The IBM PCjr thread which became the exoDOS Thread

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Re: The IBM PCjr thread which became the exoDOS Thread

Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

There should be! I want to do the thing justice. It's just -

The sharpness. The brightness! The sharpness of that display is beyond my ability to describe. It's not the same thing as emulation, and of course I know that already, I have a garage full of things that show that. I don't mean to say "ewwww, without the real thing, you'll never know ewwww" -- no. You do get 95% of the experience just fine. Let's be honest with ourselves, if you are emulating a Commodore 64, or Elevator Action or an IBM PCjr, yah, you can pretty much see what was going on through emulation.

But it's those last, final bits. The way the monitor perfectly rests on the computer. I don't have that now with anything. I couldn't put either of my monitors on top of my main computer. My larger monitor has legs that look like a police sketch artist description of the Glaive from Krull and the other one has a frigging circular piece of plastic holding it up. The PCjr's monitor and the way it is meant to sit on the computer itself is perfection. Flack and I were talking about the right wooden shelf for my Apple //, so I could put the 1080S monitor I have on top of it. This is something a handy person could make in a couple of hours. Well, I can't. I had this giant monstrosity of an Ikea shelf until yesterday. The PCjr just ... fits.

When I started it, I didn't have a disk in the drive, just to be safe. The iconic "IBM" logo appeared on the screen, along with the 16 colors it can proudly display as it counted RAM. It's more "purple" in the photo below than it is in real life, but that's just the room it's in right now, much to my wife's chagrin. So crisp! It's beautiful. This, for me, is how a computer should look, should sound, and should feel.

Image

Next, I took my Zork I disk and popped it in the drive, initiating a warm boot. ("Control, Alt, Delete" worked, funnily enough, which was a nice throwback to when that thing actually did what it was designed for, instead of the eye-rollingly-dumb thing Microsoft did to intercept it for Task Manager and NT's logon.)

And.... it..... loaded.

It LOADED.

The exact disk that changed my life was running in a PCjr again, just like it did in 1985.

I tried others. I took photographs and I shall take more. Shamus worked wonderfully. I forgot that it would, on the fly, shift between the two standard CGA palettes when you got zapped. Lode Runner on my disk would not start. Borrowed Time did! Exodus: Ultima III did. My two copies of Touchdown Football did not.

Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz most certainly did. Look. Look at this perfection. 40 columns. The layout is burned into my brain. Okay well, the layout for Zork I is burned into my brain but I didn't take a picture of that tonight.

Image

The enormous letters. The floppy disk, which provides a menacing soundtrack. Of course you could play Zork II like this. This is how it was meant to look, how it was meant to be presented. Verbosity - the >verbose command - it was a choice here. Not just something I force for the games I make because the screens are infinitely wider and taller. You were choosing to use that precious, beautiful screen to get a description of a room you had already been in. I have Enchanter running on the Apple // next to me. Enchanter is a great game and the Apple // is a great computer. It does not look as good as Zork II does here.

Lastly, I want to leave you with a phone picture I took that does not represent me as an artist. This is of my youngest nephew, whom I could not love more were he of my own flesh and blood, playing Shamus at the age of 1 year, 3 months. He figured out how to move Shamus around the screen when I pointed his right hand to the cursor keys. I mean, he also gleefully mashed every other single key combination on the keyboard before, after, and during the moving of Shamus, but that does not detract from how he did in fact move Shamus around. I want him to be comfortable around computers, I want computers to just be something he knows about and enjoys and is near. (Books too, natch.) I don't know if this is how my father felt on Christmas Day when he spent a, let's be honest, a sizeable portion of his income on a computer for his kids and I just started spewing raw kittens in the shell from my eyeballs when I saw it. But seeing this kid move this BBS's favorite knife-flinging private detective around the board got me as close to that feeling as I will ever in my life get.

Thanks, Dad.

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Re: The IBM PCjr thread which became the exoDOS Thread

Post by Flack »

It takes a big man to admit when he's jealous. Kudos, sir.
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Re: The IBM PCjr thread which became the exoDOS Thread

Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

Thank you for believing in me.

One thing I knew and then forgot and then knew again is that there are certain games that are "PC Booter" games. They are games that include the necessary files to start enough of an operating system to make a game work. Of the 5.25" disks I have in Colorado, some are games that are that self-booting kind and others are not. I don't seem to have a DOS disk around. (Not a big problem, as the jr-IDE is coming soon.) So there are some games on physical disks here that might work if I had DOS.

