heathkit
eddie white
cassette programs like bh-basic or ted-8 were ever released in machine
readable form? i purchased the hard copy before the old heathkit went
away, but never saw anything about machine readable.
thanks,
eddie
Barry Watzman
they would be quite rare now (I don't have a copy).
Barry Watzman
former Computer Product Line Director
Heathkit and Zenith Data Systems
eddie white
machine readable form. i have the hardcopy that heath sold.
eddie
Jack W. Crenshaw
>
> i didn't word this very well. i'm looking for the source code in
> machine readable form. i have the hardcopy that heath sold.
>
Since that source code was proprietary to Heathkit, I doubt very much
that you will find many copies. However, when I was with Heathkit we did
know that there were bootleg copies out there; someone within Heath was
apparently pulling them off our computer and selling them.
You might try Gordon Letwin, who's now at Microsoft. He originally
wrote both bh-basic and hdos. I'd be _REAL_ surprised if Gordon didn't
take listings of all his stuff. Whether he will give them to you, and
how he feels about violating Heath copyrights, I leave between you and
Gordon.
Jack
WWheco1
>eddie white wrote:
>>
>> i didn't word this very well. i'm looking for the source code in
>> machine readable form. i have the hardcopy that heath sold.
>>
>
>Since that source code was proprietary to Heathkit, I doubt very much
>that you will find many copies. However, when I was with Heathkit we did
>know that there were bootleg copies out there; someone within Heath was
>apparently pulling them off our computer and selling them.
>
After CP/M and ZDOS (MS-DOS) became popular, Heath started selling the source
code of HDOS in hard-copy format. They might have done the same with the
cassette software. Heath later sold the license and the machine-readable form
of HDOS to some company in the south-central U.S., but I don't recall them
doing much with it.
Probably Mr. White's best option is to convert his paper copy to
machine-readable form with a scanner and some good OCR software.
--Bill
--
Bill Wilkinson
email: wxw...@aol.com
Heathkit Page: http://members.aol.com/wwheco1/index.htm
Jack W. Crenshaw
>
> After CP/M and ZDOS (MS-DOS) became popular, Heath started selling the source
> code of HDOS in hard-copy format. They might have done the same with the
> cassette software.
I think it was more a case of, after we realized someone else out there
was selling our source files in huge quantities, Heath figured that we
might as well do so, also.
> Probably Mr. White's best option is to convert his paper copy to
> machine-readable form with a scanner and some good OCR software.
Excellent idea.
Jack
Max F Lang
>
> You might try Gordon Letwin, who's now at Microsoft. He originally
> wrote both bh-basic and hdos.
Is Mr Letwin -still- at Microsoft?! I would have thought that after what
MS/BillG did to his beloved and worked-hard-at OS/2 several years back,
he would have packed his bags to elsewhere.
OS/2 in its 16bit, 1.X versions showed alot of Gordon's subtle but good
sense of humor. What a coder he was/is...
(I'm cross-posting to a.f.c since I've wanted to ask this very question
there before.)
MFLang, a budding Unix and VMS hacker...
Jack W. Crenshaw
>
> Jack W. Crenshaw wrote:
> >
> > You might try Gordon Letwin, who's now at Microsoft. He originally
> > wrote both bh-basic and hdos.
>
> Is Mr Letwin -still- at Microsoft?! I would have thought that after what
> MS/BillG did to his beloved and worked-hard-at OS/2 several years back,
> he would have packed his bags to elsewhere.
> OS/2 in its 16bit, 1.X versions showed alot of Gordon's subtle but good
> sense of humor. What a coder he was/is...
>
AFAIK, yes. I just finished reading "Hard Drive," re Bill Gates, and
saw Letwin mentioned several times. Letwin resigned as mgr (I think) of
all OS products, but he's still there. BG has a number of key people he
calls "senior architects" or some such thing. Letwin is one of those,
and AFAIK he and BG are pretty tight.
