PCjr gameplay videos on Youtube

[monzamess]

I just put up some PCjr gameplay videos on Youtube.

 

 

Enjoy!

[+thegoldenband]

Very cool! I was surprised that the PCjr's sound hardware can duplicate the characteristic timbre of Pitfall Harry's jump, i.e. the AUDC0=1 setting on the VCS, since I thought the SN76489 could only play back straight square waves. I wonder how they did that?

[CGQuarterly]

Thanks for making those. I don't think I've ever seen a PCjr in action before. My PC gaming didn't start until about 1990. Those games don't look much better than Apple II games. It took quite some time to draw the screens in King's Quest. The computer uses DOS, or no? I guess I should read up on it on Wikipedia or something...

 

Chris

[jmetal88]

Thanks for making those. I don't think I've ever seen a PCjr in action before. My PC gaming didn't start until about 1990. Those games don't look much better than Apple II games. It took quite some time to draw the screens in King's Quest. The computer uses DOS, or no? I guess I should read up on it on Wikipedia or something...

 

Chris

 

For stuff that isn't cartridge or BASIC based, yes, it uses DOS.

[LoTonah]

Thanks for making those. I don't think I've ever seen a PCjr in action before. My PC gaming didn't start until about 1990. Those games don't look much better than Apple II games. It took quite some time to draw the screens in King's Quest. The computer uses DOS, or no? I guess I should read up on it on Wikipedia or something...

 

Chris

 

The resolution on the PCjr wasn't much better, but the color palette was. The Apple only had 7 colors to work with (16 in DHR mode, which hardly anyone used for games), whereas the IBM had 16 colors without trickery. A lot of PCjr owners had the PCjr monitor, too... very nice picture.

 

The PCjr was actually about 3x faster than an Apple (1MHz 6502 chip on the Apple versus a 4.77MHz 8088 on the PCjr, although without DMA support the "actual" clock speed was about 3.5MHz). A game like King's Quest would have been noticeably slower on the Apple, and the sound would have been awful (unless you owned a Mockingboard or something like that).

 

The PCjr used PC-DOS 2.10, although a lot of programs also came on cartridge, which meant the computer could be easier to use because you didn't have to learn and rely on DOS.

 

It's actually a pretty nice machine. The BASIC that is built in is pretty nice, the second version of the keyboard is pretty sweet, the audio and graphics were some of the best out there until the Amiga came along. Third-party companies made it even better with RAM expansion, hard drives, etc.

[CGQuarterly]

Was the second version of the keyboard of the buckling-spring variety? I love those.

 

Chris

[monzamess]

Nah, the second version of the keyboard is the same internally as the first; they just replaced the rectangular "chiclets" with proper keycaps. However, you can use an adapter to plug in a real PC/XT keyboard; the BIOS supports it.

 

The PCjr is fundamentally an 8088 PC and out of the box runs a "lot" of PC software, but definitely not all. It has some weird changes and limitations compared to the regular PC. Some are good (like the enhanced CGA graphics and the TI sound chip) and some are just dumb (like the aforementioned lack of DMA and a slightly different memory map). IBM saved some money but shot themselves in the foot doing it. You can work around some of those issues but not all.

 

Mike Brutman's PCjr page is the most comprehensive site: http://www.brutman.com/PCjr/pcjr.html

 

This Youtube video presents a decent overview of the PCjr:

I agree with the guy's conclusion, basically, the PCjr is a good system to collect if you're collecting DOS systems or if it has nostalgic value, but if you just want an old 8088/8086-based PC for gaming, get a Tandy 1000. It has the PCjr enhancements without the PCjr limitations.

[monzamess]

Some random nostalgic rambling:

 

The very early versions of the Sierra games (KQ1, KQ2, Black Cauldron, etc) would draw the screen as you watched. THEN they would pop in the animated items on the screen, like a mailbox (to open) or a rock (to move) or whatever. This was a very obvious clue as to what items you needed to investigate on each screen. Sierra quickly revised their game engine and did away with this technique/limitation. If you see an old Sierra game on Youtube or on a typical download site, it's almost certainly based on this revised game engine and not the very first version.

 

As you might have noticed, my KQ2 disks are going bad. I bought the original KQ1 and KQ2 for $50 each in 1985 after I sold my 2600 collection at a yardsale. KQ1 came with two disks, a PC version and a PCjr version. I gave away my PCjr disk with my first PCjr. I still have the PC disk but it won't boot in a jr even if you wanted to see the horrible CGA graphics. I also have the original KQ3 but it needs more memory than my jr has, and I have Black Cauldron but those disks are dead.