Larry Bird and Dr. J go One on One is another self-booting game that I had here. And look. Larry Bird in the PCjr version looks like Halloween's Michael Myers in it. You really needed 16 colors for this - pink and brown for the skin colors of Bird and Dr. J, green and red for the Celtics and 76ers jerseys, white for the jersey trim, orange for the basketball, and then other colors to fill out the court. Oh and black and yellow for hair color. The PC version looks terrible! Yes, if this is what people think of when they think IBM computers of this era, it's pants. I will link to an Amiga screenshot here, which when compared looks amazing.
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Re: The IBM PCjr thread which became the exoDOS Thread

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I have the jr-IDE and the AdLib board. (Also the joystick breakout board, but I won't be using that at first.)

The jr-IDE supports a real time clock if you have a battery, so I am going to order one of those - a battery. It supports either a real hard drive through an IDE plug, or a compact flash-to-IDE solution. There are a few such adapters on Amazon for cheap, but I guess I'd like to know that what I get is going to work, so I might do research this weekend.

What I don't have is a DOS disk, or a way to format a hard drive so that the PCjr would recognize it. So finding solutions for all of that is another next step. I am very glad I had those 5.25" disks laying around.

I've also started to come to grips with - what do I actually want to DO with the thing? What games do I want to play or solve or enjoy? The Apple // lets me run a pretty great version of Choplifter and some other games easily. Ditto with the Atari 800. I could see myself trying to solve some Wizardry games. Certainly, Zork II and III, which I have never beaten. Getting an idea of what I want to do with this thing now that it is on the home would be nice.

Figuring out where to keep it would also probably be a good thing. There are a lot of old computers and consoles in my office right now. Ulp.
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Re: The IBM PCjr thread which became the exoDOS Thread

Post by Jizaboz »

Wow glad it works!
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Re: The IBM PCjr thread which became the exoDOS Thread

Post by Flack »

They also make an IDE-to-SD adapter which is just as cheap as the CF version, and SD cards are way easier to find.

I was going to offer up usage of my FC5025, but it only makes .IMG files from 5.25" floppy disks -- it can't write to them. The Kryoflux can read and write to 5.25" disks, but only with disk images (no individual file access).
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Re: The IBM PCjr thread which became the exoDOS Thread

Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

I started to try to run through a box of floppy disks I have. At some point, the floppy disk drive stopped reading disks at all. So this isn't good.
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Re: The IBM PCjr thread which became the exoDOS Thread

Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

I think the dirty disks I put in it ruined the head on my drive. It won't read anything now. Going to try to clean it one more time. I should have the IDE to CF adapter tomorrow, and I found a line on what I think is a hard drive image that might work. I think all I really need is a DOS 3.3-created hard drive image. I don't know that there is anything Junior specific there. Oh, and then I probably need a program for my gaming computer that will read image files and let me manipulate them and save them, which I don't think I have.
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Re: The IBM PCjr thread which became the exoDOS Thread

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Let me know if the cleaning doesn't work. I have at least half a dozen spare 5.25 floppy drives and would gladly send you one.
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Re: The IBM PCjr thread which became the exoDOS Thread

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Flack wrote: Fri Sep 23, 2022 4:23 pm Let me know if the cleaning doesn't work. I have at least half a dozen spare 5.25 floppy drives and would gladly send you one.
Thanks, Flackman. Weirdly, all of the 5.25" disks I had in the box that was in the garage do not work, and then they stop the drive from working. There is a musty, moldy smell to them. So I would imagine that they will be a total loss. I don't quite want to throw them away because it could be the PCjr, but it ain't looking good.

I wonder if there will be a way to play PC Booter games if I have everything on a hard drive. Ugh, I was really hoping all my old floppies would work.
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Re: The IBM PCjr thread which became the exoDOS Thread

Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

Today was a good day!

The StarTech.com 40/44 Pin IDE to Compact Flash SSD Adapter I bought from Amazon arrived. I had grabbed a DOS 3.3 image that a person made, and I imaged a CF card I had floating around from my photography days with it. (We now use SD cards instead of CF ones, but I never threw out the CF cards.) I needed an IDE cable to go from the jr-IDE to the CF card.

Well, one problem, the IDE cables I had were keyed - meaning, of the 44 (I think) pins, one was not drilled on the female side of things. I needed it completely drilled, as the jr-IDE and the CF card adapter both had a pin there, and I did not want to rip the pins off. I took a paperclip and a lighter, heated up the paperclip and jammed it into the "keyed" or "non-holed" area of the IDE cable. That seemed to work, and I was able to make the connection.

What I didn't know is that the CF card adapter needs power. It has a 3.5" floppy connector cable. I am making a computer for my nephew, so I took that computer and powered it on. I then took its 3.5" floppy power cable, and plugged it into the CF card adapter. With everything finally getting power, I turned everything on... and it worked!

