Heathkit H-8 questions

From: Dwight Elvey <elvey_at_hal.com>
Date: Thu Apr 29 12:15:46 1999

Marvin <marvin_at_rain.org> wrote:
> > The H-89 and its variants incorporated the same basic architecture in a very
> user-friendly "All-in-one" package, and with a Z-80 instead of an 8080 [but
> only 2 MHz]. The H-89 was among the most solid, reliable and user friendly
> CP/M systems available at the time and made a good, if not fast [even by the
> standards of the day] business system for the 1979 to 1982 time frame.

Hi
 One of the interesting things about the H89 was that it came
with hard sectored drives and later soft sectored. Many that
used both were impressed with the speed increase. What they
didn't know was that the actual potential was about the same
for both. Because of the way the hard sectored worked, it
couldn't read two sectors in a row. This means that it had
to make one extra rev for each sector. I made a number of
disk for a friend that I interleaved the sectors. He was
impressed with the difference. I always thought that Heath
keep quite about the slight change in formating to keep
the large difference between drive setup to make it look
like the soft sectored were much better when they were only
slightly better.
Dwight
Received on Thu Apr 29 1999 - 12:15:46 BST