| Description | |
| Manufacturer | Heath/Zenith |
| Model | H89 |
| Date Announced | 1979 |
| Date Canceled | 1983 |
| Number Produced | Tens to hundreds of thousands |
| Country of Origin | USA |
| Price | $2,000 or so in kit form |
| Current Value | $50-$250 |
| Specifications | |
| Processor | Zilog Z80 |
| Speed | 2 MHz |
| RAM | 16K - 64K |
| ROM | Unknown (built-in boot loader/monitor) |
| Storage | 90K 5.25 floppy disk drive - built in. |
| Expansion | None |
| Bus | N/A |
| Video | 80x24 text |
| I/O | Serial, Parallel |
| OS Options | HDOS, CP/M |
| Notes | The Heathkit H89 was an early entry into the "professional" personal computer market. It was basically an H19 terminal with an added drive and processor card. |
| Related Items in Collection | Heathkit H-8 Computer, H17 and H37 disk drive subsystems, manuals, some software. |
| Related Items Wanted | Additional software, manuals, etc. |
I haven't done much more than recondition the caps on this H89 but look for pictures and additional information as time permits.
The H89 in my collection was generously donated by Cesar Barrientos.
(Submitted September 7, 2008 17:45:24 by Paul Laba)
Hello,
I have an early production H89 with a single 5 1/4 floppy drive (single sided, double density (48 tpi), hard-sectored, 10-sectors per track). I'm interested in the SVD (Semi-Virtual Disk) product as a way of backing up my original disks (lots of 'em!) to my PC.
However, my floppy disk interface (H8-1) only supports a single internal drive, and I'd like to be able to connect the SVD disk as an external drive, keeping my existing floppy intact.
Does anyone wknow where I might be able to obtain a later interface card that supports external drives?
If anyone knows where I could fine one of these, or has one for sale, please let me know.
Thanks!
(Submitted April 1, 2008 11:17:44 by Troy)
I'm searching for cp/m 3.0 for the h-89, if anyone has this I'm ready to purchase copies on hard sectored floppies also any other software for heath/zenith H89/Z90 I'm interested in.
(Submitted September 3, 2007 19:43:45 by Mark Garlanger)
If anyone has software for the H89, please let me know. I have several systems and some software but I am trying to track down and preserve as much of the software that was available for this system as possible. Many of the companies are no longer in business. The few I've been able to contact, do not have copies of their old software. There were some really interesting games available that did incredible things with the limited graphic capabilities of the H89.
(Submitted July 31, 2007 19:14:15 by Rich)
Why does my old H89 boot up CP/M perfectly but give me this error message (after puting in the date or hitting carriage return) when I try to booy up HDOS ?01 unable to mount system ... rebooting ... At some point years ago I upgraded to the Monitor 90 ROM etc. Is that the problem?
(Submitted April 17, 2007 09:58:31 by Roger)
I have a H89 and printer with manuals that I am going to sale. If anyone is interested email me or I will check this link in a few days.
(Submitted April 6, 2007 13:29:30 by A Collector)
I've been collecting these since the PC came out in 1982 and your pricing is a joke. I'd buy these all day at these prices :-) It's too bad as I use to pick up Altairs for the price of a lunch before all these other 'experts' came into the hobby.
(Submitted January 7, 2007 17:52:52 by Ron Williamson)
I searched for H89's and surprised anyone fooling with these anymore. I have two, one with 8 inch drives and the other has soft sector card to use Double sided 5 inch disks. They both still have the Hard Sector controller with 90K storage. I am going to pull one out soon to see if still works. Both have thousands of hours on them. I still have two set of Manuals with fold outs for kit building. I still don't believe what I paid for the first one. The second one I gave $300 from a friend who assembled it with a Computer course. He never got it to work but after some mistakes he made and a bad processor it worked great. My kids used them to do their papers for school until the IBM series came along. The rest is history.
(Submitted October 30, 2006 05:25:01 by (a href=mailto:)Mark(/a))
In your specifications above you show the H-89 as not having a bus or expansion option. As I recall, the H-89 did have an expansion bus. It consisted of 3 positions on the left side of the CPU board as viewed from the front of the system with the top removed. They were not slots per- se, they were rows of pins (.1 spacing I think). The main CPU board would only hold 48K of RAM so to get 64K you needed to add a daughter board using one of the expansion positions. A hard drive controller could be added using another position but I don't remember any other cards produced by Heathkit for the H-89. There were a couple of aftermarket devices that used these slots as well, I remember a voice synthesizer being available although I can't remember the manufacturer. (I worked for Heathkit in San Diego from 1980 to 1983 and managed the Louisville store from 1983 to 1985.)
(Submitted July 23, 2006 08:53:57 by suraj)
Just to know if u still have 't for sale. i wll
like u to send the full picx to me. and i wll
also want to know the last price r u going to
sale 't. and were is 't now. i am interested in
buying it , i wll like to hear from you as soon
as possible. ,
Thank,
Suraj
(Submitted July 17, 2006 09:56:44 by Cesar Barrientos)
Thanx Erik for the mention. I was looking up for
myself in Google and found your comment. Hope
that you turned it on already. By the way I'm now
working at IBM in Austin TX. But lets keep in touch.
Cesar
(Submitted May 2, 2006 15:01:59 by Grant)
I have a working H19 terminal with fabric antiglare screen and builders/users manual, might be good parts source to fix your H8.
(Submitted April 9, 2006 01:36:27 by David Dolgin)
I have an H-89 in my garage. Mine has several of the after market add on parts such as a SASI disk drive of 15MB! State of the art for those days. I might even still have the complete manuals in a box someplace. Let me know if you are intrested in any information I can provide.