[vcf-midatlantic] H89 for museum; gotek?

jsalzman at gmail.com jsalzman at gmail.com
Sun May 9 21:42:08 UTC 2021


Now that the subject has been updated, I'll clear up any misunderstandings
up to this point.

I have an H89 that was donated to me, for my collection. I will not be
donating it to the museum. The museum already has one. However, I will be
bringing this system to the next Workshop to clean, troubleshoot if
necessary, and test.

Along with what I received are about 150 SSDD hard sectored disks of
personal software from when this system was being actively used back in the
late 70s/early 80s. These all include CP/M and HDOS, programs, games, data,
etc. If I'm reading the disk labels correctly, these will be more than
enough to compile a working set of disks for use on the Museum's H89 so we
can get yet another system on display running demonstrations.

Until I test the disks, which for all I know may have not survived long
term storage, I'll know better what I have and what software is available
from the collection. Making straight copies of this software will be easier
than trying to convert from online disk images to real disks on a hard
sectored drive. If the Museum has any blank hard sectored disks on hand,
they will be very useful to have available if none of the disks I have are
blank.

What I learn from using my H89 should help me with triaging the Museum's
H89 to get that up and running at least.

As for Gotek solutions, I am aware that hard sector emulation is beta.
However, I don't look to there being much need for one at the moment. There
simply isn't a vast amount of software that's exclusive to the H89 since
it's a CP/M machine, except for maybe the ability to boot HDOS. I don't see
the need for more than three or four disks on hand for demonstration
purposes, just like the Osborne and Zorba.

Jeff Salzman

On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 3:40 PM Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic <
vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

> Just as a matter of courtesy: consider starting a new thread when the
> conversation changes greatly from the "subject" line. I am a user, I'm
> not in charge. But since I'm posting a response, I'll change the subject
> line.
>
> The subject of the thread "Needed SD card solutions for museum" was
> about SDcard adapters to replace floppy drives on 8-bit computers. But
> most of the thread now is entirely about an H89 acquired which may be
> donated to the VCFed museum; and/or about the utility of a "Gotek"
> hardware product for it that emulates various vintage floppy drives with
> file-storage.
>
>


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