My neighbor across the street had a Heathkit system with 8” floppies. It seemed very primitive compared to my Atari 600xl, but you really get a sense for the first generation 8bit computers looking at those machines.
Fantastic restoration bud. I strongly recommend the floppy drive test in checkit 3 for DOS to give these guys a little more exercise. It seeks to every track in a random order for both a read and write test.
How did you test the hard sector floppy drives using a soft sector PC controller? Or are they not hard sector drives? Normally, for example, the H89 or H8 had the H17 hard sector drive setup.
@@drueking I think I was mistaken. The drives probably can work with either hard or soft sector diskettes. You only have to match the diskette type to the *controller* type: hard sector controller, hard sector floppy; soft controller, soft floppy.
1 of my first jobs was working at Heathkit store #4 in La Mesa, CA, (4 miles inland from San Diego). I chose the Heathkit H-8 over the game machine Apple ][ ! Only complaint for me is that it programmed in Octal rather then HEX. I also create a 2 IC board that changed the monitor from 12 to 24 lines which I sold via the Heathkit club magazine that customers would sign up for. I also created the first Heathkit Computer Club. --- The original H-37 came with 2 full-height drives. Home Depot carries a Grey that will match that light color. Light white grease was originally on those rails. --- *Zenith was the DOWNFALL of Heathkit!!!* 👎 So blame them why Heathkit was shutdown!! 👎
My neighbor across the street had a Heathkit system with 8” floppies. It seemed very primitive compared to my Atari 600xl, but you really get a sense for the first generation 8bit computers looking at those machines.
Fantastic restoration bud. I strongly recommend the floppy drive test in checkit 3 for DOS to give these guys a little more exercise. It seeks to every track in a random order for both a read and write test.
Thank you!
Amazing job !!!
How did you test the hard sector floppy drives using a soft sector PC controller? Or are they not hard sector drives? Normally, for example, the H89 or H8 had the H17 hard sector drive setup.
It works with my test rig. I checked the manual for it as well, it says soft sectored disks.
@@drueking I think I was mistaken. The drives probably can work with either hard or soft sector diskettes. You only have to match the diskette type to the *controller* type: hard sector controller, hard sector floppy; soft controller, soft floppy.
1 of my first jobs was working at Heathkit store #4 in La Mesa, CA, (4 miles inland from San Diego). I chose the Heathkit H-8 over the game machine Apple ][ !
Only complaint for me is that it programmed in Octal rather then HEX. I also create a 2 IC board that changed the monitor from 12 to 24 lines which I sold via
the Heathkit club magazine that customers would sign up for. I also created the first Heathkit Computer Club.
---
The original H-37 came with 2 full-height drives. Home Depot carries a Grey that will match that light color. Light white grease was originally on those rails.
---
*Zenith was the DOWNFALL of Heathkit!!!* 👎 So blame them why Heathkit was shutdown!! 👎
That’s a bear to program, I have to admit, when I was a kid it looked cool because it reminded me of the desk/table computers in Star Trek😝
What color paint did you use?
It was A Rust-oleum 2x Satin Stone Grey