The H-89 was sold under the two names: Heathkit H-89 and Zenith Data Systems Z-89. The H-89 was sold in kit form, the Z-89 came assembled.
It originally came with 16 KB of memory, later versions provided up to 48KB on the main CPU board (in groups of 1 KB chips). Zenith and Heathkit offered a 16 KB expansion card ($120) for a total of 64 KB when using CP/M.
The system was identical to the H-19 video terminal but had an additional CPU board between the CRT and the terminal board. (Really identical because Heath offered upgrade kits to convert an H-19 to an H-88/H-89 computer).
It used hard sectored disks with a built-in card controller. Under either H-DOS or CP/M, disk capacity was of 90 KB. Another model the H-88 was identical to the H-89, but did not include the floppy drive or controller. It had a cassette port.
A couple of years later, the H/Z-37 soft sectored controller and ROMS came out, then was replaced with a double 5.25" floppy disk drive called H/Z-87 (102 KB, 250 ms). A double 8" floppy disk drive called H/Z-47 (1 Mb each) and a hard disk called H/Z-67, it contained one 10MB 8" winchester drive and one 8" floppy drive (like the one in the H/Z-47).
It ran under HDOS or CP/M (the operating system used 16 KB of RAM).
HDOS was originally written for the H-8, it ran without modification on the '89. This was a single-user OS written by J. Gordon Letwin for Heath. It included a Basic interpreter and assembler.
For CP/M, H/Z wrote a custom BIOS in assembler that the new user could further customize for his specific hardware and assemble right on the machine.
A version of MP/M was also available for the system.
A lot of extension boards were available for this computer including 64 KB memory boards, hard-disk controller cards, 3-port serial I/O board, H19 terminal board, etc.
A third party small upgrade card was also offered which doubled the processor speed to 4 Mhz.
An assembler/debugger was given with the DOS. A paper tape reader was available as well. Microsoft has adapted its various programming languages (Basic, Fortran, Cobol) for this computer. Borland also offered a version of Turbo Pascal that worked great with the CP/M.
Dennis reports:
The base H-89 had no graphic modes, just 33 graphic characters. At least two different add-on boards were created that gave the H-89 bitmapped graphics capabilities, but I'm pretty sure they both required hardware modifications to tie them in to the terminal board - this was not a simple plug-in expansion card
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jtnelsoniii(at)netscape.net
Sunday 17th February 2019
Jim Nelson (United States)
Looking for one of these computers to buy. Email me if you have one to sell.
Sunday 17th February 2019
Jim Nelson (United States)
I was very lucky to have a father working in computing in the 1960''s through now. In 1980 he purchased an H89 kit and allowed me to do the entire assembly and learn CP/M. I also messed around in BASIC and Turbo Pascal on it for the summer between my fifth and sixth grades. I had plenty of time on computers before it, but the assembly of the H89 really taught me how systems work. By winter my dad had written some software for a local franchise owner to better manage his operations and the H89 got a new home. I did get to see it in use a few times after. Not until I got an Amiga 1000 did another computer mean as much to me. I have built and assembled many systems of various scales over the years. This will always be my first.
Thursday 22nd March 2018
Jason H. Jester (Earth)
NAME
H-89
MANUFACTURER
Heathkit / Zenith
TYPE
Professional Computer
ORIGIN
U.S.A.
YEAR
1979
END OF PRODUCTION
1983
BUILT IN LANGUAGE
None
KEYBOARD
Full stroke keyboard with numeric keypad
CPU
Zilog Z80
SPEED
2.048 MHz
RAM
From 16 KB up to 64 KB
ROM
Custom bootup & monitor
TEXT MODES
80 chars. x 24 lines ( + one independant line)
GRAPHIC MODES
No graphics mode. 33 graphic characters
COLORS
Monochrome green phosphore display
SOUND
Beep - HUG magazine had a article on how to use one of the serial ports as a crude