"David G. Nagel" wrote:

No. They were very succussful until another company who's name starts
with a "Z" bought them out so that they could get a foothold in the home
computer business. They ("Z") left Heathkit to flounder without proper
finances until Heath closed. With proper finance and control a company
could succeed with out much trouble. There are several "kit" companies
out there that seem to be doing very well.

Dave WD9BDZ


According to trade journals at the time Zenith wanted to bid on a
large computer contract with the US government, but they were not
building computers yet. So, they bought Heathkit to get their existing
government business, and to get the contract.

I've scrapped some of the "XT clones" from that contract and they
were a joke. Both the regular and the "Tempest" hardware. I still have
some of their "Z DOS" manuals and the printed source code for the BIOS
used in the computers. Zenith put the non Tempest version in the
Heathkit stores, and a board was sold by a third party to let you run
MSDOS software on the system. The I/O ports were in different locations
from the standard "XT" design and some of the BIOS calls were different
so that the software written for regular "XT" computers wouldn't run on
their design.
--
?

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida