4 thoughts on “Heathkit H89

  1. I wasted many hours playing YWing Fighter in my day, even though I was working 80 hour weeks (for 40 hours’ pay, sadly) so my available time for computer games was limited. So it looks like you have HDOS 1.6 and HDOS 2.0, YWing Fighter, a cooking program of some sort, a few “working disks” that are a bit vaguely labelled. The disc labeled simply C is probably a C compiler but which one is unknown, as its completeness. I used to favor the Software Toolworks C Compiler for most of my programming, but you would need more than a single diskette to hold everything it included. Then there is a disc labelled GW BASIC but I thought that name only referred to a version of Microsoft Basic for the IBM PC and compatibles. Maybe the prior owner just used that label as a shortcut name for Microsoft Basic for Heath computers. I didn’t spot any outstanding “catches” that the group is lacking, but then a few of your disks are not identified at all or the ID is illegible. But congratulations on getting the H89 to start up, I imagine you will enjoy it. I loved mine, which was highly modified: DG Electronics Super-89 CPU board, 256Kb of RAM, AM9511 hardware math chip, H17 + H37 disk controllers, and 3 disk drives on each controller – one double-sided 40 track drive (200Kb single-density, 400Kb double-density) and two double-sided 80 track drives (400Kb each single-density, 800Kb each double-density). It also had a 40 megabyte hard drive that I only had going with HDOS, not CP/M. It also had the Imaginator Graphics board, and two Hallock Systems Corp. coprocessors, an 8086 (768Kb RAM, 8087 math chip) and a 68000 (4 Mb RAM). Now that is one tricked-out H89! I hope you enjoy yours for many years.

    • Thanks John! I was great reading about all you had done with your H89. I’m really enjoying learning about the Heath computers. After I get my H8 working with my H-17-3, I’m planning on adding Norberto’s CF card, and I’ll probably then try to add one for my H89. I’ll keep going through the disks to see what all I inherited. I did check out the GW basic disk, and it’s not even a hard-sectored disk, so I suspect the previous owner just put it in with the H89 disks by mistake…

      When I boot off an HDOS 2.0 disk, and then switch to one of the vaguely labelled disks to do a directory on it I get a message that “PIP…” is required for this operation. I believe these disks are initialized. I’ve been doing some reading up on HDOS but haven’t found how to boot with one disk, and then switch to another for a directory yet. Do I have to type “BYE” before I switch disks?

  2. Try PIP then Enter key to load PIP into memory.
    Then enter: SY0:/reset Then the Enter key.
    This tells HDOS to dismount the boot disk and mount a different disk in its place.
    Once the new disk is mounted, enter:
    SY0:/li This tells PIP to list the directory of the diskette in drive SY0: Remember to never change a diskette in any drive without FIRST informing HDOS that you are going to change it. Otherwise, unless the diskette is physically write-protected (opaque label over the arite-protect notch), it’s directory or Group Reservation Table (GRT.SYS file) may get incorrect information written to it, making the diskette unusable (although it MAY be possible to repair it once you become an HDOS expert).

  3. My first computer was an H-89 my dad built. I spent a lot of time playing a game I’d like to find the name of… IIRC it was an underwater game where you navigate a ship. There were jellyfish, other creatures and most memorable, some sort of spiders that would drop from above and kill the player.

    Anyone remember something like this?

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