 

CGA could be better than what you normally see, but here are the limiting factors:

 

Some PC CGA games took advantage of NTSC artifacting (like the Apple II did, and some Atari 8bit games) and you could get 16 colors at an effective 160x200 resolution using that technique--but only IF you were using a color composite monitor or TV. The early versions of Sierra games supported this, as well as Sega's Congo Bongo and others. However, almost NOBODY used a color composite monitor with a PC, as most business software in 80 columns would have been unreadable on such a display. So most PC games were stuck with the two fugly CGA palettes viewable on an RGB monitor.

 

The original PC CGA card supports an "undocumented" 160x100 16-color mode, but most CGA clones (including the PCjr) do not support this mode and only a handful of games used it.

[jmetal88]

Nah, the second version of the keyboard is the same internally as the first; they just replaced the rectangular "chiclets" with proper keycaps. However, you can use an adapter to plug in a real PC/XT keyboard; the BIOS supports it.

 

The PCjr is fundamentally an 8088 PC and out of the box runs a "lot" of PC software, but definitely not all. It has some weird changes and limitations compared to the regular PC. Some are good (like the enhanced CGA graphics and the TI sound chip) and some are just dumb (like the aforementioned lack of DMA and a slightly different memory map). IBM saved some money but shot themselves in the foot doing it. You can work around some of those issues but not all.

 

Mike Brutman's PCjr page is the most comprehensive site: http://www.brutman.com/PCjr/pcjr.html

 

This Youtube video presents a decent overview of the PCjr:

I agree with the guy's conclusion, basically, the PCjr is a good system to collect if you're collecting DOS systems or if it has nostalgic value, but if you just want an old 8088/8086-based PC for gaming, get a Tandy 1000. It has the PCjr enhancements without the PCjr limitations.

 

Or, if you're like me, you got a PCjr for free and you're trying to make the best of it.

 

I'm still rather astonished that my first idea for a 512k RAM upgrade worked. Eventually, I hope I can get a PCB version working that plugs into the CPU socket. I'm also hoping to do an additional 96k to go on top of the 512k upgrade. Hmm, wonder if I could squeeze it all on the one board? I'd probably want a switch to turn off the extra 96k in case something conflicted (since that area isn't normally used for RAM, there could potentially be a conflict with, say, a cartridge or another peripheral).

[kool kitty89]

The resolution on the PCjr wasn't much better, but the color palette was. The Apple only had 7 colors to work with (16 in DHR mode, which hardly anyone used for games), whereas the IBM had 16 colors without trickery. A lot of PCjr owners had the PCjr monitor, too... very nice picture.

 

The PCjr was actually about 3x faster than an Apple (1MHz 6502 chip on the Apple versus a 4.77MHz 8088 on the PCjr, although without DMA support the "actual" clock speed was about 3.5MHz). A game like King's Quest would have been noticeably slower on the Apple, and the sound would have been awful (unless you owned a Mockingboard or something like that).

 

The PCjr used PC-DOS 2.10, although a lot of programs also came on cartridge, which meant the computer could be easier to use because you didn't have to learn and rely on DOS.

 

It's actually a pretty nice machine. The BASIC that is built in is pretty nice, the second version of the keyboard is pretty sweet, the audio and graphics were some of the best out there until the Amiga came along. Third-party companies made it even better with RAM expansion, hard drives, etc.

You had 320x200x16 color too, but that ate up a lot of RAM. (and PCJr was only 64 kB stock) Plus you had the 640x200 4-color mode.

The Tandy 1000 made much more use of that graphics mode though, or it could at very least, and later models also added a 640x200x16 color mode, short of models with actual EGA or VGA cards -which you could add of course as it was a standard ISA motherboard unlike the PCJr. (faster CPU on top of more stock RAM -and then later/higher-end models as well)

That would have made games (with enough CPU grunt) look as good as many 320x200 EGA games given that many such games stuck to the default palette (I don't think those EGA modes are limited to that palette, but simply tend to stick with it for whatever reason, like many VGA games using the default palette as well). Later T-1000s even added an 8-bit DAC with DMA logic and sampling up to 48 kHz. (so rather close to a mono equivalent to the STE sound and a little better than the Sound Blaster 2.0's PCM channel, though like the STE, it came late and wasn't very often used)

 

 

 

Some PC CGA games took advantage of NTSC artifacting (like the Apple II did, and some Atari 8bit games) and you could get 16 colors at an effective 160x200 resolution using that technique--but only IF you were using a color composite monitor or TV. The early versions of Sierra games supported this, as well as Sega's Congo Bongo and others. However, almost NOBODY used a color composite monitor with a PC, as most business software in 80 columns would have been unreadable on such a display. So most PC games were stuck with the two fugly CGA palettes viewable on an RGB monitor.

