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Heathkit H89 - how to open?

alker

Experienced Member
Joined
Nov 14, 2006
Messages
115
Location
Austria
I was searching now for more than one hour for a Heathkit or Zenith H89 manual but could not find anything. I just dont know how to open the case... I have one open and one closed machine - I know the mechanics behind.. but I simply cant open my 2nd heath without destroying something.. is there a simple trick?
 
Hi
Even when the slide is in the right position, it is sometimes hard to
get the cover to go up. I find that I have to wiggle the cover
around to get it to release. The pin on the cover never exactly
aligns with the hole in the latch.
Dwight
 
Thank you very much for your help! Exactly 10 minutes after I posted this I could open the case... It looks that my 2 H89 have different systems.. the 2nd one had a spring which could easily pushed like on the manual page.

I could boot up both machines: one machine states "H:" waiting for input... the second machine only shows a "_". Maybe this machine is in terminal mode?
Both machines have the 16k memory expansion, the I/O card and a serial card. For me both machines have the same equipment/boards/cards installed.

After booting up they only accept certain kinds of characters.. I sadly dont have a boot disk (I suppose both drives use hard sectored floppies). Do you know any trick how I could test them to load software or check if they are working without a bootdisk? How can I get the 2nd machine from "_" to H:?
Thanks!
 
Hi
You might want to joint a googles group called SEBHC. It is
a group specific to H8/H89.
A while back I wrote a program to transfer disk images from a PC
to the H8/H89 through the serial. It is specific to the hard sectored
controller and can be used to boostrap a machine with no boot disk.
It is available from SEBHC. You do need some blank hard sectored disk.
There are others that can help with determining what bios version
you might have with a different prompt.
For the setup I know of, you type B and the disk will be accessed
in an attempt to boot load.
The fact that you can power up without smoke is a good first indicator.
Dwight
 
A while back I wrote a program to transfer disk images from a PC to the H8/H89 through the serial. It is specific to the hard sectored controller and can be used to boostrap a machine with no boot disk.
It is available from SEBHC.
Thank you very much Dwight . With your utility my H89 with hard sector floppy was finally able to start this morning. I was looking for a boot disk since over several years :)
 
Thank you very much Dwight . With your utility my H89 with hard sector floppy was finally able to start this morning. I was looking for a boot disk since over several years :)

Hi
It was something that needed to be done. I originally did it to help another
boot his machine. Later SEBHC started and it seemed natural to post it to
them.
Dwight
 
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