[vcf-midatlantic] H89 for museum; gotek?

[Herb Johnson]

> On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 5:42 PM Jeff Salzman   wrote:
> 
>> 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. 

>>  I don't see [the museum's]
>> need for more than three or four disks on hand for demonstration
>> purposes, just like the Osborne and Zorba.

Looks like I'll be able to attend the Workshop tomorrow. So I'll be able 
to assist Jeff Salzman with the Museum's H89 and his new acquisition, if 
that would be useful. Otherwise I offer to look at the Museum's 
warehouse of H89's and assess them while Jeff does his work. I'll bring 
some component parts but it's likely Jeff will bring what he needs. I 
assume he can do some repairs, and likely he'll bring his own diskettes 
along with the ones he acquired. If not, we can work with what's 
available. There's variacs around and that's a good tool for dormant 
computers.

The Heath H89 is a good example of early 1980's Z80 personal computers, 
and noteworthy as a Heath product. For those unfamiliar, Heathkit was a 
premier electronics kit company for many decades, in the mid-20th 
century where one could make a career and job from servicing 
electronics. They provided test equipment, radio amateur equipment; 
their products were both learning tools and teaching tools. The H89 was 
a good business computing system, with support from local Heathkit 
stores and local computer stores of the era. The Z-100 followed the H89 
and became a noteworthy MS-DOS computer and an S-100 system; the H8 was 
an early 8080 computer before the H89.

They are all entirely serviceable today as is much 1970's 1980's 
equipment if one has digital-component-level skills; that being my 
interests. They ran CP/M and Heath's HDOS and have VT52-class graphics, 
so there's lots of software they can run. For some time, SEBHC folks 
have made new Heath-class boards, so that generates 21st century interest.

Regards, Herb Johnson


-- 
Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA
http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net
preserve, recover, restore 1970's computing
email: hjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT com
or try later herbjohnson AT comcast DOT net