🚀 go-pugleaf

C08926RC@WUVMD.WUSTL.EDU (Rob) writes:
>Can someone give me some info on the Zenith Z100 computer?

It is a dual-processor (8085/8088) non-PC-compatible originally 
built by the Heath Company (Heathkit) in Beton Harbor, MI.
It sports an S100 bus and accepts most third-party S100
boards (it has been popularly used in process control applications).
The Z100 was introduced shortly after the IBM PC but was far
more advanced.  It was designed by the engineers at Heathkit
who had gained a well-deserved reputation for superior documentation
and hardware design.  The Heath Company also sponsored the 
Heath User Group through which users could get hardware/software
discounts, Heath-specific public domain software, and a magazine
devoted to the technical aspects of Heath products.

The 8085 was clocked at 4MHz, and the 8088 was clocked at 5MHz.
The Z100 runs both CP/M (on the 8085) and MSDOS (on the 8088), and 
the last version of MSDOS available for the Z100 was (I believe) 3.1.
CP/M 3.0 was never offered for the Z100.

At one time, there were magazines devoted to Heath-only
products, ("Buss", "Sextant"), and the Z100 dominated their
pages in the late 80's.  

The Pc-incompatibilities arose in Heath's choice of much
higher-technology hardware and a different scheme for color
and graphics.  Both software and hardware PC compatibility 
emulators have been offered from third-parties for the Z100.

Because the Z100 had such an elegant hardware design, superior 
documenation, a strong user group, popular 3rd-party bus (in the early
80's), both CP/M and MSDOS, and availability in both kit and built
from Heathkit; something akin to a religious computer cult grew around
it.  

But, as they say in the industry, "take your technical 
superiority and $.75 and buy yourself a cup of coffee!"

Heath realized this (after being acquired by Zenith) in 1987
when they introduced their first PC-compatible.  The Z100
began slipping into oblivion after that.  There were other
similar machines with a similar history:  the Victor 9000, 
TI Professional, and the DEC Rainbow (also a dual processor Z80/8088); 
but none were as extraordinarily innovative as the Z100.

My Z100 is sitting in my basement with 768k of memory, two
DSDD (1.2M) 8-inch floppy drives, and two 360k 5.25-inch drives.
It has been a couple of years since it was powered-up.
The Z100 is sad testimony to the fact that excellance does not
always result in monetary success.

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