I actively remember using almost all of those at one point or another. Many just for playing around on, or at friends houses (the Atari and the T/I's).
The PCjr is always bashed, especially for the keyboard, but I never understood that. For starters mine had the "real" keyboard in addition to the chiclet keyboard. I also knew a few other folks with jr's, and never remember anyone using the chiclet keyboard. I must've written a couple hundred thousand lines of BASIC on my jr, and interfaced it to all kinds of peripherals, and later other PCs in the house.
The PET brought back fond memories, I taught myself to program (more or less by looking at other BASIC programs for examples) on one of those. My first "application" was to display a calendar for the month of November... I finished it in February ;)
You were fortunate. I was the only guy in my college dorm with a computer, an Apple //e, when my neighbor announced he was getting a PC Jr. As a dedicated fanboy (even back then) I was nervous that my Apple would be crushed by the IBM giant. I was instantly relieved when I saw his chiclet keyboard and surmised that my computer was still the cool one on campus.
I lived to type in adventure games from Creative Computing, inCider and other mags that published BASIC code. I still remember fondly playing countless hours of Super Star Trek.
Is it sad or proud that I recognized 5 of the 10 keyboards from having written programs on them in elementary school? The TI-1000 was particularly atrocious, although the PCjr wireless keyboard was pretty godawful.
The old-school HP, IBM, and Sun workstation keyboards -- seemingly cleft from a solid block of metal, with a satisfying CLICK on each keypress -- get my vote as the best keyboards ever made. It was a sad day when I looked at the HP and IBM white-box models in a store one day and realized that the good keyboards were no longer being made.
The PCjr is always bashed, especially for the keyboard, but I never understood that. For starters mine had the "real" keyboard in addition to the chiclet keyboard. I also knew a few other folks with jr's, and never remember anyone using the chiclet keyboard. I must've written a couple hundred thousand lines of BASIC on my jr, and interfaced it to all kinds of peripherals, and later other PCs in the house.
The PET brought back fond memories, I taught myself to program (more or less by looking at other BASIC programs for examples) on one of those. My first "application" was to display a calendar for the month of November... I finished it in February ;)