28 Oct
1998
28 Oct
'98
11:48 a.m.
On Thu, 29 Oct 1998, Tony Duell wrote:
Well, every PCjr I've ever seen had the drive. I was a bit confused at
this one when I first saw it and it took me a minute to realize it was
the missing disk drive that made it peculiar.
It was there. The only other board internally was one that had a squared
connector tha stuck out one of the openings in back. It had a chip on it.
I didn't have enough time to inspect it any closer because the store was
closing. Its only $10 so I may go back if its worth getting, but my guess
is that its just a PCjr without the disk drive and some pieces missing.
Has anyone
ever seen (or heard of) an IBM PCjr with no internal disk
drive, but instead a face plate covering the slot where the drive would
go? I saw such a thing today and was curious if there were ever any
PCjr's released without internal disk drives. Obviously this one was.
The TechRef implies that the disk drive is an option, but that doesn't
mean that machines were ever sold without it, of course. The inside is
rather bare as well. There is not the usual cards inside.
Well, I would hope the PSU card (far left, looking from the front) was
there. Otherwise powering up the machine could be interesting. The other cards are a 64K RAM expansion (optional, but
useful as it gives
extra video modes as well), the floppy controller and an internal modem.
So a bare-bones system could look empty. The plastic chassis that holds
the drive (and fan, which is only fitted on floppy systems) was
presumably missing as well.
So it looks like this was the poor man's PCjr (which being the poor man's
PC would put the sorry fellow who got this in the lowest possible income
bracket would be my guess). It must have been the really, really
inexpensive entry-level IBM home computer. I may get it just for that.
I did get some interesting ephemera that was around it, including some
PCjr pamphlets and the first 3 issues of PCjr magazine (I'd never heard of
it until now). Plus the IBM PCjr BASIC reference manual (not the one with
the cartoon drawings throughout, this was the manual with the BASIC
command reference).
Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
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