HD drives and the PCjr

From: Lawrence Walker <lgwalker_at_mts.net>
Date: Wed Apr 10 14:56:59 2002

 In doing a search for NEC V-20 chips I ran across this site

http://www.pcenterprises.com/newbegin.htm

 It has a lot of upgrades and info for the PCjr, PS/2 and Tandy 1000. The site
was last updated in April so it is still current.

Lawrence

> > > I installed a PC HD 5.25" floppy in my long-suffering PCjr by replacing the
> > > old IBM drive. It all seems to work on DD disks, but not HD disks. Do I need
> > > to upgrade something else? (being somewhat ignorant on old PCs).
>
> > Yes. the computer.
> > Welcome to one of the least popular collectibles - the Edsel of CC.
>
> Actually, I'm rather fond of it. It has much more personality than a plain
> boring old XT clone. Now that I have Cartridge BASIC (tip of the hat to
> Sellam :-) I'm able to do more practical things with it once I understand
> what's actually going on ;-)
>
> > The disk controller only does "DD". It operates at a 250K data transfer
> > rate, and was intended to work with 360K drives ONLY.
> > A 720K drive (either 3.5" or 5.25") will work with it just fine, except
> > that it isn't supported by PC-DOS 2.10. If you switch to PC-DOS 3.20 or
> > above, then it'll work with DRIVER.SYS.
>
> What is the highest DOS I can run on a PCjr? And how can I tell the
> difference between a 720K drive and a 1.2MB 5.25" drive? (See, I really *am*
> ignorant about old PC systems. ;-)
>
> Is a 3.5" disk really practical in the jr?
>
> > If you expand the RAM further (with a 512k sidecar), then you might be
> > able to run Windows 3.0 on it if you are willing to devote some time and
> > effort to configure it.
>
> I have the RAM disk software running, which takes up most of the 128K
> internal RAM expansion, and ended up writing an autoexec.bat that copies
> most of the useful DOS files into the RAM disk, makes the COMMAND.COM in
> RAM the permanent shell, and makes the default path the RAM disk. This is
> much, much faster. :-)
>
> --
> ----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
> Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser_at_stockholm.ptloma.edu
> -- if (you.canRead(this)) you.canGet(new job(!problem)); -- Seen at JavaOne ---


lgwalker_at_mts.net
bigwalk_ca_at_yahoo.com
Received on Wed Apr 10 2002 - 14:56:59 BST

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