About this site

In 1985, I got my first taste of computing when my dad bought home an IBM PCjr. This system was poorly-designed, slower than previous IBM PCs, and too expensive, and IBM discontinued it after barely a year and sold off the remaining stock at deep discounts.

Of course, five-year-old me didn't know any of this. I had never used a computer before and I was amazed at all it could do. Flight Simulator, King's Quest, etc. – how did they work? What was this machine doing on the inside that produced these incredible experiences on the outside?

Then I discovered I could command the computer myself. If I had an idea for a tool, or a game, or anything else, I could make it happen – provided I learned enough about the language and the hardware.

Now at 40 I've dug that old machine out of my parents' basement, dusted it off, plugged it in, and I'm reliving the nostalgia. It has become a hobby of mine to learn about and experiment with this machine, exploring the techniques I remember from some of my favorite software at the time, and trying to replicate them using the tools of the day – heavy hardbacked manuals and an Intel 8088 assembler.

In episodes starting in 2016 and spread out over many years – and continuing today – I explore coding concepts, both in general and specific to the PCjr, and incrementally work my way toward a full fledged game that can run on, natively, on the first computer I ever used.

Full source code of each episode is available on my GitHub. Follow along!

Get started with Episode 0: PCjr Nostalgia and What I'm Doing with It.