Recently picked up a new to me Heathkit H89 computer. It actually dons the H19 tag on the back, which means this started life as an H19 terminal, and was updated to a full blown computer by adding an internal motherboard and disk system. This computer runs a Z80 and can run CP/M, H-DOS, Basic, Fortran, and likely anything else a Z80 can do. Since the monitor and keyboard are technically an internal “terminal”, its mostly limited to text and some crude graphics.
Its in great shape, and turned on and worked right away. I did give it an internal once-over to make sure things were seated good and no loose parts rattling around.
More info here: http://oldcomputers.net/heathkit-h89.html
It came with all it’s original books and disks, including Microsoft Basic, CP/M and Fortran. It does boot but it seems to be struggling with accessing the floppies, so it prob needs a good cleaning. Its actually immaculate inside and out.
One interesting part of this computer is it’s floppy system – its one of the few I have that actually uses “hard sectored” floppy disks. What this means is that it actually uses timing holes in the disks themselves to time when a track begins and ends. Unfortunately this means it takes “special” floppy disks, and normal “soft sectored” disks aren’t gonna work, and reading/writing images to floppies for this may be a challenge.
Here’s a few links to some techy info about the H89:
Floppy Format info: http://sebhc.lesbird.com/h8d.html
More info about Heathkit 8-Bit computers in general: http://sebhc.lesbird.com/
Flashfloppy Firmware Discussion: https://github.com/keirf/FlashFloppy/issues/182