Didn't most business computers tend to opt for MDA anyway? (obviously you had some things using CGA, especially spreadsheet software, but a lot of business stuff was MDA early on, I though)

 

Plus, in terms of composite, a good composite monitor will look about as good as RGB for the modes where colorburst is disabled. It's just like plugging component video (or S-video luma/Y -ie Y/C on Atari 8-bit, C64, etc) into the composite RCA socket and getting a crisp B/W image. For that matter I think the Amiga 500 was like that (apparently the colorburst signal was disabled to entice users to get RGB monitors -that or they only catered to 1 colorburst signal and either PAL or NTSC ended up w/out color -not sure which if that's the case, but probably PAL). Or same as with a C64 Y/C monitor with only the luma (Y) plug in.

 

The only factors then would be calibration, beam precision, and dot pitch. (the latter mainly being a factor for 640x200 mode as even common low-end SDTVs had fine enough pitch to be fine in 320x200)

 

It's the colorburst that screws stuff up though. (much worse in this case than some others, but it's always there -something simply dot crawl, others more)

 

Edit: see the PCJr go through the color and luma only (colorburst disabled) text modes at 6:40 on the 2nd video. At 7:20 you can see how the 80x25 text mode works quite well in composite video with color disabled. (and then how it's utter garbage with colorburst enabled )

 

 

 

 

Very cool! I was surprised that the PCjr's sound hardware can duplicate the characteristic timbre of Pitfall Harry's jump, i.e. the AUDC0=1 setting on the VCS, since I thought the SN76489 could only play back straight square waves. I wonder how they did that?

The Colecovision version does it too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH3RaXzLzT0 (and smooth vertical scrolling too, which the SG-1000 port of Sega's arcade version doesn't do, oddly enough -it does choppy character scrolling instead)

 

I think that sound might be done using PWM in software.

Edited September 9, 2010 by kool kitty89

[monzamess]

Plus, in terms of composite, a good composite monitor will look about as good as RGB for the modes where colorburst is disabled.

 

Right, thanks for the explanation. I played around with this a lot back in the day, because all I had for my PCjr were a green mono composite monitor and a junky color TV set. Everything was a compromise. I spent most of my time with the green monitor in B&W video modes, so it looked nice enough. I never had an RGB monitor for a PCjr until I got a set off ebay last month. One pathetic childhood dream fulfilled!

[kool kitty89]

Plus, in terms of composite, a good composite monitor will look about as good as RGB for the modes where colorburst is disabled.

 

Right, thanks for the explanation. I played around with this a lot back in the day, because all I had for my PCjr were a green mono composite monitor and a junky color TV set. Everything was a compromise. I spent most of my time with the green monitor in B&W video modes, so it looked nice enough. I never had an RGB monitor for a PCjr until I got a set off ebay last month. One pathetic childhood dream fulfilled!

For the mono composite monitor (and B/W TVs), having colorburst enabled will still look terrible as it's the luma (b/W brightness/intensity) that's corrupted by the video encoder in that mode: hence why totally B/W stuff turns into weird colors (including games using the 640x200 mono mode for the pseudo 160x200x16 color display -though the 320x200x4 color modes were also used for that).

