[vcf-midatlantic] H89 for museum; gotek?

[Sentrytv]

I would love to come to the workshop tomorrow but I can’t.
I will be selling my off some of my stuff up at the hamfest in Succasunna, New Jersey on Saturday.
I may be able to try for Sunday but not sure yet.
It would be nice to see these systems.

Mike Rosen

Sent from:
My extremely complicated, hand held electronic device.

> On May 14, 2021, at 3:52 PM, Herb Johnson via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>> 
>>> 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