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Zenith Data Systems Model ZCV-251-EC

Caluser2000

Caluser2000

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As mentioned in http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?38427-My-Hoard&p=307347#post307347 I've aquired a Zenith Data Systems 286 system (top right in the pic with "Fourth" written in felt pen on it). It has 4 megs of ram of 30 pin simms with 4 simm slots free. The 20 meg hdd is dead so I'm testing it with my Quantum LPS 52AT drive. Ran CheckIt, which shows that it has a 286/12 cpu, no NPU and all seems well with this system.

It is a slimline design with two serial ports, one parallel port and VGA video on the planar. The cpu is on a card the lays flat at the front LH edge of the planar and the keyboard port to the left of that on its own card. Looks like it could be upgraded by just replacing the card and setting some jumpers. You plug the AT keyboard into the DIN socket in the front of the machine. There is room for one 3.5" fdd and one 3.5" hdd. These have a guide that is fitted to the LH side and screws on the RHS as you'd expect. It does have 3 ISA slots on the riser.

The bios is gotten at by holding down the ESC key on start up and then typing SETUP at the prompt. Typing a ? gives a few more options and typing TEST brings up a list of advance diagnostics tests you can do on the system. When in setup you can change the usual stuff such as fdds, hdds, ports etc. The hdd area has something like 60 hdd type selections but no option to set your own parameters that I could find. Most likely will have to set up any drives bigger than about 240megs using DDO software or other means. Not a problem really. The ribbon cables in it currently are fairly long so I'll fit some shorter ones.

I haven't found terribly much about the machine online as yet, but the search has just only begun. I'll post a few pics when I get some time.

I noticed I left a 2 out of the thread title. Can a mod correct that please?
 
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Nice haul! I used to have a Zenith model similar to that, but two 720k drives instead of an HD. Never could find much info on it back then either. I recall it had what looked like an IDE interface header, but I never could find a hard drive that would work with it at all.

Also that is a really nice generic AT on that machine to the left of it. Also used to have one like that, except mine was in horridly bad, torn up condition from years of crazy experiments.
 
Thanks. The innards of that machine on the top left will most likely go into the bottom right case. Although it doesn't look like it in the pic, the front is pretty banged up. After some consideration I ended up getting that Advantage Comp. case back out of the skip bin.

The Zenith has quite an industrial feel about it and is well put together. The battery back resides in a metal tray at the front on the stay that supports the riser, next to the speaker. There is nothing on it to indicate the manufacturing date at all.

Looks like Zenith Data Systems got themselves in a bit of strife over a US Govt. contract due to quality control issues. Most of the research I've done so far seems to go on about their laptops, with not a terribly lot about their desktop systems at all.
 
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It wasn't so much the Zenith affair with the laptops, if you look at things in the rear-view mirror with 20/20 hindsight.

Zenith started business as a radio manufacturer in the pre-TV days, then moved into TV manufacturing (I remember how neat the "Space Commander" remote control seemed at the time). I've owned a few Zenith TVs in my time--the portable set that I used with my TV Typewriter was a Zenith monochrome "hot chassis" tube model.

Zenith's foray into computers was more-or-less a "hail mary" sort of play, so they acquired Heath who were offering made-in-USA computers of their own design. But offshoring really was where things were happening. By the mid-80s, almost everything was being made offshore. Even marques such as Dell and HP were employing offshore production for commodity personal computer products.

After a round of being acquired and bankruptcies, Zenith is now part of LG electronics; Heath is set to emerge again with some kits, but not under LG.

Evolution got Zentih, nothing more.
 
I found this page http://retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/s_zenith.html.

On my system the FCC ID is BJ4-ARACHNE and it states on the sticker detailing part no, serial no. etc that it was made in the USA.

It seems the correct method of accessing the bios is Ctl-alt-ins, but just pressing esc gets the same result and puts you at the -> prompt. Looks like it's had other expansion cards in it at some point as there's com, game, printer etched into the back of the expansion cage so has had a bit of use.
 
Zenith sold a lot of computers to the U.S. military, so their machines were ruggedly built and quite durable. I believe Zenith was the first to offer a laptop with a backlit display and a hard drive running on battery power, although they were rather large and heavy (15+ lbs.). Zenith eventually sold off their computer division to Groupe Bull, who ultimately merged it into Packard Bell in 1996 -- another historic brand name of U.S. electronics, which still lives on in Europe as a subsidiary of Acer.
 
vwestlife said:
Zenith sold a lot of computers to the U.S. military, so their machines were ruggedly built and quite durable. I believe Zenith was the first to offer a laptop with a backlit display and a hard drive running on battery power, although they were rather large and heavy (15+ lbs.). Zenith eventually sold off their computer division to Groupe Bull, who ultimately merged it into Packard Bell in 1996 -- another historic brand name of U.S. electronics, which still lives on in Europe as a subsidiary of Acer.
Click to expand...

Well, Packard-Bell in the PC era bore no resemblance to the old Packard Bell who made TV sets, military electronics, computers, etc. In other words, the company that made the PB-250 is not even a remote ancestor of the company that marketed the PB-500. A bunch of Israeli army buddies bought the rights to the name and nothing more.
 
Chuck(G) said:
A bunch of Israeli army buddies bought the rights to the name and nothing more.
Click to expand...

That's why I said it was a historic brand name. :)

It's just like the "Westinghouse"-branded LCD monitor I have -- a historic name dating back to 1886, but only the name itself is of any relation to the original electric company founded by George Westinghouse.
 