So on a mono monitor, you'd definitely want the colorburst disabled at all times if possible, but I think that had to be supported in software or you got stuck with the color modes only. (I think most games stuck with color modes only -and the games using the composite corruption intentionally would look totally wrong with colorburst disabled, of course)

If they really wanted to cater to grayscale/mono monitors, the 4-shade grayscale modes with colorburst disabled would be most useful, and indeed it would have made sense to include that as an option along with composite and RGB color optimized modes for CGA games (I'd imagine mono/grayscale monitor users were rather common), albeit in the case of actual CGA, there was no true 4-shade grayscale mode (oddly enough), but some of the other palettes available were close enough with colorburst disabled. (and a game properly catering to a grayscale display would look much better than using the plain CGA RGB color modes in many games, and of course, for non-composite grayscale monitors you still couldn't use the composite artifacting modes either -while you could with a B/W TV or composite monitor: with full artifacting in the proper manner but without the colors)

 

So a bit like the 2600 games that supported the B/W mode too, in some respects. (game optimized so you could still distinguish things in B/W rather than a lot of colors that are similar luma intensity and very hard to tell apart)

 

 

It seems a bit odd that more computers didn't cater to B/W modes, even if it would have been up to software to cater to them. (be it software or hardware/manually activated, software still had to provide a mode that had optimized contrast for grayscale -at least in some cases, for others the contrast was already fine by default)

That would have especially facilitated lower-end users, especially those with composite monitors (color or B/W) for using high res modes with sharp detail (or even lower res modes with sharp detail), but grayscale RGB users as well. (in the case of the atari ST you had the dedicated fixed sync mono monitor for the high-res 640x400 resolution only, but that's a different case than a mono monitor for the normal resolutions of the ST/amiga/SDTV/CGA/etc -all used the normal 15 kHz television sync rate vs higher res stuff like EGA/VGA/MAC/Hercules/etc -the high res mono mode on the ST uses a VGA compatible 30 kHz sync rate)

 

Given the low-cost aim of the ST, that was particularly odd: they did offer the high-res mono monitor at a lower price, but that left out all users wanting to use the normal res modes (which is what most games supported -and highres was 1-bit monochrome like the mac, not multi-shade grayscale). Though in that case, the very early STs didn't even have composite/RF out, so a no-colorburst mode would not be a factor, but software catering to grayscale (and availability of lower-cost grayscale RGB monitors) would have been significant.

For the Amiga it would have made sense due to compsite video being supported and a composite monitor being the low-cost option, so any fine detail/high-res/text stuff would definitely be preferable to have the colorburst disabled. (and on the A500 it seems that's all that was supported anyway, oddly enough)

 

And of course, that would have been very important to have on all the earlier 8-bit machines with composite/RF output, even for those with Y/C monitor support for the many cases of users using TVs. (it would have made the 320 wide graphics and 40 column text modes much more usable on the A8 and C64 for those using RF or composite, or likewise the 256 wide/35 column text of the CoCo or TMS9918 based machines -and the ZX Spectrum in Europe, albeit they had PAL with the higher colorburst signal, so the artifacting was less significant)

At least for any machine that already had a separate luma output, all it would mean was a hardware toggle between the composite video and luma lines going to RF or the A/V port. (or an external switch on the monitor cable itself in the case of the latter -or for any computers with external RF boxes and luma+composite on the AV port)

 

 

 

 

 

Actually I started a thread on this a while back: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/158753-should-a-bw-mode-have-been-standard/page__p__1950662#entry1950662

Edited September 9, 2010 by kool kitty89

[Tempest]

This has inspired me to get my PCjr out of the basement and bring it back up to my game room. I've been meaning to try something away. Back in 85 when my friend got his PCjr (his dad worked for IBM) he had Kings Quest, and I distinctly remember there being 'background noise' during the game (I think it was supposed to be birds chirping and other 'nature' sounds). Every version of Kings Quest I've played since then hasn't had it, but I finally got my hands on a PCjr copy again so I'm going to fire it up and see. Knowing what I know now, I'm guessing it was some sort of PCjr/Tandy sound enhancement that the regular PC version didn't have.

 

Tempest

[monzamess]

I distinctly remember there being 'background noise' during the game (I think it was supposed to be birds chirping and other 'nature' sounds). Every version of Kings Quest I've played since then hasn't had it, but I finally got my hands on a PCjr copy again so I'm going to fire it up and see.

 

In college, my roommate and I would walk around whistling that bird noise just to annoy each other... we had both played the game as kids and it was burned into our brains.

 

I'm pretty sure it's in the PC and PCjr versions but maybe it's only in the original "GAL" versions...? From what I can gather, GAL came before AGI and way before SCI. It lacks the "Score" and "Sound" status at the top of the screen and doesn't use pop-up windows (as evidenced in my video) that AGI added.

[Tempest]

I distinctly remember there being 'background noise' during the game (I think it was supposed to be birds chirping and other 'nature' sounds). Every version of Kings Quest I've played since then hasn't had it, but I finally got my hands on a PCjr copy again so I'm going to fire it up and see.

