Vendex Headstart III

[PeterNC]

Received a set of Headstart III documentation today. Brings back a lot of memories. First PC I worked with in the late 80s / early 90s. My uncle owned one. Very rare machine nowadays.

Uploaded the diskettes to Vetusware. http://vetusware.com/download/Headstart III Master Disk Drivers Utilities/?id=14975

 

[Denniske1976]

Yep, I love my HeadStart LX as well... first PC I ever got and it was awesome back then (40MB harddisk, CGA color, 5.25 360K and 3.5" 1.44M drives, AT style keyboard while it was XT).

 

[dieymir]

Could you upload the images of the floppies ? You can get the images with this tool:

http://www.winimage.com/winimage.htm

Thanks

 

[Rick Ethridge]

We have one! We got it from my brother-in-law. I plan on giving it a thorough update then placing it in service. The first thing will be doing something to that "jet engine" fan noise.

 

[lotonah]

My memory isn't the greatest on this. Wasn't Vendex renamed Hyundai at some point? Also, the name Blue Chip comes to mind in relation to this too. Anyone remember more about it? I'd love to know more.

 

[PeterNC]

Diskettes already uploaded to Vetusware. Will see whether I can image them as well this weekend.

Vendex Headstart was a Philips subsidiary. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philips_Computers. Some Headstart computers were made in South Korea.

 

[PeterNC]

As luck would have it I bought a boxed HeadStart III on eBay this evening. No HDD. Will use INTERLNK/INTERSVR or I may pop in a SCSI. I believe this system needs an ESDI HDD. Need to verify that.

 

[Denniske1976]

Oooeeeh….. TVT (TerugVindTopic) ;-)

 

[PeterNC]

At this point I am still waiting for the seller to ship. Has not responded to a message I sent. Looks like it may be a "item not received" case on eBay.

 

[PeterNC]

Update: machine should be arriving tomorrow after all. Wait and see.
Update: got the machine. Need to figure out the HDD situation. The machine POSTs and boots on diskette.
Update: MFM: https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/hard-drives-hdd/seagate/ST138-1-32MB-3-5-HH-MFM-ST412.html.

Also needs a Lithium battery pack.

A ST-01 / ST-157N combination works great. Cannot install the HeadStart diskettes however. I did succeed in manually installing some compressed titles from diskette to the ST-157N like Splash!.

 

[PeterNC]

This machine is a tiny bit slower than my Philips P 3238.

Playing FLIs works but is very slow compared to the Argent Technologies 486 DX 33 (obviously).

INTERLNK/SVR on LapLink works great. No need for a HDD.

This monitor that was sold with it will probably be very hard to find.

 

[PeterNC]

Received a 3X AA holder today. Is it safe to use this instead of the 3.6V Lithium battery?

 

[PeterNC]

Correction: AAA.

 

[Stone]

Yes, you can use it.

 

[PeterNC]

Thanks! Appears to work. Once upon a time I tried this with a 9V battery in an Everex Tempo 433C and it fried the MOBO.

Unfortunately the 5.25” DS/HD FDD appears to be dead.

COM1 works. Nullmodem INTERLNK/SVR is slow but works.

 

[twilliamc]

Hi PeterNC,

I recently purchased this exact computer. I replaced the CMOS with an identical battery from mouser, added an XT-IDE card w/IDE-CF card, and backed up the MFM drive to a CF card. Like yours, both of my floppy drives are flaky. I hope to find a way to repair them soon, lubrication and cleaning the heads has not worked. Do you happen to have photos of the documentation? I am getting a memory error on boot and think it might be the dip switches on the motherboard.

 

[twilliamc]

I bought one of these at an estate sale recently. I added an xt-IDE with IDE-CF adapter, a Sound Blaster Pro 2, Gotek Floppy emulator, backed up the 32MB MFM drive, and started a new installation of DOS 6.22 on a second CF card. I plan to use a third card for a fresh install from the Headstart disk images.

I get a memory error on boot that I suspect is related to the dip switches. Do your manuals have any mention of the dip switch configuration?

 

[PeterNC]

Let me check this evening or later this week.

 

[PeterNC]

Here you go.

 

[wilkmanracing]

I have a Vendex Headstart III that was my first computer. I'm now in the process of recommissioning it. Sometime back I loaned it to my brother who formatted the hard drive before returning it to me. (grrr) Destroyed all the Vendex software. And, while I have every other thing that came with the computer, I cannot find the original software. I'm so glad to come across the post with a link to this software. The floppies work fine, but I cannot get the hard drive to boot. I'm advised to replace it with a modern drive.