Congratulations, Michael! I never had a PC-JR but I find it to be a very
interesting computer.
These old gems are pretty rare in Brazil. I've never SEEN a PC-JR in
Brazil (although I had its color monitor - it was my FIRST color monitor)
and talking old PCs, just ONE Tandy 1000 :o(
---
Enviado do meu Motorola PT550
Meu site:
http://www.tabalabs.com.br
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael B. Brutman" <mbbrutman-cctalk at brutman.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 22, 2012 9:30 PM
Subject: jr-IDE for PCjrs (Re: XT-IDE V2 PCBs)
I would like to point out that there is a jrIDE sidecar, which was
originally derived from the XT-IDE work but is quite different now. Here
are the main features:
- fits inside of an existing PCjr sidecar shell
- Adds 512KB of SRAM to fill the machine out to 640KB
- Adds an IDE interface using an adapted XT-IDE BIOS
- Real time clock (uses a command line utility at the moment)
- POST display
- The BIOS boots directly from the IDE drive
- Implemented using CPLD to keep the chip count down
- IDE registers are memory mapped - this sucker is fast!
I originally grafted an XT-IDE onto a PCjr and modified (hacked up) an
early version of the BIOS to work. That lead to ideas and discussion, and
eventually the jr-IDE sidecar. Alan H ("eeguru") did the design and
implementation work. I've done most of the BIOS work.
Details, including how to get one can be found here:
http://www.brutman.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=180
The short story: Kits are $70, and you have to provide your own sidecar
shell. We have a few happy people using them now. But it was a limited
run of cards (20-25?) so they won't last forever.
Mike