 

In college, my roommate and I would walk around whistling that bird noise just to annoy each other... we had both played the game as kids and it was burned into our brains.

 

I'm pretty sure it's in the PC and PCjr versions but maybe it's only in the original "GAL" versions...? From what I can gather, GAL came before AGI and way before SCI. It lacks the "Score" and "Sound" status at the top of the screen and doesn't use pop-up windows (as evidenced in my video) that AGI added.

Ok so I'm not crazy, it does exist.

 

GAL? I've never heard of that before. I'll have to do some research on that.

 

Tempest

[kool kitty89]

I distinctly remember there being 'background noise' during the game (I think it was supposed to be birds chirping and other 'nature' sounds). Every version of Kings Quest I've played since then hasn't had it, but I finally got my hands on a PCjr copy again so I'm going to fire it up and see.

 

In college, my roommate and I would walk around whistling that bird noise just to annoy each other... we had both played the game as kids and it was burned into our brains.

 

I'm pretty sure it's in the PC and PCjr versions but maybe it's only in the original "GAL" versions...? From what I can gather, GAL came before AGI and way before SCI. It lacks the "Score" and "Sound" status at the top of the screen and doesn't use pop-up windows (as evidenced in my video) that AGI added.

Ok so I'm not crazy, it does exist.

 

GAL? I've never heard of that before. I'll have to do some research on that.

 

Tempest

It's in the YT videos too, for King's Quest and King's Quest 2 at least. (including waves crashing in King's Quest 2)

 

From what I understand, King's Quest did use AGI, but the term wasn't specifically applied to the engine until King's Quest 2.

 

I think the sound is specific to the PCJr/Tandy versions and not present on the CGA PC Booter version (with PC Speaker), or early 1987 EGA versions using the AGI (also PC Speaker), but the remade SCI EGA version in 1990 added Adlib support.

Edited September 10, 2010 by kool kitty89

[monzamess]

From what I understand, King's Quest did use AGI, but the term wasn't specifically applied to the engine until King's Quest 2.

 

The stories I've found on the web aren't very clear. From what I can gather, the early KQ1 & KQ2 were GAL, but GAL was just an early version of AGI. So technically they would all be AGI. You can see the very early versions of the game are just more primitive than the more common AGI versions, with the lack of status bar, no popup windows, the background that draws itself as you watch, etc. However, I can't find a clear history of AGI (or GAL) variations.

[Tempest]

You can see the very early versions of the game are just more primitive than the more common AGI versions, with the lack of status bar, no popup windows, the background that draws itself as you watch, etc. However, I can't find a clear history of AGI (or GAL) variations.

The Apple II versions of Kings Quest I & II did this as well. I remember thinking it was cool at the time.

 

Tempest

[doctor_x]

very "atari 8 bit" looking games, which i didnt know the ibm pc jr had... were those ATARISOFT games?

[kool kitty89]

very "atari 8 bit" looking games, which i didnt know the ibm pc jr had... were those ATARISOFT games?

Some were I think, but many weren't some were obviously activision. (pitfall II)

 

And it's not at all odd that they have that look given the resolution used (160x200), a lot of rather C64 looking stuff too. Some were plain CGA games though, just with enhanced title screens (like alley cat) with the 320x200x4 color mode used. There was a 320x200x16 color mode too, but that was avoided due to RAM use I think. (with the original PCJr having only 64 kB) Rendering speed was probably an issue too.

 

Technically you could have CGA games that looked roughly on par with 160x200x16 color PCJr/TGA graphics using composite video artifacting in the 320x200 or 640x200 modes with colorburst enabled. Of course, that would only work on a composite monitor (so some low-end options for CGA PCs/clones), but only a few games did that for whatever reason. (in fact, you even had the advantage of a broader range of pseudo-colors than the real CGA/PCJr/TGA palette, so it could even be useful for Tandy/PCJr games -especially given how common composite monitors were for those)

[monzamess]

very "atari 8 bit" looking games, which i didnt know the ibm pc jr had... were those ATARISOFT games?

 

None of the ones I posted were Atarisoft. I don't think any of Atarisoft's PC games used PCjr enhancements; they were probably in development before the PCjr came out. All the ones I've played were straight 320x200 CGA games; they didn't even use NTSC artifacting. You can see screenshots etc at Mobygames: http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/atarisoft/pc-booter/