Jack
Jeff Jonas
I'm curious: I once saw a build-it-yourself paper tape reader
that was just photocells on the PCB with wire guides.
No motor: you pulled the paper tape through by hand,
used a high intensity lamp over it and it read the tape
as fast as you could pull it!
Does anybody have one? Could it be easily interfaced
to a PC via serial or parallel port?
--
Jeffrey Jonas
jeffj@panix(dot)com
The original Dr. JCL and Mr .hide
Barry Watzman
Actually, I have been looking for one of the devices that you describe.
I used to own one. I was called the OAE paper tape reader, and it sold
for about $50. OAE stood for "Oliver Audio Engineering", which made and
sold the device. The device was marketed in about 1976-1977. It used a
parallel port interface, could probably be interfaced to a PC
bidirectional printer port with a bit of wiring and some custom
software.
As I indicated, I've been looking for one (although I'm not sure why).
Will probably be hard to find, however.
The only paper tape equipment made by Heathkit (I was the computer
product line director for nearly 5 years) was the H-10 reader punch.
The reader was ok, but the punch was a disaster and rarely worked
correctly. To anyone who ever owned one, it was designed and marketed
before I joined the company, I take no responsibility for it (this is
the "I will not be responsible for the sins of my father" speech). It
was one of two absolute disasters in the Heath computer product line
(the other, not quite as bad but close, was the H-9 CRT terminal -- also
before my time).
I have a complete set of Byte magazine from Vol. 1 #1 to about 1983, and
this and other devices are listed in some of the early issues.
Barry Watzman
William Meyer
Never had one, as I had an ASR-33.... But I did see one work... sort
of... kind of on a par with hand scanners, I suppose...
WWheco1
>The only paper tape equipment made by Heathkit (I was the computer
>product line director for nearly 5 years) was the H-10 reader punch.
>The reader was ok, but the punch was a disaster and rarely worked
>correctly.
The problem with the punch was that the solenoids would overheat, jam, and tear
the paper tape. Heath fixed the problem by either changing vendors or
tightening the original vendor's specs. Anyway, the H-10 didn't last long.
Heath replaced it with an 8-inch floppy drive for H-11 owners and most H-8
owners were using audio cassettes instead of paper tape.
>(the other, not quite as bad but close, was the H-9 CRT terminal -- also
>before my time).
>
I think the original H-9 was a definite "oops" by Heath. While it made the best
of the affordable technology at the time (1977), the factory-built wiring
harness (which was required to connect about eight or nine circuit boards
together) didn't use gold-plated connectors. Also, the connectors were crimped
to the harness, rather than soldered. It caused all kinds of headaches for us
technicians. <grin>
Frank D. Cringle
> >They were released on paper tape and on casette tape.
>
> I'm curious: I once saw a build-it-yourself paper tape reader
> that was just photocells on the PCB with wire guides.
> No motor: you pulled the paper tape through by hand,
> used a high intensity lamp over it and it read the tape
> as fast as you could pull it!
>
> Does anybody have one? Could it be easily interfaced
> to a PC via serial or parallel port?
I still have one that I built in the late '70s. A small plastic box
with ten holes in a row across the middle. Hmmm... 10 holes? I guess
I drilled 10 because there were 10 photocells in the integrated strip
that was mounted underneath. The 4th hole from one side was smaller
than the rest - to provide a suitably-timed strobe from the transport
hole in the tape. The extra hole at the other end of the strip might
have been used as a sort of "lamp-check" - I have forgotten the
details.
I used that reader to transfer the contents of the boot prom for my
first CP/M system from a mainframe to a homebrew prom burner. I had
written a bunch of macros to get the mainframe (370-like) assembler to
understand Z80 code.
--
Frank Cringle, f...@cliwe.ping.de
voice: (+49 2304) 467101; fax: 943357
Jack Peacock
<3665F88B...@ibm.net>...
>Jeff,
>
>Actually, I have been looking for one of the devices that
you describe.
