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Lot of Heathkit/Zenith and LSI-11 hardware for sale

ilyaz

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 11, 2012
Messages
148
Location
MD near DC, USA
About 1.5 years ago I acquired an eclectic batch of vintage hardware. I posted a bunch of pictures and a brief description here.

At this point what I have left are the oldest pieces from that batch, namely Heathkit/Zenith and LSI-11. Some of the modules have been turned on and determined to be partially functional, some were never turned on in fear of some fatal damage that might occur after years of sitting in a storage unit.

My original plan was to try to fix them but now I realize I simply don't have time for that. I will be starting a new job soon, plus I have a lot of family-related errands, so just don't have enough hours in the day to dedicate to this project.

So now I want to sell it.

I have more info about individual pieces and more photos. I'll be happy to post them, but before I do, I wanted to sort of gauge potential interest in these pieces based on the info and pix in the above link.

I am located near Wash DC and, ideally, would like to find someone local. But remote is an option too, we'll just need to figure out feasible shipping arrangements.

Thanks!
 
Here's some additional info. I hope this post is short enough to keep reader's attention while providing enough important details. If you have additional questions after reading it, fire away and ask.

First, in addition to the hardware shown in the original post (call it Batch A), there is more stuff -- primarily manuals, 8" disks and possibly some hardware -- at a different location in the DC area (call it Batch B).

Batch A:

One system is an H89 + peripherals. Single internal hard sectored drive and two peripheral units (in H77 style cabinets). One is a dual soft sectored floppy drive unit (full height drives), and the other unit has two full size hard drives, probably early vintage 5 or 10 meg drives? The interface cards for the drives are in the ’89 as well.

The last time it was powered up was more than a year ago, when I got some help from a local vintage computer expert. When we turned it on, we got it to power up with a single beep (terminal board). One of the tantalum cap’s on the main board blew so replacing that may get the CPU to come up as well. We were not able to get high voltage or raster on the CRT so there may be a problem with the video board and/or flyback circuitry? The system has an H19 sticker on it so it probably was an H19 to H88 upgrade at some point. Internally very clean but dust/dirt on the outside, which I can try to clean if needed.

We were careful to NOT fire up the hard drive unit. It may be old enough vintage that we would then have to worry about the heads getting “unparked” (hopefully the were “parked” before being put into storage!). The drives may or may not have any software on them, but I have no way of checking that.

The other system is a Zenith LSI-11. It seems fairly complete including two 16K RAM cards, a Floppy drive interface, serial card and CPU. I tried to fire it up recently and the power supply does come alive but not much else seems to happen after that. There is also a dual 8” floppy drive (WH-27) and an H-29 serial terminal (with an extra keyboard for some reason). It appears that the cable to connect the Serial terminal is missing – the card is a Sigma 4 port card. Actually, there are two identical LSI chassis but the other one only has a power supply that seems to be dead.

I did not try to turn on the dual floppy drive although I do have a set of floppies that I would be happy to include. They look clean but of course, this does not guarantee they are not damaged or erased.

Batch B:

This is the same location that has the vintage magazines I posted about separately. Here's a link to an album that shows what's there. I did not have a chance to inspect or photograph every single manual or piece of hardware but hopefully the photos give you an idea of what is, or might be, there.

Good news is that A+B would probably be better than just A. Bad news is that adding B to A is more complicated logistically.

Questions to those who are interested:
1. Are you interested in all of A? Parts of it?
2. Are you also interested in B (I am assuming just H/Z/LSI stuff, not the mags, but let me know otherwise)?
3. Can you give me an offer for A or A+B without worrying about shipping costs? I.e. if you were picking it up locally, how much would you willing to pay? We will have to deal with shipping eventually, but I'd like to have a baseline of sorts if I get multiple offers, to compare apples to apples.

Thank you!
 
Thanks to everyone who's contacted me so far.

Last night I brought home the entire Batch B less the old periodicals. There are a couple of dozen boxes of manuals, disks and some hardware. I suspect that some of that would be for the H89, some for the LSI11 and some for neither. Time permitting I will be sorting through the pile. If you have questions about any items shown in the albums I posted before let me know and I'll try to dig those out first.
 
UPDATE:
The LSI-11 hardware + manuals and spare parts from Batch B were sold today
I have a couple of people seriously interested in the H89 lot so that might go in the next few days
There are a few things still in boxes that seem to belong to neither lot. I'll try to post more pix soon
 
Here's something that was unearthed today from one of the Batch B boxes: vintage games and other software for H89 from Evryware and The Software Toolworks.

I could not find much info on any of those except for this, but was told these might be quite rare and valuable. Is that the case?
 
The H89 was sold today.

Here's (hopefully) the last batch of photos of various stuff from both batches:
1. This shows a bunch of books and manuals, including Knuth's3-part classic
2. This shows what appears to be a Heathkit HF-151 kit and, probably, accompanying software and manuals. I can't tell if the kit is complete but it is probably at least close to that.

There is also a box with various FORTH-related books, manuals and other publications.
 
ANOTHER UPDATE:
Most of the hardware is gone. What's left is:
- The HF-151 kit and various software that might be for it
- A box of Mac manuals and software
- The following magazine issues (all in great condition):

REMark
12-81
3-82
10-82
10-82
9-82
1-82
2-82
8-82
11-82
7-82
4-83
10-84
8-85
4-85
11-85
4-86
2-86
6-86
3-86
5-86
2-87
11-88
6-88

BYTE
7-78
10-81
9-81
12-81
5-82
8-82
12-82
1-83
2-83
4-84

Datamation
9-81
11-81
10-81
7-82

Interface Age
11-81
10-81
12-81
3-82

Microcomputing
10-81
11-81
12-81
2-82
8-82

Mini Micro Systems
9-81
10-81
10-81
11-81
9-82

If you are interested in any of the above, PM me.

Thx
 
H89 85-2549-1 CPU board

H89 85-2549-1 CPU board

Well, this is turning into a never-ending story, but here's another piece that someone might be interested in. It's a 85-2549-1 CPU board for H89 and it appears to be in excellent shape although I can't really test it.
 

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