Acorn made the Electron, which was a cut down BBC Micro made to sell for £250, but failed due to a myriad of reasons, including delays, speed issues compared to a BBC and program compatibility. Even as far in as 1988, most games in stores were for the "big 3" of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC. Entire racks of game cassettes lining the store, with maybe a rack of disks for emerging systems like the Atari ST and Amiga.

@mogwaay 8 месяцев назад

Great Video, loved the old video of the launch presentation - so many suits! 😅 Looking forward to part 2, I studied the PCjr tech manual a lot whilst designing a my own minimal mode 8088 PC so I defo have an affinity with it, even tho I've never used or seen one in the flesh before!

@TheOldskoolPC 8 месяцев назад

You should love part 2 then, which goes into tech. It doesn't go TOO far into the weeds, as that might bore half the audience, but it should be familiar to you.

@mogwaay 8 месяцев назад

@@TheOldskoolPCgreat stuff, I'm also very interested in some of the newer developments too so looking forward to when you get onto that too. Really enjoy your content again, thanks for taking the time to make it.

@AdamChristensen 7 месяцев назад

Oh! I need to open my PCjr up and check what kind of RF paint it has. Interesting! Looking forward to the series!

@keopsequinox1624 7 месяцев назад

Nice video, really interesting

@VictorYepello 4 месяца назад

My first PC though I bought mine just before they killed it. Still it was instrumental to my budding career in the computer industry. I'm sure it must still exist somewhere.

@AlsGeekLab 8 месяцев назад

Great video!

@MR-vj8dn 6 месяцев назад

I’ve wanted one of these for decades. I have games optimised for it specifically.

@TheOldskoolPC 6 месяцев назад

What are some of your favorite PCjr-optimized games?

@davelister2005 8 месяцев назад

Love this

@stefanfriedt3450 7 месяцев назад

It is interesting, that IBM PCjr sound and graphics are now referred to as Tandy sound and graphics. So Tandy did everything right on its PCjr clone that IBM did wrong.

@ConfuserUsed 6 месяцев назад

Damn, now I really want to watch part 2... How's the progress? Any expected release date?

@TheOldskoolPC 6 месяцев назад

You and me both! The script is 100% written, but it needs a ton of real PCjr footage so I'm setting up the video shoot area again (I have a very small space to work in and need to set up and break down constantly for various projects). I'm hoping to have it done in the next two weeks, but if that slips, it should certainly be before the end of January.

@fffUUUUUU 8 месяцев назад

This is rather a teaser 😋 I need the real meat! When the Part 2?

@TheOldskoolPC 8 месяцев назад

Before the end of the year!

@vwestlife 8 месяцев назад

So IBM knew right away that the wireless keyboard was unsuitable for classroom use, rather than the popular belief that it took kids messing with each other's PCjrs to discover that. But since IBM suggested that's what kids _could_ do with the wireless keyboards, I can see how that got turned into claims of kids _actually_ doing it.

@TheOldskoolPC 8 месяцев назад

Right on. They designed it for home use first, then afterwards marketing meddled with the scope and wanted classrooms, so I'll bet it was a quick "Hey, wait a minute" realization from the engineering team that a single IR protocol would wreak havoc in that scenario and added the ability to wire up the keyboard.

@geeteoh1 6 месяцев назад

Purchased one right when they came out. Junior in high school at the time. Amiga came out just after and blew everything away. Bad keyboard was more of a myth even at that time. Worse than the AT but same or better than many cheap home computers. Wireless keyboard was awesome. Had both the clicklet and later redo keyboard. Authored many articles/programs for Compute magazine on that. Modem worked great later when I was in college and had to hook to the computer science computers from the dorm. Was one of the very few with a modem (much less a computer) in the dorms.

@TheOldskoolPC 6 месяцев назад

What programs of yours did you write for Compute! magazine? I'd love to check some out.

@geeteoh1 6 месяцев назад

@@TheOldskoolPC My brother and had 11 articles published. I only remember a couple. Million color palette for PCjr, Flexible Files, and my favorite- “Lumpies of Lotis IV”. There was probably another 11 we submitted that didn’t get published.

@joetheman74 5 месяцев назад

The PCJr was a success. FOR TANDY. The Tandy 1000 line was one of the most successful of it's day and they were essentially PCJr Clones. They were so successful that software vendors sold software not as PCJr compatible but as Tandy Compatible. Who cares about IBM and whatever their problem was. It took Tandy/Radio Shack to take IBM's product and idea and make it a success.

@TheOldskoolPC 4 месяца назад

Indeed! I'll touch on that in part 3 of the series.