>I used to own one. I was called the OAE paper tape reader,
and it sold
>for about $50. OAE stood for "Oliver Audio Engineering",
which made and
>sold the device. The device was marketed in about
1976-1977. It used a
>parallel port interface, could probably be interfaced to a
PC
>bidirectional printer port with a bit of wiring and some
custom
>software.
>
don't want to part with it). Basically it was a tape guide,
a row of 9 photodiodes (8 data plus sprocket hole used to
clock data). It used a very simple parallel interface. I
got one when it first came out ('77 sounds right), used it
to load MS 4K Basic into my then brand new IMSAI with it's
4K SRAM board and a video TTY. It actually worked quite
well if you used a hi-intensity light directly over the
diodes. The only problem was with oiled paper tape, a real
mess, oil got on your hands, all over the reader.
Jack Peacock
Jack W. Crenshaw
>
> >They were released on paper tape and on casette tape.
>
> I'm curious: I once saw a build-it-yourself paper tape reader
> that was just photocells on the PCB with wire guides.
> No motor: you pulled the paper tape through by hand,
> used a high intensity lamp over it and it read the tape
> as fast as you could pull it!
Yep, someone sold one way back in 1976. We had one, and used it. All it
is is an array of photodiodes. Except for the mechanical construction,
which takes a certain amount of craftsmanship for it to work smoothly,
it's a straightforward design. The system uses the sprocket holes as
clock pulses. Since the sprocket holes are smaller than the data holes,
you should get nice, clean pulses.
We used a hand rewinder, built for rewinding and editing movie film, as
the motive force. That was the "take-up spool." The source spool was a
tech standing with a pencil through the loop of tape <grin>.
> Does anybody have one? Could it be easily interfaced
> to a PC via serial or parallel port?
Don't see any reason why it couldn't be used with a PC parallel port.
Gotta be parallel, though, not serial. You'd have to write a driver, of
course, to look for the sprocket pulse, then read the data lines.
Jack
Jack W. Crenshaw
>
> The only paper tape equipment made by Heathkit (I was the computer
> product line director for nearly 5 years) was the H-10 reader punch.
> The reader was ok, but the punch was a disaster and rarely worked
> before I joined the company, I take no responsibility for it (this is
> the "I will not be responsible for the sins of my father" speech). It
> was one of two absolute disasters in the Heath computer product line
> before my time).
Barry, don't forget the H-14 printer, which was designed with a motor
that didn't have enough oomph to pull fan-fold paper up. Until Heath
issued a retrofit kit, we had to set the paper on a tray just underneath
the printer.
Jack
Max F Lang
>
> AFAIK, yes. I just finished reading "Hard Drive," re Bill Gates, and
> saw Letwin mentioned several times. Letwin resigned as mgr (I think) of
> all OS products, but he's still there. BG has a number of key people he
> calls "senior architects" or some such thing. Letwin is one of those,
> and AFAIK he and BG are pretty tight.
Well, OK, I'll try not to fault his choice of friends, especially one
who has probably helped make him pretty comfortable. But I still have to
wonder about his relations with Dave Cutler, who from what I understand
is pretty opposite in character to Gordon, and who seemed to displace
Gordon rather abruptly when MS dropped OS/2 for NT. I had several
correspondences with Gordon in the late '80's about OS/2 development,
and he always came across as a pretty laid-back, easy going guy with a
very irrelevent sense of humor, the archtypal propellerhead. I actually
thought well of MS back in those days... Oh well.
mflang
Bob Withers
says...
I met Gordon at one of the first OS/2 Development Seminars in NYC, 1987 I
think it was. I was most impressed with him and would agree with your
assesment 100%. In fact, of all the MS folks I met during that week long
session only two impressed me, Gordon Letwin and Mark Zibkowski (ever
wonder why .EXE files are identified by the "magic" characters MZ?).
Being a developer sure was a lot more fun back then. Sigh.
