The IBM PCjr thread which became the exoDOS Thread

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I got a game working that uses the AdLib board re-imagining! Commander Keen 4. It plays poorly, but hey, it sounds nice.

Transylvania had a PCjr color patch. When I started the game, there were no graphics. What a gyp! I hit "Escape" to try to leave the game.... and that flips between all-text mode and graphics mode. Funny. The game definitely does not tell you this.



Since I last posted, I got a bunch of different games working. I'll post about them soon. I think I have a good list of games that I could see myself playing long term: Elite, Knight Orc, Lode Runner and then the Wizardry games, but I might need real floppies for the Wizardry games.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Accomplished some other things today.

I found the "FLOPPER" 1.02 zip file, which includes (in the GOODIES) directory a .COM file called "IMG2DSK." It does what you think it might: it takes a image file of a PC Booter disk and writes it to a floppy disk. As a result, I have three games on real 5.25" floppies working that I otherwise would not have been able to play on the real hardware:

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord
Touchdown Football
Championship Lode Runner

Great games, all. I am ok with having a CF card hard disk for whatever I can have there, and a few modern-day floppies created that should last another 40 years.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

One other thing - all the info does seem to be out there, but ya gotta search for it. Bitrot will take a lot of sites down.

I sort of want to make a PCjr game. Maybe after Cyberganked. I think it should be possible to maybe have Hugo run on a PCjr.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Oh. Yeah. It works.

I just have to make a version with no graphics (I think) of Enceladus and boom. Roasted. PCjr text adventure game.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

It took about a half hour in Wizardry to buy some equipment, equip some guys, wander in the maze, get in a fight, win the fight and come back up.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I found an ftp site filled with DOS games from like 1980-1988, organized by year. Nothing special - exoDOS also had it. The archive DID have a PCjr section, and I scarfed that down, but the "8088-Friendly" directory was what I was most interested in.

There's a sweet spot where most games from a time frame should run on Junior.

I grabbed Arkanoid. It has a CGA, EGA and Tandy mode. I thought that it would be slower than I'd expect, what with having EGA support, but it actually runs fast enough where a man of my limited talents can't keep up. (In CGA mode.)

There is a mod out there to let your PCjr run in Tandy mode, which I guess offers more colors. I kind of want to install it. Requires soldering. I bought glasses to let me solder again recently.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

In an effort to not just scene set, I shall try to give Starflight on the Jr a full hour of play tomorrow.

[Jizaboz]

Have you played The Black Cauldron on it yet?

(Did you ever play The Black Cauldron?)

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Have you played The Black Cauldron on it yet?

(Did you ever play The Black Cauldron?)

I have not! I never did!

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Don't think I posted this here. The chess game Cyrus on the PCjr.

[Jizaboz]

I am interested in your thoughts on The Black Cauldron if you get around to trying it. I didn't see the movie because it wasn't in theaters long and never arrived on VHS in the USA. However, for some reason that game got me really interested in the story and I ended up reading all 3 books by Lloyd Alexander when I was 12-13. It's basically a King's Quest clone where you have to type in commands. I recommend trying to play it yourself for an hour or 2 then resorting to a walkthrough. Back in the day I probably spent 4-6 hours total trying to finish it myself before writing Sierra Online for a printout of a walkthrough.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Then I shall try it!

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Reminder to patch Paratrooper for the PCjr tomorrow.

https://www.brutman.com/forums/viewtopi ... 3276#p3276

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

My Jr has a problem where the graphics will distort after a warm boot.

The keyboard or ADP port on my Mac doesn't seem to work.

Ohhhh, the joys.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

The ADB (not ADP) port on the Mac is fine, more on that in the Mac thread.

Today I played GATO to make a joke on Mastodon. You're all on Mastodon, right? Get on Mastodon! Let's all be pals there!

Here is GATO, the submarine warfare game for the PCjr.

[Flack]

There was a PC Jr set up and running at the convention I went to over the weekend. I love seeing the pictures of yours, and sitting down in front of one again was a real treat. There are so many downsides to owning, maintaining, displaying, and using old hardware, and yet when you sit down at an old machine you haven't seen in years it's like running into an old friend.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

That is an amazingly kind thing of you to say. I am starting my week off RIGHT. I will try to make the posts with pictures of the systems have more juice to them. I am a retro monster!

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I bought a new old stock joystick that didn't work, so a few months later I bought the crappiest, cheapest one I could find, and of course it works perfect.



First problem-free game I have played of Touchdown Football with a joystick in probably... well, I don't think it worked for XTs, right? So maybe 36 years or so.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

The Gravis Gamepad does work, through the adapter I bought a while back.

However, the adapter takes over the keyboard slot, and it has two connectors for a keyboard - none of which are compatible with my particular genuine PCjr keyboard (I have a PS/2 keyboard I can use to get by). But this is all solvable. We have **options**

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I did not take a picture of Spy Hunter. It is not a great port. There does not seem to be any water areas, the helicopter will appear at least twice before you have the missiles and any way to attack it, and the Weapons Van is really few and far between.