My older borther has an old IBM PC Jr. I want to try and find different cartridges and blank 5.25 drives for it. I looked some stuff up on ebay but they have almost nothing.

This is a real oddball PC:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PCjr

You need to visit Mike's page (the guru of PCjr's) and Micro-Zone. Excellent source of info (and possibly links to hardware)...

http://www.brutman.com/PCjr/

http://www.micro-zone.com/index.html

On ebay use the search terms "pc jr" and "pcjr". The second turned up some games:

http://search-desc.ebay.com/search/...

You should check every few days to see if there's new postings.

You might consider selling it on ebay. Some of that old crap sells high there. For example, someone's trying to get $300 for an IBM XT:

http://cgi.ebay.com/IBM-PC-XT_W0QQi...

(And I've trashed dozens of those over the years.)

If you can find it that rig will run DOS 6.22 and many other things, I remember throwing a lot of task's at one and almost everything I tried at that time "1998" would work on it, if you feel it needs a good home please let me know....

Keep the old stuff running

eBay used to have a 'wanmt list'. Maybe they still do.

=====================================
If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

M2

Here in the UK, these drives and their discs are always available on:-

ebay/computing/vintage

at very reasonable prices. Occasionally entire pc juniors are offered. I suspect you have been looking in the wrong place or searching incorrectly.

Am unclear what you require when you state 'find different cartidges'. What configuration does it have at the moment.

Possibly it can support a 3.5" floppy drive, but maybe only DD.

If an existing 5.25" floppy drive is suspect:-

blow out any muck using a hairdryer set to cold and max blast. Assist with a long thin soft brush.

carefully remove any dust lumps left behind.

gently clean head or heads using a bent cotton bud/q tip that has been dipped in iso-propyl alcohol (liquid that comes with cd cleaners etc.)

Advise how you get on.

Good Luck - Keep us posted.

I have seen mikes page, great stuff. The PC that steve got was a sealed one from the fatory with many differnt things including: sidecars, joysticks, and even a report on how to increase the ram to 512K. Whst version of dos should I load dos 6.22 or an earlyer version.

I'm sure 6.22 would work but getting it installed might be a problem. You'd need it on low density 360K disks and I've only seen 6.22 on 1.44 disks.

okay so I would have to use whatever version of dos came with the computer then. I also have two cartridge slots one for the boot program and one for another program. It has a 5.25 drive as well.

>>>You'd need it on low density 360K disks and I've only seen 6.22 on 1.44 disks.<<<

I remember installing 6.22 from HDD (copy files to empty directory and install from there); shouldn't be to difficult since none of the files on the original floppies are either hidden or read-only (that's assuming the machine has a hard-drive). You could even upgrade 6.22 to 6.22 from the upgrade-version:

http://www.computing.net/dos/wwwboa...

posts 3-4

Yeah, I put 6.22 on an 8088 by sys'ing the drive and copying the dos files from another machine already running 6.22. I should have mentioned that method but was in a hurry.

I'm wondering now, do those PC Jr's even have a hard drive? He mentioned cartridges with a boot program. That may be all they ever came with.

But Offstring, are you sure you don't want to try selling it?

http://cgi.ebay.com/IBM-4860-IBM-PC...

('Course he hasn't sold any yet.)

>>> http://cgi.ebay.com/IBM-4860-IBM-PC... <<<

Dang, the one he posted photos of looks brand new (even has 17 up for grabs). Were I working right now I'd almost be tempted to "take the plunge". Always wanted to try to get one of those things "on the net"...

Every now and then I pick up an an oldie at goodwill. I remember seeing a PC Jr there once. I probably could have gotten it for $5 but passed as I felt I'd collected enough junk that day already.