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|CED in the History of Media Technology|
The PCjr was IBM's attempt to market a home and student version of their more powerful PC business machine. The PCjr was introduced on November 1, 1983 and sold for $998 with 64K of RAM or $1918 with 128K and a 5.25" floppy disk drive. It had some unique features setting it apart from the PCsr, such as a wireless infrared keyboard, ROM cartridge slots on the front, and a sound generator chip on the motherboard. The machine never achieved a good market niche, as it was more expensive than the typical home computer of the time and didn't have the memory, hard drive, or card expansion capabilities of the standard IBM-PC.
One misconception about this machine is that it was initially mouse-compatible, but the PCjr came out shortly before the Macintosh when mice were practically unknown. It wasn't until 1985 that the Microsoft Booster interface in the above advertisement became available.