The DOS 3.3 image I had isn't a large image. It did not have much on it. It had some games but they didn't work. I took the CF card, plugged it into my video game computer, and was able to toss some games on it. I also found something that Michael Brutman wrote called JRCONFIG. I modified autoexec.bat and config.sys, added the DEVICE lines for the JRCONFIG file, and put everything back. I was now cooking with gas - I was able to play Lode Runner and Flightmare and Wizardry off the CF card, with it booting by itself and working as a C: drive.

I had two problems left at this point. The first is that my image is very small - I was able to throw six games on it, and I was told the image was full.

The second is that I needed a separate computer to be running, in order to get power to the CF card. I figured out that the jr-IDE has a +5 line for just this purpose. A modern floppy cable just needs ground and a +5V line. It gets +12 volts and another ground, which is why it is a four wire and four pin cable, but it only needs and uses +5 volts and ground. Which is what the jr-IDE gives us via two small pins.

Remember jokes about guys keeping large boxes of connectors and power supplies and such? Well, I dug into mine. I snipped a floppy power cable and exposed the wires for +5 and ground. I have several of those push button "start your motherboard at the pin level" cable and buttons. The clutch part of these is that they are two-pin female connectors. I snipped this to get rid of the push buttons. Then I twisted the exposed wires for the floppy power cable and the aforementioned two-pin cable and added electrical tape. Not idea, but fine for now. I connected the two pin connector to the jr-IDE, and the 4 pin floppy connector to the CF card.... and turned everything on... and it worked! Like a charm.

I'll take pictures and do more documentation tomorrow. Part of me wants to launch a series of videos called PLATFORM JUNKIES except that name is already used. Platform Junkies would be a Jolt Country video production where I play games on the original and offbeat hardware. This would certainly qualify.
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Re: The IBM PCjr thread which became the exoDOS Thread

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A coin has to land on heads eventually. After all our failed projects and investments, this one is paying off.
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Re: The IBM PCjr thread which became the exoDOS Thread

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Image

Moved it downstairs. After some internet searches, I was able to download the original Starflight from exoDOS and follow some instructions to patch it for a real PCjr.

The light isn't as good where it is now - I have to deal with sunlight. But we'll fix it so it photographs well in my office, too.

Here's some PCjr Starflight.

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Re: The IBM PCjr thread which became the exoDOS Thread

Post by Jizaboz »

Woah I've never seen that version of that game but my friend told me about it. I played it on Sega Genesis.
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Re: The IBM PCjr thread which became the exoDOS Thread

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I was able to get Elite working. So the list of games that I would actually, legitimately try to finish on this thing are:

- Elite
- Starflight

Games that I might be able to get working and try to finish are:
- Wizardry 1, 2, 3
- Ultima 4, 5

Games I tried today that I was not able to patch:
- Paperboy

Screenies of Elite coming soon. The way the PCjr is situated, light hits it at like 4:30PM from the sun (the SUN!!!!) and makes for bad photographs, so we'll wait till that goes down.
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Re: The IBM PCjr thread which became the exoDOS Thread

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We are going to play Elite on this. Yes, we are.

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Re: The IBM PCjr thread which became the exoDOS Thread

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The "new" keyboard... the replacement one.... is actually good!

Yes, it lacks a numberpad and function keys. But the keys themselves have a nice mouth feel, I mean touch feel. I have a PS/2 keyboard that I have been using forever, because a lot of machines I make need a PS/2 keyboard. And I have the breakout board for the PCjr, so I was using the PS/2 keyboard. And the feel sucks compared to the actual Junior keyboard. It's only issue is lack of keys, I think it has 62. It could use another 40.
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Re: The IBM PCjr thread which became the exoDOS Thread

Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

In 1985 I bought Spy Hunter for the IBM PC/PCjr. It did not work. I assume because we did not have enough RAM. I don't know.

I downloaded Spy Hunter and ran it on the PCjr in this thread tonight. It DOES work.

It is terrible. It is really, really clonky with a low frame rate and poor controls.

It's terrible! Peter LET ME EAT A GUNN
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Re: The IBM PCjr thread which became the exoDOS Thread

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I am starting a spreadsheet to organize which games run on the PCjr.

Knight Orc works! First I tried text mode in 80 columns. Sure enough. I got greedy. I tried "MGA" or "MGA pictures (faster)." I don't know what MGA is, but black and white graphics came up.

There is no way EGA should work, but I am going to try it right now.

...

Ha, the game goes to 40 column mode and says, "I don't think that format will work. Press RETURN to try it anyway or press ESC to select a different format." I've never seen a screen like this in any game in my life. You are right, it won't work, but here's nothing.

... Yes, it's an abomination, but we TRIED and that is the important thing. I should try saving and restoring next.
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Re: The IBM PCjr thread which became the exoDOS Thread

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Thanks to http://www.oldskool.org/pc we have a fixed version of Jumpman and we have a fixed version of Beyond Castle Wolfenstein. Both start on the Junior.
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