Heathkit H-11 Operating System (similar to PDP Lsi-11)

[Gfbtdhg1]

Hey there,
Just purchased an H-11 with a H27 floppy drive, keyboard, printer, and an H9 video terminal, but no discs. What OS should I look for/ buy? I was thinking maybe Pascal, HDOS, BASIC, or CP/M, but I’m honestly not sure where to find compatible disks at all. I haven’t checked to see if there are any extra ram cards in there, but I know the max is 60k. Also, where can I find the serial cable for the H9? Most of the stuff hasn’t quite arrived yet, so I may also need some hardware/debugging advice.
Thanks,

 

[krebizfan]

Hey there,
Just purchased an H-11 with a H27 floppy drive, keyboard, printer, and an H9 video terminal, but no discs. What OS should I look for/ buy? I was thinking maybe Pascal, HDOS, BASIC, or CP/M, but I’m honestly not sure where to find compatible disks at all. I haven’t checked to see if there are any extra ram cards in there, but I know the max is 60k. Also, where can I find the serial cable for the H9? Most of the stuff hasn’t quite arrived yet, so I may also need some hardware/debugging advice.
Thanks,

USCD Pascal is a good choice. RT11 (DEC) was slightly modified into HT11 (Heathkit) but either is the most common choice. I think the BASIC ran on HT11. http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?50305-Heath-HT-11-OS covers some of this.

http://www.classiccmp.org/cini/heath_h11.htm has manuals in PDF if you didn't get any. I suspect you will have to build your own serial cable. Hopefully, one of those using an H11 more recently will provide some information.

 

[RichCini]

The serial cables are easy to build, you just need the Molex connector and pins from Mouser or Digi-Key. My system was the unit only and no floppies, etc., so I spent a few dollars and bought a SCSI card and SCSI2SD adapter plus another SLU (serial card) so I could run the TU58 tape emulator. The TU58/serial setup is probably the least expensive, but slowest, option to get something running.

Regarding the disks themselves, unless you find someone with the same setup who can make floppy copies for you, the other option is to locate disk images. I took a quick look on Bitsavers and on Dave Dunfield's site and didn't see any disk images. Re-creating disks from images is an interesting but involved process if you don't have the hardware readily available. I built an "imaging system" out of an old PC/AT, an Adaptec AHA-1522 card and two Seagate SA-851 8" floppy drives.

I started with the extra SLU and TU58 emulator until I located an Emulex SCSI board.

 

[Chuck(G)]

Might this better be moved to the "DEC" area? I have to admit that I was looking for something like IMP16 or SCELBI 8 bit systems, not the H11 (which was later than the MITS Altair system.