Bob
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Withers Do or do not, there is no try
bw...@pobox.com Yoda
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jack W. Crenshaw
>
> Jack W. Crenshaw wrote:
> >
> > AFAIK, yes. I just finished reading "Hard Drive," re Bill Gates, and
> > saw Letwin mentioned several times. Letwin resigned as mgr (I think) of
> > all OS products, but he's still there. BG has a number of key people he
> > calls "senior architects" or some such thing. Letwin is one of those,
> > and AFAIK he and BG are pretty tight.
>
> Well, OK, I'll try not to fault his choice of friends, especially one
> who has probably helped make him pretty comfortable. But I still have to
> wonder about his relations with Dave Cutler, who from what I understand
> is pretty opposite in character to Gordon, and who seemed to displace
> Gordon rather abruptly when MS dropped OS/2 for NT. I had several
> correspondences with Gordon in the late '80's about OS/2 development,
> and he always came across as a pretty laid-back, easy going guy with a
> very irrelevent sense of humor, the archtypal propellerhead. I actually
> thought well of MS back in those days... Oh well.
>
Jack
Barry Watzman
motor wasn't really up to the job as originally designed. The retrofit kit,
which increased torque by simply putting more power into the motor, helped
enough to resolve the problem at the 90%+ level (but not 100%).
And, on top of that, there were some print head overheating problems, in fact
it was possible to burn out the printhead by simply printing graphics with too
much black.
However, all of that said, the H-14 was, overall, a great product for it's
time. It sold for 20% of the nearest other thing that could be called a
printer, and with the retrofit it worked [marginally] "good enough" for the
intented use of most of the people who bought it.
And, even at it's worst, even without the retrofit kit, it wasn't even in the
H-10's class when it comes to problem products.
Barry Watzman
Jerry Avins
>
> Jeff,
>
> Actually, I have been looking for one of the devices that you describe.
> I used to own one. I was called the OAE paper tape reader, and it sold
> for about $50. OAE stood for "Oliver Audio Engineering", which made and
> sold the device. The device was marketed in about 1976-1977. It used a
> parallel port interface, could probably be interfaced to a PC
> bidirectional printer port with a bit of wiring and some custom
> software.
>
> Will probably be hard to find, however.
>
> product line director for nearly 5 years) was the H-10 reader punch.
> The reader was ok, but the punch was a disaster and rarely worked
> correctly. To anyone who ever owned one, it was designed and marketed
> before I joined the company, I take no responsibility for it (this is
> the "I will not be responsible for the sins of my father" speech). It
> was one of two absolute disasters in the Heath computer product line
> (the other, not quite as bad but close, was the H-9 CRT terminal -- also
> before my time).
>
> this and other devices are listed in some of the early issues.
>
> Barry Watzman
>
>
> > >They were released on paper tape and on casette tape.
> >
> > I'm curious: I once saw a build-it-yourself paper tape reader
> > that was just photocells on the PCB with wire guides.
> > No motor: you pulled the paper tape through by hand,
> > used a high intensity lamp over it and it read the tape
> > as fast as you could pull it!
> >
> > to a PC via serial or parallel port?
> > Jeffrey Jonas
> > jeffj@panix(dot)com
> > The original Dr. JCL and Mr .hide
I have one, and I'm pretty sure I can find it. It's near the top of my
CCH. It would take longer than anyone would care to wait for me to
decide to give it up, but I will be happy to lend it in the meantime. I
don't have (or can't find) the docs to go with it. Is there a lendee?
Jerry
--
Engineering is the art | Let's talk about what
of making what you want | you need; you may see
from things you can get. | how to do without it.
---------------------------------------------------------
eddie white
but, the copy is *real* poor, some of the sheets are hard to read.
eddie
"Jack W. Crenshaw" <jcr...@magicnet.net> wrote:
eddie white
i liked the h14. mine worked better than those axiom printers that
were in the same price range. plus, teletype ribbons were always easy
to find.
eddie
"Jack W. Crenshaw" <jcr...@magicnet.net> wrote: