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Looking for Info, Tips of Repair

Captain Retro

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Aug 7, 2019
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DEC sold the LSI-11 to several companies such as HeathKit. These are essentially full blown PDP-11 in a kit form factor. Power Supplies were built by the hobbyist, but the cards and accessories were pre assembled from major manufactures.

I currently own an H-11A, along with an H17 floppy disk drive and a H19 Terminal.

Photos: https://postimg.cc/gallery/s7C8jGL

I’m looking for any articles, blogs of by people who have recently worked repaired one of these systems. I’m also looking for video of them being used. It seems impossible to find any sort of information, especially videos on the systems.

Lastly, I’m also looking for history and info on any Christlin Industries, Inc. PDP-11 machines. The one I own (CI-11/03-LK) is obviously in need of repair but I can only find brief magazine images, and the power supply options are completely different than anything I’ve seen.

An image of the badge: https://postimg.cc/fJFtxxwG

Thanks everyone,

Captain Retro
 
Probably just a typo, but that disk drive unit is an H27. Heathkit did make an H17 that is an add on dual 5.25" for their earliest 8 bit computer, the H8.

Anyway, in addition to other places on the web, there's quite a bit of H11/H11A/H27 info right here on VCF. Scroll up to the top of this page and enter H11 in the search field. If the search fails, you might need to fill in the "random question" field and run the search again.

Bit of an overview of stuff you might or will run into.

.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXWA1hKzxv8
 
Last edited:
Hi! If you recall, we discussed these two systems in email a few days ago.

Your floppy subsystem is an H-27, not an H-17.

I've gotten a few H-11s up recently; they're not difficult to work on. Your best bet is to follow the Heath documentation for the system, ensure everything is correctly assembled (which it often isn't!) and then follow the bring-up procedure in the assembly manual. DO NOT just "plug 'er in and let 'er rip", the result is likely to be smoke.

As far as your other system, Chrislin made a number of DEC compatible products, including pretty nice Qbus enclosures like the one you have. I don't think there's much actual Chrislin documentation out there, like for the chassis and power supply, but you may find something. But apart from that, just "treat it like a PDP-11". Yours is actually pretty similar to the Heath H-11 system, or at least it was when it was sold.

-Dave McGuire
LSSM
 
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