Announced November 1, 1983 and first shipped in March 1984, the PCjr came in two models: The Model 4860-004, with 64K of memory, priced at $669 US, and the 4860-067, with 128K of memory and a 360K 5.25-inch floppy disk drive, priced at $1269 US. In addition to promising a high degree of compatibility with the IBM PC, already a popular business computer, the PCjr offered built-in color graphics and sound comparable or superior to other popular home computers of the day. In addition, its 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 CPU was faster than anything else then on the home market, and its detached wireless infrared keyboard promised a degree of convenience none of its competitors had.
The popular 1980s adventure game series King's Quest debuted on the PCjr. Later ported to other platforms, its release changed the way games were developed.
The PCjr was expected to change the market in a similar way that the IBM PC changed the business market, but it was never well received. At $669, its price wasn't competitive. It cost more than twice as much as the Commodore 64 and the Atari 8-bit family; its price was close to that of the Coleco Adam, but for the price, the Adam included two tape drives, a printer, and software. With the exception of the Apple II, it was possible to purchase a complete system (computer, disk drive, printer, and monitor) from almost any of IBM's competitors for less than the PCjr's entry price.
Although its technical capabilities may have justified its higher price tag—it was a 16-bit machine competing in an 8-bit world, offered better memory expansion, had a built-in 80 column display, and was more than twice as fast as any of its competition—reviewers of home computers at the time cared much less about raw power and more about price, available software, and the quality of the keyboard. In addition, many people compared it to the IBM PC rather than to the machines it was competing directly against.
The PCjr was more difficult to expand than many of the machines it was intended to compete with. It wasn't designed to add a second floppy drive, a hard drive, or memory beyond 256K, which made it difficult to deliver on the promise of running business software for the IBM PC. Add-ons to provide a second floppy drive or a 20-megabyte hard drive were only available from third parties, and weren't available right away.
However, the target of most of the criticism was the unit's keyboard. The original rubber "chicklet"-style keyboard (similar to a pocket calculator) was widely criticized as feeling cheap and being difficult to type on; it was later recalled and replaced with a conventional keyboard. With 62 keys, it lacked the numeric keypad and separate function keys of the IBM PC, and its keyboard layout was more awkward than that of most of its competitors. In addition, the wireless keyboard didn't work as well as expected; in practice you could only be two or three feet away from the machine when you typed, and in wireless mode, the keyboard drained batteries quickly.
Unable to compete with the C64 and Apple IIe and IIc, let alone the forthcoming Atari ST and Commodore Amiga, IBM withdrew the PCjr from the marketplace in mid-1985.
Tandy produced a clone of the PCjr, the Tandy 1000. However, since it was released two weeks after the PCjr was discontinued, Tandy had to hastily change its marketing strategy. However, the machine, sold in Radio Shack stores, ultimately proved much more enduring, partly because of the ubiquity of Radio Shack stores and its better price and greater ease of expansion.
IBM returned to the home market in 1990 with its much more successful IBM PS/1 line. The words "IBM compatible" carried much more marketing weight in 1990 than they did in 1984.
Features
Failure in the marketplace
The PCjr legacy
Technical specifications