Talk:Heathkit H8

Computing Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Computing, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of computers, computing, and information technology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ComputingWikipedia:WikiProject ComputingTemplate:WikiProject ComputingComputing articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by Computer hardware task force (assessed as Low-importance).

[Untitled]

There are several errors and half-truths.

The H-8 originally came with an 8080 processor. The H-89 was always Z-80 based. The H-8's optional Z-80 processor was actually introduced AFTER the H-89 was developed. The H-89 was NOT a re-packaged H-8; it was a Z-80 processor system whose design was intended to be software compatible to the H-8. But the application space eventually started drifting into Z-80 code, which created the demand for a Z-80-based retrofit.

The H-8 commonly ran an operating system called HDOS, written by Heathkit and/or hired consultants (J. Gordon Letwin was the primary author, as far as I could tell from reading code and binaries at the time). CP/M was more common on the H-89, which Zenith Data Systems was, after all, selling in assembled form as a business system (and virtually all 8080-based business apps were written for CP/M).

The front panel keyboard was originally DECIMAL (and used octal notation); the HEXADECIMAL keyboard (with a ROM BIOS change) bundled with the optional Z-80 processor board upgrade.

The H89 was not based on the H-9, but rather the later H-19. The H-9 was only capable of upper case characters and used individual switches; the H-19 could do upper and lower case characters and some line-art glyphs and had a preassembled keyboard (with a much nicer feel). (An aside: the *nix termcap still has the H-89 as an entry, 30 years later.)

Actually, the purchase of Heathkit by Zenith didn't kill their kit operation. It was the acquisition of Zenith Data Systems by Bull HN a few years later that closed them down.

-- Dave Wallace (wa1gsf at comcast dot net)

Thank you for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the edit this page link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). Ghettoblaster (talk) 21:37, 11 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, from the muse wiki it is clear that they are talking about the Hitachi H8 microcontroller, not the heathkit h8: "Using a microcomputer (Hitachi H8 / 3048F)" 68.109.163.112 (talk) 01:43, 16 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]