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On Mar 6, 2025, at 9:32 PM, Tim R <t...@primal-bits.com> wrote:
Mike, I may be headed down a rabbit hole with this story, but I too had sound issues on the H8. In my case, the tone was more of a squawk than a beep, and I eventually tracked it down to IC103 on the front panel board. I hit the socket with DeOxit and reseated the chip which fixed my issue. I don't think you have the same issue, but I learned some things about how tones are generated via front panel IC103. That IC is a 14040 12-bit counter that is used to create a couple of different tones for the sound circuit based off the system clock. One of the interesting things is that sound circuitry also generates a beep when a system reset is detected on IC103, pin 11 (the 14040). It sounds like you have two different devices/cards that are triggering a reset on system boot.
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On Mar 9, 2025, at 6:50 PM, Mike Cassidy <cmc...@gmail.com> wrote:
Any recommendations on sourcing IC's? Rochester has everything I'm looking for but $250 minimum order. Seems like e-bay might be only way to go.
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Congrat’s!
The RAM test in the book is set up such that it tests the same bank of RAM where the program itself resides so it has to avoid overwriting two things: 1) the test program itself and 2) the stack. As listed in the manual (P. 61) it is set up to test a 4K RAM board starting at the 8K boundary. Normally this would be 040.000 through 057.377 (or 0x2000 through 0x3000-1)… BUT… in order to avoid clobbering the program or the stack the start is set at 040.160 and the end at 057.260.
The good news is you have two RAM boards (I presume these have both been upgraded to a full 8K RAM each) so you can arrange things for a complete test of each board. The first thing to know is that when the H8 comes on the PAM-8 monitor searches (starting at 040.000) for the first 4K boundary where there is no RAM and sets the stack pointer to the top of continuous RAM (i.e. the top of the most recent 4K RAM bank. So if you want to test an entire memory board you must leave a GAP between the two RAM boards so that the stack won’t end up being in the range of your test board.
So set the first one to start at the 8K boundary (i.e. 040.000) and set the second one somewhere higher. For example set the second board to start at 32K (200.000). Then you can set the start test address to 200.000 (i.e. put 000 200 at locations 040.101 and 040.102) and the end of the test range would be 237.377 (0xA000-1) so put 377 and 237 at locations 40.104 and 40.105 respectively.
I know split octal can be confusing. Hope this helps!
Let me know if you have any questions…
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'A few questions for you:
1. What boards do you currently have?
2. What are your ambitions for the H8 (hardware / software)?
3. What OS' do you plan to use (CP/M, HDOS2, HDOS3)?
4. What terminal are you using / plan to use?
Joe
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Great point joe! FYI by default the memory test in the H17 ROM tests everything from 040.100 to top of RAM minus 64 (040.000 to 040.077 is working storage for the front panel monitor so that’s excluded from the test range and the top 64 bytes are excluded since they’re the working stack space.)
Note that there’s a HLT instruction which pops you back to the front panel monitor where you can adjust the starting address (HL) and ending address (DE), then hit GO (key 4).
As joe says, this will only work if you have an H17 or a more modern monitor ROM that includes the H17 code (e.g. XCON-8).
Good capability to know about!
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Mike: with what you’ve got you should be able to run BASIC and/or do some simple assembly work. Take a look at this REMarks article I wrote a while back:
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Sounds like trying to find an operational H-17 maybe not worth the effort.
You can build out your own H17 board and use 3.5” floppy drives to boot HDOS2/HDOS3 and CP/M.
Link here: https://koyado.com/heathkit/New-H8-Website/h8-h17-vdip1-fsb.html
Norby
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Better off to just build out the CF card controller to do the same.
https://koyado.com/heathkit/New-H8-Website/h8-dual-cf-controller.html
Norby
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The 8080A 64KB board has the build in ORG 0. I think I still have one board left that I need to build to check out the layout. The same for the 512KB board.
Link: https://koyado.com/heathkit/New-H8-Website/h8-8080a-64kb-board.html
Thanks,
Norberto
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If you mostly just want the nostalgia trip use your H8-5 and one of the techniques from the REMarks article or Joe’s technique to convert the H8-5 to download digital content. This would require very little investment.
If you want to go farther and run one of the disk-based operating systems you’ll need more RAM, typically at least 32K, though more is better. This means buying or building a RAM board, e.g.: https://koyado.com/Heathkit/H8_8080A_64K_RAm_Brd.html. That board also contains the “Zero Org” logic that will let you run CP/M or HDOS3 and has battery-backed RAM.
As Joe and Norberto have mentioned, one way to run these operating systems is by installing a compact-flash-based hard drive emulator (see link in Norberto’s email). There are pre-configured CF images with all the operating systems and sample programs loaded. Some of these programs require an H19 or a PC running an H19 emulator.
Depending on how far you want to go we also have ways to interface with USB Flash drives (for file copying, not booting an OS).
Perhaps get started by doing the H8-5 thing and playing with some of the old tape-based programs, then decide if you want to go further!...
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Hopefully this is the latest. Once Joe’s online he can verify that:
H8-5 Serial-Tape IO - Google Drive
I used the Sparkfun USB-C Serial Basic breakout (SparkFun Serial Basic Breakout - CH340C and USB-C)
Rather than solder directly to the 8251 I created a little breadboard, which I ended up sending to Tim Rogers. He featured that in one of his H8 restoration videos:
The Heathkit H8 Computer - Part 4: Terminal I/O and Benton Harbor Basic
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Also, you can use same original HW and just flip SW101 to interchange the Cassette port with the Console port, to send data via the serial port of the PC to the H8. This setup was design to read/write from the paper puncher/reader or any RS-232 serial port.
Norberto
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