@TheSulross 7 месяцев назад

the success of the Tandy 1000 vindicated that the general concept of the PCjr was valid but IBM's specific execution of the concept was flawed

@TheOldskoolPC 7 месяцев назад

That is very well put.

@kotto7877 8 месяцев назад

Where can I find a list of the "over 100 books" about the PCjr? Serious question. I have several PCjr books but would like to explore more..

@TheOldskoolPC 8 месяцев назад

I compiled that list by searching archive.org, abebooks, and amazon for "PCjr", normalizing the titles, and then doing a sort+uniq to find the unique titles. I was very surprised to see slightly over 100 books published in the years PCjr was a viable product.

@kotto7877 7 месяцев назад

@@TheOldskoolPCthank you; I'll do this

@MontieMongoose 8 месяцев назад

I just wish that IBM had brought the 3-voice sound to other computers, that way maybe other companies other than Tandy would have implemented it.

@TheOldskoolPC 8 месяцев назад

Going from one PC speaker to effectively three PC speakers wouldn't have been enough of a jump, IMO. The Creative Music System was like having four PCjrs and it didn't do well in the marketplace. There were also technical issues; the PCjr and Tandy implementations located the chip at port C0h, which was used for other things in the AT and later systems, so it wouldn't have been a drop-in compatible part.

@AllGamingStarred Месяц назад

where is part 2?

@KabelkowyJoe 7 месяцев назад

And this part 4:30 shows that IBM management was sic! Normally company is selling product that people demand to have like calculator to make calculations, IBM didn't care about what people wanted to have they wanted shovel PC into thotes and force them to change behaviours. Who on Earth would put PC at the centre of their homelife, to sit together. If it wasn't able like i mentioned before to show TV on it's screen being able to be connected to TV. For that reason only type of "PC" that is allowed to do so are gaming consols. You don't need to have keyboard, can be turned on and turned off quickly. They invented "a dream" and wanted trough advertizement change people's behaviours. Influence their lifestyles. Not many companies are able to achviieve that.

@KabelkowyJoe 7 месяцев назад

7:00 Wait - so i was wrong? It was designed to be connected to TV?

@TheOldskoolPC 7 месяцев назад

Yep! The PCjr monitor wasn't even available until March 1984. If you look at all of the marketing materials in the video, you can see that IBM was positioning it to be in the living room or den, just like other 8-bit personal computers that came before it, like the Atari 800 or Vic-20.

@YarisTex 8 месяцев назад

Par excellence…

@slowlymakingsmoke 2 месяца назад

Brilliant history. It really was a machine with character that I did not see back then. Looking forward to the next episode.

@hotmultimedia 8 месяцев назад

new vid from trixter -> instant click

@root42 8 месяцев назад

Ok, so I guessed wrong. And the European Union is in fact exactly 10 years younger than the PC jr! Who would have guessed! I think I haven’t seen a single PC Jr here in Germany. I think it could have been a bit of a success here in Germany, as for example Apple was basically non existent in schools, contrary to the US. Plus parents here were always keen on computers „that could do something useful“ and pure gaming machines were a bit frowned upon.

@TheOldskoolPC 8 месяцев назад

I think the only way it could have been a success at half the price it launched at, which I'll cover in part 3.

@AlistairKiwi 5 месяцев назад

I started living with my (current) other half in 1986, & he'd bought an IBM PC Jr. there was not one day when it actually worked. This machine was utter trash.

@chaoticsystem2211 2 месяца назад

those ads are cringe

@judewestburner 5 месяцев назад

You have to admit the keyboard didn't help lol

@TheOldskoolPC 5 месяцев назад

You get used to it quickly. More on that in the upcoming Part 2 :-)

@supercompooper 8 месяцев назад

Ir sucked so much. I regret every attosecond with it.

@PhillyMJS Месяц назад

@offensivejerk 7 месяцев назад

Excellent video!

@shanehebert396 8 месяцев назад

I had a college roommate who had a PCjr. He made that machine do a lot of stuff. He eventually replaced it with another machine, though... a 'portable' one from the day. I think he was having problems with getting expansion stuff (his only had 256KB memory, I think, and one floppy drive) so he just got a different machine that he could have all the expansion he needed.

@TheOldskoolPC 8 месяцев назад

They were tough to expand, which I'll cover in the next part of the series.

@brianhirt3918 8 месяцев назад

Great video!

@TheOldskoolPC 8 месяцев назад

I'm making up for lost time, in a sense :-) Always wanted one back in high school to compose on, ended up borrowing PCjr and Tandy 1000 systems wherever I could.

@brianhirt3918 7 месяцев назад

@@TheOldskoolPC i always wanted a TRS80. It was the first computer I programmed on in a school lab. I actually know very little about the Jr which surprised me.