Earliest HUG Software Preserved to SEBHC collection
Glenn Roberts
The news was big in late 1978 and made the cover of REMark magazine – the Heath Users Group (HUG) had just rolled out its first software release!:
It was only about a year prior to this that the H8 had first come on the scene, and HUGgies were anxious to get their hands on any software that let them show off their new creations! This was the first entry into what was eventually to become a large HUG software library, and was a compendium of mostly BASIC programs, plus a handful of machine language programs, contributed by the Heathkit user community. It was published two ways: “HUG Software Volume 1”, a hard copy printout of all the programs (885-1008) and a cassette tape version (885-1009).
A while back I purchased the paper version on eBay, hoping to preserve the software. David Troendle and I experimented with OCRing the code, with limited success. It was only subsequently that I realized Mark Garlanger has preserved the audio tape contents of 885-1009 in the form of .WAV files!:
https://heathkit.garlanger.com/software/library/HUG/
As part of my effort to document the early H8 software realm I have converted these audio files into digital captures of the programs (.H8T format). As I mentioned in a previous post, I am documenting this for a forthcoming article which I will share with this group. I have posted the contents on the SEBHC site together with the original Heath system software (previously captured/preserved by the late Carroll Waddell):
https://sebhc.github.io/sebhc/software.html#Cassette_Tape_Images
There are five cagetories of software in this volume: Amateur Radio, Computer-Assisted Instruction, Financial, Games, and Utilities. I would say the game software has best stood the test of time. The financial software looks pretty silly in hindsight, but back then the idea of keeping your checkbook on a computer was quite exciting. It’s interesting to study the software here and fun to play some of the games and reminisce… You’ll need an H-8-5 board to load these (and for console I/O); they mosty used Extended Benton Harbor Basic 10.01 or 10.02 (available in the afore-mentioned Heath tape archive)
I was able to convert the .WAV files to .H8T by using Dave Runkle’s daughterboard adapter, which converts the cassette I/O port on the H8-5 to RS-232. Pictures of my testbed are here
https://photos.app.goo.gl/RuTojPLGfGNRrjzW9
I used my iPad at about 90% volume and had great success (once I got the H8-5 pots properly calibrated!) Dave’s daughterboard includes a capability to switch between analog and digital I/O, which was very handy. I set it to analog, loaded the .WAV file, then switched to digital and saved as .H8T. Again, I’ll document this more in my forthcoming writeup!
(p.s. I’ve recently discussed with Dave the idea of producing some more of his daughterboards – stay tuned!)
Enjoy!
- Glenn
Joseph Travis
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "SEBHC" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sebhc+un...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sebhc/060801d80fa5%24118fb200%2434af1600%24%40gmail.com.
