Heathkit H89 Intro

From: Jason J. Gullickson <mr_at_jasongullickson.com>
Date: Mon Feb 17 13:22:04 2003

I tried punching "b" when the system starts and that did indeed engage
the floppy drive, so things seem good at least up to the monitor (that
is the monitor, right?).

Do any of you know of a good source of parts or software for this
machine?

-----Original Message-----
From: cctech-admin_at_classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-admin_at_classiccmp.org]
On Behalf Of Bob Mason
Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2003 4:44 PM
To: cctech_at_classiccmp.org
Subject: RE: Heathkit H89 Intro


"Jason J. Gullickson" <mr_at_jasongullickson.com> wrote:

>I recently acquired what I believe to be a Heathkit H89. It was
>assembled a long time ago by my friend's father, contains a single disk

>drive and a monochrome terminal.
>
>My ultimate goal would be to get this thing running CPM and a C
>compiler, but first I need to figure out if it's working.
>
>I've yet to determine if it has a hard or soft-sectored disk
>controller, but I have some general questions since I don't have any
>documentation.
>
>First, where can I get some documentation? ; )

I have all the original documentation, including the assembly manual and
schematics. My first question is; has Heath/Zenith released H89 docs to
P.D.?

>
>Second, when I turn the machine on, all I get is a blinking cursor. If

>I depress the "offline" key, I can type characters on the terminal
>accompanied by a short beep; if the "offline" key is not depressed, I
>get long beeps and nothing on the display. What "should" it do when I
>turn it on with no disk in the drive?
>

IIRC, on power-up, you only have about 4 options as to what keys you can
press. Pressing "B" should respond with "oot" (to boot the machine). I
don't remember what the other options were.

I also remember a space bar tapping ritual, to syncronize the serial
comm between the two boards. Don't remember when that was applicable,
though.

>I'll be happy to provide more info as I dig it up, but any introductory

>details on this system or references to websites, etc. would be greatly

>appreciated.
>
>
>Jason J. Gullickson
>mr_at_jasongullickson.com
>


-- 
Bob Mason
2x Amiga 500's, GVP A530 (40mhz 68030/68882, 8meg Fast, SCSI), 1.3/3.1,
2meg Chip, full ECS chipset, EZ135, 1084S, big harddrives, 2.2xCD
Gateway Performance 500 Piece 'o Crap, 'ME, 384meg, 20Gig & 40Gig,
flatbed. Heathkit H-89A, 64K RAM, hard and soft-sectored floppies,
SigmaSoft and Systems 256K RAM Drive/Print Spooler/Graphics board HDOS 2
& CP/M 2.2.03/2.2.04
Received on Mon Feb 17 2003 - 13:22:04 GMT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Oct 10 2014 - 23:35:55 BST