Heathkit computers

[Christian Fandt]

Upon the date 02:31 AM 12/13/01 -0500, Dan Veeneman said something like:
>I realize that most subscribers on this list are interested in Heathkit's
>amateur radio gear, but I was wondering how many of you have built
>or operated any products from the line of Heathkit computers.  More
>to the point, I'm also interested in how many of you might still have
>such equipment.
>
>I'm looking for an H-11 computer, if anyone has one they'd be
>interested in selling or donating.  The H-8 was somewhat more
>popular, and the H-89 series was quite a bit more common.

Hello Dan,

I'm one of the heretofore non-hams who have a rather strong interest in
Heath gear and have one of each of the early, pre-Z150-series Heath
computers plus the ET3400 trainer and its I/O accessory all just like Bob
Groh had mentioned in his previous post. I also have a bunch of early,
tan-paneled ("red line") items and quite a bit of later goodies. Good stuff.

The H-89/Z-90 series was certainly more common as it was often used in
offices and small businesses before the IBM PC and compatibles became
available and/or affordable to those users.

The H-11 used a modified version of DEC's RT-11 OS. I think it was around
ver. 2.0 or something but not sure without digging thru my archives. It's
been several years since I had focused on the H-11 system. I've got a
distribution of RT-11 Ver. 5.2 but will not let out a copy as it's still a
licensed OS sold now by Mentec, Inc. Someday I'll either find an original
H-11 release or try to hack 5.2. It will be A Project as the only DEC
boards in there was the PDP 11/03 CPU module and a memory board. Floppy
controller and I/O modules were Heath-designed products and will have
somewhat different addressing characteristics.

Anyway, I can offer some bits of info if you shoot questions over to me and
I can go hunting through my paper library and archived email list postings
for answers. A few others here may also offer help too, I'm sure.

Regards,  Chris
-- --

NNNN

Christian Fandt,         Electronic/Electrical Historian
Jamestown, NY  USA      cfandt at netsync.net
        Member of Antique Wireless Association
        URL: http://www.antiquewireless.org/

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