Still have my Heathkit ET-3400 and ETA-3400. Learned 6800 assembly language on that pair before moving up to a OSI C1-P. It would be great to see Heathkit back to something fun. I was bummed when my K2/100 rig was finished.
Brian KB1VBF Sent from my iPad > On Aug 9, 2016, at 7:08 PM, Lewis Phelps <l...@n6lew.us> wrote: > > Heathkit was at the forefront of the personal computer revolution. Their H-8 > was one of the earliest 8-bit computers, and the H-89 one of the first Z-80 > machines, as well as being the first “all in one” computer that combined the > keyboard, monitor, and processor into a single enclosure. I used an H-89 as > a word processor for a number of years, upgrading it with aftermarket > products (which were plentiful) to the first-ever silicon drive, in lieu of a > 5 inch floppy. It didn’t have “permanent” memory, so you had to copy files a > a floppy before shutting down, but it sure accelerated the word processing > speed. The Z-80 (an enhanced 8080 chip made by Zilog) addressed 64K of > memory, and the operating system (CP/M) used about 39K, which didn’t leave > much space for the word processing app and the document file. There was a > lot of swapping of chunks of instruction in and out of memory. > > They didn’t keep up with the advances in technology forever, but I think that > was due more to a lack of capital than a lack of focus. Their 16-bit machines > never caught on in the face of the IBM PC onslaught. > > Lew N6LEW > > > >> On Aug 8, 2016, at 12:47 PM, Dauer, Edward <eda...@law.du.edu> wrote: >> >> It may be that Heath’s demise came less from a lack of entrepreneurship than >> from a lack of focus on the market where it had mastered its route to >> success. The introduction of personal computers at around the same time >> probably played a role as well. > > Lew Phelps N6LEW > Pasadena, CA DM04wd > Elecraft K3-10 / KXV144 / XV432 > Yaesu FT-7800 > l...@n6lew.us > www.n6lew.us > > Generalized Law of Entropy: Sooner or later, everything that has been put > together will fall apart. > > > > > > ______________________________________________________________ > Elecraft mailing list > Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm > Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net > > This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net > Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html > Message delivered to b.den...@comcast.net ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