Now we have that sorted out here is a few blury pics of the machine undressed:
IMAG0050.JPGIMAG0049.JPG

The PSU plug that goes onto the mobo is different from a generic PSU. As you can see both FDD and HDD controllers/connectors are on the planar. The cpu card slots in to a connector on the front edge of the planar and is supported at the back rhs of the card by a stand off and screw.
 
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Pic of the back showing the serious security loop and cover with blanking plate fitted.IMAG0055.JPGIMAG0053.jpg

The keyboard gives some scale as to the size of the system. Apparently the original keyboards had some sort of electronic beep on key presses which drove some folk nuts.

All I need is some software that will make use of all that ram. Unfortunately I don't have a copy of OS/2 1.*

Found a link to a Z-200 http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/mickfrench/zenith.htm for those interested.
Z-100 http://www.ricomputermuseum.org/Home/small-systems-at-ricm/zenith-100-home-computer
 
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It could be my system is a Z-286LP Plus (Model 20) made from 1990 - 1991 or at least a Z-286LP something which appear to have been in production until 1994.

Z-286LP Plus.jpg

Auction for a manual is on ebay which is were the about pic was gotten from http://www.ebay.com/itm/Zenith-Data...237?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2eca536f55

So another step closer to finding out more about the system.

Now all I need is an illustration or table detailing the jumpers.
 
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I have one of these units. It's a Zenith Z286 LP Plus. I purchased it from one of our members on this website(Mike Brutman's old friend Frozenfire). I was surprised how fast it is for a 286 machine.

This model is one that was produced after Zenith Data Systems was acquired by Groupe Bull. You can tell by the green tree on the logo. Most likely, the motherboard was not a Zenith. There may be some ID on the board that tells who the manufacturer is.

The links you reference in this post to Herb Johnson's site and one other are for the Z286 models made before the Groupe Bull acquisition. They are much bigger and heavier that the one you have. It's possible I may have a manual for it, but it would take some time to look for it.
 
Thanks for the offer to search for the manual. No great hurry really. http://www.zdsparts.com/ has a user manual available but it would be nice to have it as a pdf file. A service manual would be useful as well. I'd imagine getting hold a 386SX upgrade card would stretching things a bit.

I've had a search re numbers on the mobo up but no joy yet. For me half the fun of having older kit is I find is finding as much out as possible and the history around the manufacturer. With there being minimal amount out there on this beast makes it more rewarding with each snippet I get. Of course the added bonus is you can go off in tangents and find out about other computer related stuff from the same period. I did find the Z286LP layout pic. but that's a different layout, with the cpu on the mobo as opposed to a removable card. Max amount of ram that can be fitted on the Z286LP Plus is 8 megs apparently, so I'll max that out because I can. It's quite nicely set out and very easy to work on.

Its seems these systems originally shipped with DOS 4.01 installed.

Found this ad from a 1990 university campus newspaper from October 1990:
zenith ad.jpg

Anyone know the make and model of 14" flat screen crt monitor that was shipped with these?
 
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Are there any Zenith FTM monitors still in operating condition? I remember when it was introduced--the display was quite striking and was almost tempted to buy one. Later reports showed a high fatality rate.
 
Interesting. I'd imagine they'd be pretty high end for the time.

Pic of the bios screen:
IMAG0056.JPG
Command Summary:
IMAG0058.JPGIMAG0057.JPG
And Test options:
IMAG0060.JPG

Found an old usenet post which had this quote when someone was trying to set up vga on a Zenith 386 system in Windows 3.0:

"Zenith: Compatability goes out before the name goes on!" LOL

Anyone know of any archive/ftp servers with Zenith specific patches/drivers at all?
 
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Chuck(G) said:
Are there any Zenith FTM monitors still in operating condition? I remember when it was introduced--the display was quite striking and was almost tempted to buy one. Later reports showed a high fatality rate.
Click to expand...

Yes, I have one. The first one I had was plagued with problems. This one seems to be OK.
It's been about a year since I turned it on though. At the time it was released nothing compared to it. Very pleasant display.

Caluser2000 said:
Pic of the bios screen
Click to expand...

The BIOS screen you see was common to most of the Zenith machines.

Chuck(G) said:
Found an old usenet post which had this quote when someone was trying to set up vga on a Zenith 386 system in Windows 3.0:

"Zenith: Compatability goes out before the name goes on!"
Click to expand...

Don't know why that comment was made. I never had any problems getting a display to work on my Zenith machines.
 
Chuckster_in_Jax said:
Don't know why that comment was made. I never had any problems getting a display to work on my Zenith machines.
Click to expand...
Seems one chap had to put a replacement video and rom bios in his box :

http://www.megalextoria.com/usenet-archive/news130f1/b182/comp/sys/zenith/00000444.html

Considering they seemed to have been primarily used in academic/govt circles and the Z286LP series accounted for something like around 46% of Zenith sales in 1988 and was in production in various configurations until 1994 there is very little info out there in www land. That is one reason I've decided to post my experiences and posted the above pics and links etc. here. Hopefully others who have used Zenith x86 systems, in particular the desktop Z286LP systems or Heath branded equivalent, will chime in.

Thanks for the link to the monitors. Just had a look at the computer page http://www.pestingers.net/HZ_comp_hrdw.htm

Love the REMark mags http://www.pestingers.net/images/Antique_computers/REMark_magazines/REMark_cvrs.htm

The catalogs make interesting reading as well: http://www.pestingers.net/CAT_HISTORY.htm
 
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