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.

Verifying that PC-CALC will fit in the PCJr memory space is simple. Start the PCJr, go into BASIC, read the amount of available memory. It should be close to 64K which will be more than the roughly 32K PC-Calc will occupy. PC-Calc is a huge program by the standards of line number BASIC but the Jr has more than enough memory. The DOC is a simple text file. The PCJr lacks a text editor and can't run a text editor at the same time as BASIC. The Jr is a very limited computer. It will be necessary to read the DOC file on a different computer to access the manual to figure out how to use the spreadsheet unless a lot of paper is wasted printing the document. Ignore the EXE.

The 6502 chip was cheaper than a floppy disk controller chip in the early 80s. The bare bones internal single sided disk drive was about $150 in quantity so Commodore was accepting very low margins selling at $200. The case and power supply weren't free. It was such a good deal that Commodore couldn't meet demand.

That is a method that will work.

It should run on the PCJr after being transferred by a 5.25" floppy. I tested the code in PC-BASIC with the pcjr settings and it worked. Entered a few values, made a simple equation summing those values, saved the sheet, and loaded the sheet back in.

I was considering if all else failed, to suggest using one of the current IBM PC BASIC to WAV programs* and play that WAV over the cassette cable to the Jr. It would skip the problems of making a disk image but without special software, BASIC programs are about all that can be transferred that way. It should be easier than retyping a long program. *These run on modern hardware. But I don't know if the OP has a cassette cable for the Jr and I haven't used the software to validate that the audio file will load reliably. A serial or parallel port transfer program on the 5150 would be even simpler since the disk could be created there. The drawback of the network card is getting the drivers on a 5.25" disk so DOS could see the card. Many of these solutions are stymied by the need to get that necessary initial 5.25" disk created.

The problem running 123 on the Jr is memory. The 128K Jr has only 112K available since 16K is assigned to video. 123 needs a minimum of 192K to launch; putting about 128K on cartridges gives the Jr barely enough room to run 123. The Jr was designed when the 256K motherboards for PC and XT was available. IBM saved about 5% on the cost of the Jr but caused so many problems in the process. Removing files from the disk won't help squeeze 123 into the limited memory space. Visicalc in its very limited original form for the PC should fit in the memory. https://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue59/review_lotus_123.php is a period review that shows how limited the Jr's memory was. If you can transfer BASIC files over to the Jr, there was a reasonably capable spreadsheet written in BASIC. https://www.pcjs.org/software/pcx86/sw/misc/pcsig/0001-0999/DISK0224/#pc-calcbas is a clean version of the BASIC source. https://www.geocities.ws/joseph_sixpack/bpc-calc-doc.html is the documentation. It might be enough to produce a few simple demos before the 40th anniversary.

Yes, it is possible but it isn't easy. http://brutmanlabs.org/PCjr/pcjr_faq.html the first question is about adding disk drives. https://www.pcjribm.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=119 includes a link to a PDF describing the simplest modification to do today. It restores the components that should have been on the floppy controller that let the controller have 2 drives. It requires comfort with a soldering iron. PCJr expansion chassis and replacement floppy controllers were scarce 30 years ago and the only way to get one now is to strip them from another Jr. The attempts to put a Gotek in a parallel port floppy drive enclosure have not been successful.

The main bit of tinkering would be to remove the floppy drive on the Jr and put the floppy emulator in its place. That is the entire idea of the floppy emulator. Select the proper disk image and the computer thinks that is the disk inserted. Because the PC Jr uses a 360K floppy drive and the default firmware on a Gotek emulates a 1.44 MB floppy drive, it would be necessary to place different firmware on the Gotek. https://www.brutman.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1135 and https://www.brutman.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=996 might give an idea of the complexity involved. Note that the Gotek plugs into the floppy cable. It has a USB port to accept a USB drive with a number of disk images. I think the standard firmware is restricted to 1,000 images so only about 400 MB of a flash drive would be used. The Gotek may not be the optimum solution for your use case but it is an alternative to waiting for someone to create physical disks from images. Or if you can figure out how to have two floppy drives on the Jr, one could be a Gotek and then the disk images could be transferred to physical disks.

When I checked Ebay, I got a low price of $24.11 which is higher than I expected. Some offerings were several times that which seems a bit extreme considering that the brand new Goteks were about $30 at Amazon. The joys of inflation. I looked at what I would need to make the disks. Does my 360K floppy drive still work? Do I have 360K floppies that haven't turned into a pile of rusty paint shavings? I also lack a PC Jr to verify the applications would run on a PC Jr. It would be annoying to put in the effort and cost involved and not have a happily running destination system. Using a Gotek and running the system off of disk images would be another path which costs about the same. I will miss the physical thunks of disk drives but mylar sheets covered in paint were never expected to last this long.

A business today could buy an array of storage that could easily exceed the million dollar mark which would be more than those disk platters cost, even factoring the effects of inflation. $20K for 330 MB means about 17KB per dollar or about what the cost of storage on a single sided single density 5.25" floppy disk was. The 5.25" disk by itself was $5 to store about 90kB; that excludes the $500 for the drive and the $300 for the controller. For bulk storage, those disk packs were astonishingly cheap. Now, if one wanted expensive storage in the mid-70s, National Semiconductor planned to use ram cartridges to store the data for one of their programmable calculators. The planned pricing would have been $20 for about 250 bytes or more than 1000 times the cost per byte of disk platters. One major difference in storage was that storage back then was intended to be used 24x7 for many years. I remember a test on flash drives being repeatedly written to and then reformatted resulting in drives that failed in only a few days. Even the really good flash memory could only handle a few months of writes at the chips full data rate. If one wants to get reliability today, one has to extensively over provision to make up for the short lives of the storage.