Krebizfan

Many laptops supported external 5.25" drives. Examples include the Sharp PC-5000, the Gridcase 2, and much of the Toshiba lineup through the early 90s. Some of the Toshiba models could even swap the drive settings to boot off the external drive. Some of the Toshibas had VGA. Getting the proprietary external drives and cables will be nearly impossible now. Many laptops (even ones late enough to have VGA) could accept a parallel port 5.25" drive which would be easier to find but won't handle disks with unusual formats. For internal, there is the Visual Commuter which IIRC lasted for years in the DAK catalogs. http://oldcomputers.net/commuter.html Alas, too early for VGA. The fictional Cardiff Giant looked like a cross between this and the Tandy 600 in its chunky brown. Unless you can find one of the limited footprint chassis (fancy name for computer in keyboard) from the 90s that were advertised in the back of magazines, you will have to check if computer can accept a VGA card in the undersized expansion slot. The Tandy and Amstrad keyboard computers came with improved CGA.

IBM's original plans for the PC were to match the Apple II video mode for video mode. CGA and MDA were nice improvements on that with Hercules being a great budget monochrome graphics solution. Perq was the first widely available high resolution (1024x768) graphics system. The problem was the cost of memory. The 256KB needed for 640x480 with a sizable palette meant the video card had to cost at least $2,000 in 1980. Add to that a roughly $5,000 monitor and the system would be priced right out of business let alone the home. A few years later, IBM had the 3 card monster of PGC to supply 640x480 but the cost was still excessive. It took the development of the enhanced EGA cards to put 640x480 in reach. The EGA card needed 256K so it was just a simple matter of adding a few oscillators to hit the higher resolutions. The necessary monitor was still around a thousand dollars but that wasn't much of a stretch compared to legible EGA monitors.

IIRC, the power supply is held in place by a tab on the bottom. It will need to slide about an inch or so before it can be lifted out. Very unlikely to find a replacement power supply that can fit in that mounting.

The best solution is to write some simple programs that you want to write. Writing programs locks the syntax in place. Some languages just won't stick no matter what; I have failed with Smalltalk multiple times.

Not very. The disk drive was announced in Nov 1984 while the Adam was terminated in Jan 1985. Only a small number of drives were placed in stores or were in inventory when the surplus companies took over the stock. The Adams that remained in use after 1985 got third party drives but that was only a community of around 20,000 IIRC. Coleco had spent about a year developing for the Tabor 3.25" disk drive but that was not going to be viable by early 1984. Tabor itself shut down in Aug 1984.

What does the recipient plan on using the computer for? Simply handing off an old computer results in a polite thank you and something cluttering a closet.

I had a green/amber monitor. Press a switch and it flipped color. For some reason, I thought it was easier to read text in green but graphics stood out better in amber.

If you are in the US and are willing to provide twice the number of disks to be created, I am willing to give the creation an attempt. The extra disks are because I expect a 50% failure rate just from their age. I would prefer to have an actual PCJr to make sure the contents of the images work as intended. Two weeks of waiting only discover the images were incorrectly labeled and are not for the Jr would be very annoying. I don't have one so I would do what I can and hope for the best. Fill in the details through PMs.

I thought I pointed out two forums that could help. Mike Brutman's PCJr forum is a very good point since the PCJr works differently from other IBM compatibles. Everything is easier when someone has the hardware to confirm what is being tried can be done. VCFED (dot) ORG is a larger general purpose forum for old hardware though the PCs are a minor element. I am there and have sent out disks before. I would have made an offer to create disks except I lack 5.25" DD disks. Creating disks and sending them off does take a bit of work; I don't want to waste time creating disks that do not function correctly.

Double check that it is FILES = 10 in CONFIG.SYS. I looked at the PC-DOS 2.1 and I don't see an easy way to verify what the system settings for FILES and BUFFERS are. After entering the contents of CONFIG.SYS, reboot. The system won't change the memory allocation until the reboot. The disks you have are for version 3 which the Infoworld review indicates needs a minimum of 256K so if it does run, the spreadsheet will be tiny.

Wouldn't the shocking event for AI be creating something that takes less time to fix than for the human to do it without AI?

The Memron Chromadisk got a few writeups. One in Feb 1985 Creative Computing and another in John Dvorak's Infoworld column of Nov 14, 1983. Dvorak mentions Visicorp and Information Unlimited as users. I have not seen a Visicorp disk like that. The only disk I know of that wasn't sold by Memron directly was the 1984 Epyx Preview Disk which was perhaps its best use. The preview disk wasn't going to be hidden in a box. https://www.commodorecomputerclub.com/photos-july-2-2010/ and scroll down a lot to see an image of the disk. Internet Archive has copies from several of the museums of diskette sleeves showcasing how the sleeves didn't have to be bland.

Having checked references, it seems that typing BASICA would launch Cartridge BASIC on the Jr. How the Cartridge helps memory is that the 32K of ROM on the cartridge does not have to be loaded into memory. The 128K of RAM on an expanded Jr. was equivalent to 144K on a 5150 or 176K on an XT clone which didn't have Cassette BASIC in ROM. If the math seems off, remember 16K of RAM is used for video memory on the Jr. I would type the program on a 5150 instead of the Jr because the Jr is more likely to lose keystrokes. 5150 has a proper keyboard controller with buffer while the Jr tries to grab every character using the CPU. Debugging a long program can be a challenge even without the computer throwing in bonus errors. I went through a similar set of confusion when I resumed writing line number BASIC programs after a 25 years hiatus.

Taking a refresher on the BASICA/GWBASIC is a good idea. I remember being tripped up a few times because of differences I had forgotten between the editing mode of BASICA and more modern editors. One command within BASICA to remember is FILES which is similar to DIR in DOS so if a typo is made in a filename, tracking down the file will be possible. Cartridge BASIC is BASICA with a few additional functions to handle the Jr's better video modes. Loading the software from cartridge stretches out the limited RAM supply of the Jr. IBM went out of its way to make it difficult to use 5150 BASICA on the Jr. Entering the program would involve starting BASICA and then SAVE the file every time a reasonable amount of text was added. When resuming work, use LOAD to get the previous draft and resume work. Both SAVE and LOAD require the file name enclosed in quotes. One slight wrinkle is that closing quote does not need to be entered unless a command switch is added after the file name. For example, SAVE "PC-CALC",A would save the PC-CALC.BAS file in ASCII mode so it could be opened by a standard text editor.

The EXE version is what would result if the BASIC code was run through a BASIC compiler. The result was often faster but needed more memory. However, without the ability to copy files to disks, it is nearly impossible* to send the exe file to the PCJr. Compiled programs aren't something that can be simply typed. * Technically, some utilities were distributed as BASIC code with the instructions of the compiled program stored as DATA lines. Run the BASIC program and the compiled program would be reconstituted on disk. If you have the skills needed to convert a compiled program into the matching lines of DATA, you have so much skill that you should not be listening to me. You might need to be using Cartridge BASIC. BASICA would be the right version on the 5150. I don't recall what the command was needed to enter Cartridge BASIC on the Junior. It has been many years and nothing turned up in a quick search. Use PC-CALC.BAS and start with BASICA PC-CALC or simply BASICA followed by LOAD "PC-CALC" The .BAS is filled in automatically.