On Tue, 24 Jun 1997, Roger Merchberger wrote:
> From: Roger Merchberger <zmerch_at_northernway.net>
>
> Yes, I finally got the fever for the flavor of a Pringles -- Dooh! I mean,
> the fever to spark up my CP/M machine... despite everyone & their brother
> telling me to check the PSU first.
>
> It is *not* a Heath/Zenith machine.... It states simply on the front:
> Heathkit Computer. No nuthin' else. On the back, I found the Serial# and
> the number:
>
> H-120-1.
>
> I'm assuming this is the model number.
It is.
> It has two floppy drives (one of
> which the garage door is broken on) a full keyboard (which works fine, but
> is slightly sticky...) and an internal green 11" diag. mono monitor.
You've got an "All-in-one" Heath 100, more commonly known as a Z100.
There are several achive sites for software for the unit, you'd need to
do an altavista or archie search to find them (memory's way too sloppy,
haven't played with the Z for a few years.) The H-121-1 version is the
one that looks like an oversized apple ][.
> Something tickled in my brain about those floppies, so as I lumbered around
> in the dark in my newly-begun clean-ish basement (Eeeeek!) I found my old
> non-working Atari 810 disk drive... and the mechs looked almost exact!
> Would these happen to be the same mechanically, would anyone know?
Probably not, the Z (or H) used standard SA-455? 360K ibm pc style drives
>
> Also, as there was no paperwork for this, so even the most basic,
> rudimentary info on this unit would be helpful... such as: which drive is
> the boot drive? Top or bottom?
Top, I think. (I have one, but I only got it for the Winchester drive
card).
>
> When I sparked it up, everything seemed to work, the tube came to life, and
> greeted me with a finger pointing to the right in the upper-left corner...
> and stayed there. Every key sequence I tried resulted in a "Beep" except
> <CTRL><RESET> which, of course, reset the machine and re-greeted me with
> the finger.
That is the monitor rom, and certain keys should do something more
interesting, like
C - color bars (if you have color video, otherwise b&w bars)
B - boot prompt, pressing the right combo of numbers and fkeys selects
the boot drive.
D - dump memory
... and several more
> BTW, I (of course) would be in the market for a set of boot disks for this
> beastie...
It will boot off of CP/M, MP/M, UCSD P-System, Concurrent CP/M, MS-DOS
and others. If you find a generic version 1 or maybe 2 ms-dos it might
boot, pc specific PC dos won't.
The machine has an 8088 and an 8085 processor, and uses the appropriate
one for the os in question.
I'm not sure what the licensing requirements are, however, I do have
several OS's for the machine - I'm sure something can be worked out.
>
> Thanks one and all,
> Roger "Merch" Merchberger
You're welcome, pity I'm so far behind in the mail...
-stacy
--
Stacy C. Morang, Communications Specialist
Education Network of Maine
scm_at_access.enm.maine.edu, smorang_at_enm.maine.edu
So long, and keep your stick on the ice.
Received on Mon Jul 07 1997 - 11:47:43 BST