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Husky Hunter/Hunter 2

This is a little doculant i put together in the pinout for the ports as his info was not out there. Can be found in the manual.

Manual: https://archive.org/details/HuskyHunterManual

ROM Dumps: Husky Hunter EPROMS

Husky Hunter

The husky Hunter was most likely relesed in 1984 although some sources refrence it as 1983. Old-Computers.com does this in one page.

The Husky Hunter has a NSC800N-4 4MHz Z80 compaterble CPU, the crystal runs at 8MHz. Most of the motherboard is RAM, 80KB base (expandable to 144KB, 208KB, 352KB, or 496KB) . It has a far higher resolution display of 240x64 that can do graphics. Has RS-232 serial communications. Sound is 1 voice, 4 octaves range, programmable frequency & duration & runs on 4 AA's for quite a long time. The NSC810 CPU uses multiplexing for the data bus / lower 8 address bits. Some models have an EL backlight.

The OS is DEMOS, CP/M compaterble which gave a great compaterbilty for the time with software & computer systems. There are a few versions of DEMOS which are mostly updated between models or revisions of Husky Hunters.

The Husky Hunter to the left is running a custom OS GUI in RAM, sadly I lost the software when the batterys died.

Another quirk of the Husky Hunter is when the internal battery is depleted it won't turn on. You have to put the batterys in & wait for it to charge before it turns on. Then when it does turn on it does not stay on untill you set the clock. You have to hold down a key, I recomend the shift key so you can hold the machine on with out it doing randon stuff. Set the clock, then after that type FORMAT into the consol other wise it can crash randomly due to random data in the RAM. The quirk is the same with the Huskly Hunter 2 machines.

Most Husky Hunters use two 256KB EPROMs, the older models use the full six EPROM sockets. There might have also been options where more EPROMs were used. But there also were options loaded into RAM from the factory.

You can also see the NSC800N-4I low power Z80 clone & the 8MHz crystal below it. You cna also see its main support chip the NSC810AN-4I that is pretty much like a co-proccessor/northbridge. It handles RAM timings & I/O for the Husky Hunter.

https://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/view/95859/NSC/NSC810AN-4I/A.html

Front RAM card, LED & evil NiCAD battery is visiable here. The chips to the right are memory addressing chips, as the Z80 can only nativly adddress a max amout of RAM/ROM or 64KB, bank switching is incorprated to use more RAM/ROM.

Some of the older Husky Hunters used DIP packages but later switched to SMT RAM on the motherboard.

Side view under the LCD, can't see much form this angle. Don't know why I took this shot.

The front case of the Husky Hunter. The keyboard uses a membrane which is pretty standard for 80s computers & modern computers. The DB25 connector is also wired up to the LEMO connector & plugs into the motherboard.

The view of the board when you open the machine. Intrestingly, while there are foot prints for other EPROM's, the sockets for them are not there. ALso common in all HUSKY computers is each coner of the EPROM is soldered in place. This will be to increes the ruggedness of the computer so the chips don't fall out.

Reverce Engineering Effort

Quite an extensive effort has been made to try & reverce engineer these machines, it has never been fully completed but we do have a MAME emulator.

Husky Hunter: MAME
Husky Hunter 2: MAME
MAME Hosted By Me: MAME
Potential Repalcemnt Display: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/635765367.html

Ash Evens went though the effort of putting a scematic together & also building a board layout. Sadly the project has not ever been completed.

Chip layout in the scematic view.

One of the chips that is in the Husky Hunter.

Manual: To Be Scanned

Husky Hunter 2

The Husky Hunter 2 is the same machine as the Husky Hunter. The only diffrence is a larger screen. The screen is the same resolution as the Husky Hunter with the same graphics caperbilitys.

Both these units have 496KB of RAM, most of it was be used as a RAM disk. There is a floppy drive that can be connected to these machines, but I don't have it sadly.

The Husky Hunter 2 motherboard is pretty much the same as the Husky Hunter. This version has the EL backlight display option, the display also is connected to the motherboard via a plug in cable not the horrible one that disintergrates in the older Huskys, makes them a lot easyer to work on.

The LCD modual takes up half of the top case in the unit. It uses a newer revision of the Husky Hunter display chipset, will probaly try driving an older display with one of these at some point just for fun.

The DB25 serial connector is the same & is splaced out to the same LEMO connector. Silica Gel bags are in all the Husky computers.

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