Heathkit H8's, H9's and H-11's

[Barry Watzman]

Robert Armstrong wrote:

> Dunno about the H-9, but the H-19 was a nice terminal.  I have one 
> hooked up to an H-11; works great.

Does anybody know how long they sold H-11's?
I remember drooling over it when I saw the ad I think in BYTE, but I
remember the H-8 had the write up but very little other than 8080/8086 ever
seemed to have more than a passing glance with that magazine.

> Bob Armstrong

The H-11 was offered from 1977 (when Heath entered the computer business)
until about 1981 or 1982 ... I don't remember the exact date.  While the
hardware was nice if you liked DEC architecture (it was just a standard
LSI-11 made by DEC), it was a terrible system for a computer hobbyist at the
time.  There was very little software, and both the hardware and the
software was expensive.  Although I didn't introduce the H-11 and by the
time I took over was only trying to sell off our inventory, I felt guilty
for offering the system, because I knew that almost everyone who bought it
was making a several thousand (1970's) dollar mistake.