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Heath HT-11 OS

C

cellarcat

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Apr 28, 2013
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I recently acquired a Heath H11 which I have now been able to get running with the monitor rom. Before I invest a pile of money in a WH-27 disk drive though I am wondering if anyone knows where to get a copy of the HT-11 operating system. I have hunted all over the web with no luck at all. I can't even find a manual for it. I realize it is a variant of RT11 but it was specifically designed to work with the WH-27 and it allows formatting which DEC in its uniquely blinkered way would not. I am new to the world of DEC machines (which to a CP/M guy like me appear to be beautifully engineered and hideously complicated!) so any help or suggestions for work arounds would be greatly appreciated.
 
m_thompson said:
The RICM has an H11/H27 that currently doesn't run. There is an OS diskette in one of the drives, but we have never tried to read it. If the diskette is in RX01 format I should be able to read it and possibly copy it with my PDP-8/e.
http://www.ricomputermuseum.org/Home/equipment/heathkit-h-11
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If the disk is for HT-11 that would be great! It should indeed be in RX01 format. As I understand it the WH27 will boot from a RX01 disk but not RX02 although it will read an RX02 disk.
 
krebizfan said:
What do you run on yours? I thought the only H-11 choices for OS were HT-11 and UCSD Pascal.
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Doesn't the H-11 just use a standard dual width M7270 KD11-HA LSI-11/2 CPU? Does it use a DLV11 compatible async interface, and is the H27 compatible with the RX01? If so, shouldn't you be able to run any OS that is compatible with the CPU and memory and storage capacity?
 
Hi All;

"" What do you run on yours? I thought the only H-11 choices for OS were HT-11 and UCSD Pascal. ""

I got it Years ago, I don't remember for sure, But, I don't think I have ever had it running..
I think it came with One Floppy, and I don't remember, If it was bootable or not..
It had a Serial Card, maybe two of them, and a parallel card or two as well..
The Last time I tried it the power Supply was bad, but, I had a friend who had one to fit it.. And so that now works again..
It was a mix and match system, It had a LSI 02, the Parallel and Serial Cards were HeathKit, The Boot Card was DEC, If I remember correctly.. And the Floppy Controller was third Party..
And the Card Cage was DEC..

THANK YOU Marty
 
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Back in the days when the H11 was new the word was that part of the deal between Heath and DEC was that the "hobby" operating system HT-11 would not be capable of running on DEC systems so as not to compete with DEC's RT11. I have no idea what part of HT-11 did the checking or what DEC hardware it looked for but one of my co-workers who had an H11 told me that he was not able to get HT-11 to run on any of our PDP11/03's or PDP11/23's at work.
 
I am not sure that the H27 is 100% RX11 compatible. If so, then the RT11 driver would be different, and it would not run on normal DEC equipment .

I believe that the H11 came with an RT11 license application. After you received the H11 system you filled out the application, with the system serial number, and received a real RT11 license from DEC.
 
I have 2 of these systems, and I have disks of HT-11 and RT-11 which both booted a few months ago. I'm currently working to repair my WH27 and H27 disk drive units. When I say working to repair, it's not at a fast pace. :D I have many things ahead or at least in parallel to do.

Kipp
 
kyeakel said:
I have 2 of these systems, and I have disks of HT-11 and RT-11 which both booted a few months ago. I'm currently working to repair my WH27 and H27 disk drive units. When I say working to repair, it's not at a fast pace. :D I have many things ahead or at least in parallel to do.

Kipp
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If your disks are good would it be possible for me to get copies? I can send you the blank 8" disks.
 
It will be possible once I get the drives repaired. I don't know when I'll get to repairing them, but I'd guess it'll be after Christmas.

Kipp
 
kyeakel said:
It will be possible once I get the drives repaired. I don't know when I'll get to repairing them, but I'd guess it'll be after Christmas.

Kipp
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Hey i just got one of these yesterday. A complete system pulled from an engineering firm in the 1990s. It came with a set of manuals for the rt 11 operating system, which were from DEC and have the digital logo on them. About 4000 pages. Also a stack of floppies, dual 8" floppy drive, terminal, and main unit. Minus the rt 11 operating system. The guy who sold it said he definitely has the disks...somewhere. If he finds them and bothers to call, id be happy to make a copy. *starts reading page 1/4000*

also if anyone knows how to get any of these emulator disk images into the h11s memory by any means necessary id surely love some advice. If not, I will attempt to discover one and then share my results. I suspect if the the io is rs232, i can perhaps set up some type of cheesy assembly program that brings it in, deposits it, and then sets a few vectors and jumps to a disk save routine. Im sure somewhere in those 4000 pages of manual is something along those lines.
 
Forbidden64 said:
Hey i just got one of these yesterday. A complete system pulled from an engineering firm in the 1990s. It came with a set of manuals for the rt 11 operating system, which were from DEC and have the digital logo on them. About 4000 pages. Also a stack of floppies, dual 8" floppy drive, terminal, and main unit. Minus the rt 11 operating system. The guy who sold it said he definitely has the disks...somewhere. If he finds them and bothers to call, id be happy to make a copy. *starts reading page 1/4000*

also if anyone knows how to get any of these emulator disk images into the h11s memory by any means necessary id surely love some advice. If not, I will attempt to discover one and then share my results. I suspect if the the io is rs232, i can perhaps set up some type of cheesy assembly program that brings it in, deposits it, and then sets a few vectors and jumps to a disk save routine. Im sure somewhere in those 4000 pages of manual is something along those lines.
Click to expand...

TU58EM? http://www.ak6dn.dyndns.org/PDP-11/TU58/tu58em/

This will emulate a tape drive over RS-232 from a windows PC.
 
wow nice! Thanks for the replies! Now I just need to clean all the crud off of this old beast and get computing! I found so many programs for it already. Plus there is the uncountable library of basic programs out there from books, magazines, etc. for all systems which I can port over to basic 11! So exciting! Each of these 8 inch floppies hold 256k?!, that's quite a few basic programs/games that will fit onto just one disk. I want to play chess against the H-11 :D. I love the blue phosphor screen too... Its a retro-enthusiasts dream!
 
Hi All;

Paper Tape is NOT useless, Yes, if you are Impatient and want the fastest way to load things, then yes, it is useless to You..
But, some people like the feel of doing things the 'old' way, and part of the experience is the time it takes to Load things..
Faster is not always better !!

THANK YOU Marty
 
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