moss@eosp1.UUCP (11/19/83)
I have been looking at the Heathkit H/Z-100 computers and have
some questions. Hope there is someone out there that can help.
1) Are they hard to build?
a) does Heath really help if you have problems?
2) Heath claims that Z-DOS is MS-DOS compatible, is it?
a) what MS-DOS software will run, will not?
b) is there a 'C'?
3) What non Heath hardware are people using on it?
4) How good (bad) is the Heath displays?
5) Other General opinions, comments.
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Bill Moss
Exxon Office Systems(Princeton, N.J.)
{decvax!ittvax, allegra}!eosp1!mossweamc@pyuxa.UUCP (11/21/83)
I have built five or six Heathkits over the past few years. The manuals
are superb, and an idiot could put the kits together, as long as you
follow the instructions!!! When I got in trouble, it was invariably
because I had taken shortcuts. Heath has a hot line (not toll-free) with
engineers on the other end that actually know what they are doing; if you
can't solve the problem yourself, you can always send it back. I did this
on two occasions, and Heath fixed it for free. If I have any complaints
about Heath, it is that they design their stuff to be labor-intensive in
terms of assembly. It keeps the price down, but sometimes assembly gets a
bit tedious.
The Z-100 design was stolen from Godbout/Compupro (imitated is kinder,
I suppose). Bill Godbout, on viewing the Z-100, remarked, "That's the
best computer I ever designed." It is PC-compatible, and has very good
graphics. Best plus is the S100 slots, so you can do just about anything
with it.
Andy Cohill Western Electric, Piscatawayron%brl-vgr@sri-unix.UUCP (11/23/83)
From: Ron Natalie <ron@brl-vgr> Yes, well at least Heath now has sense enough to steal some good designs rather than producing more brain-damaged products of their engineering department like the Benton-Harbor-Bus and the H-9 terminal. -Ron
Fat.Tag@SU-SIERRA.ARPA (11/24/83)
From: Tim Gonsalves <Fat.Tag@SU-SIERRA.ARPA> In-Reply-To: Message from "harpo!eagle!mhuxl!ulysses!princeton!eosp1!moss@ucb-vax" of Fri 18 Nov 83 23:01:26-PST Are they hard to build? No. The processor board and video logic boards are assembled and tested. Only the floppy controller board (and video deflection board in the all-in-one model) need to be assmebled. If you have some experience soldering and work carefully, this is easy and took me about 7 hours. The rest is mechanical assembly, plugging cables together, etc. which also took me about 7 hrs. Does Heath help? When I built an H-19, it did not work. I wrote to Heath describing the problem. They wrote back suggesting places to look. I did so and found a badly soldered connection. I know of a person who had trouble getting a couple of non-computer kits to work. The local Heath Electronic Center fixed them for him. Is Z-DOS MS-DOS compatible? Z-Dos is standard Ms-Dos v 1.25 with some additions to support H-100 specific hardware e.g. the hardware timers. Thus software which uses only the standard Ms-Dos interface will work on the H-100. Some software, notably for the IBM-PC, uses non-standard functions especially for display management. This will not run as is on the H-100. However, companies that write software for the IBM-PC often offer a version which runs on Z-Dos. Some software available: The FinalWord full-screen text editor/formatter; PeachText package - editor/formatter, spelling checker, DBMS, spreadsheet; Lotus 123; several C compilers - Computer Innovations CI86, c-Ware Mark DSmet C compiler etc. I have the ZVM-123 amber monitor. It is good. The H-100 updates the screen only during the vertical retrace period (with any monitor). Thus there is no screen flicker. The effective baud rate is a bit low, about 5000 char/sec, though. Other comments The fan is noisy. Perhaps it is necessary because the power supply can presumably support 4 additional S-100 cards. (I dont have any yet). Seems to be a generally well-designed machine. The documentation is good for novices, tutorial in nature, though not very good for quick reference. The advanced stuff is in a number of appendices which are of lower quality. The type-setting is excellent, though there are a number of typos. The techinal manual comes in two volumes. The first contains good descriptions of the theory and actual operation of all parts of the hardware (except for the power supply which is not considered to be user-serviceable). The second is a reprint of the data sheets for most of the LSI chips in the machine. Tim Gonsalves Gonsalves@SU-Sierra.Arpa ------- ------- -------