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Zenith Data Systems (ZDS) was a division of Zenith founded in 1979 after Zenith acquired Heathkit, who had, in 1977, entered the personal computer market. Headquartered in Benton Harbor, Michigan, Zenith sold personal computers under both the Heath/Zenith and Zenith Data Systems names. Zenith was an early partner with Microsoft, licensing all Microsoft languages for the Heath/Zenith 8-bit computers. Conversely, Microsoft programmers of the early 80s did much of their work using Zenith Z 19 and Z-29 CRT display terminals hooked to central mainframe computers. The first H 8 Heathkit computer, sold in kit form, was built on Intel 8080 processor. It run K7 audio-tape software, punched tape software (with puncher/readr H10) and HDOS (Heath Disk Operating System) software on 5"1/4 hard-sectored floppy disks. The CP/M operating system was adapted to all Heath/Zenith computers, in 1979. Next, the early Heath/Zenith computers (H88/H89 ans Z89) were based on the Z80 processors and ran either HDOS or CP/M operating systems.

Zenith introduced the revolutionary Z-100 computer in mid-1981. Targeted for professionals, it had an S-100 bus, high performance color graphics, an 8-bit Z80 and a 16-bit 8088 processor. It ran MS DOS, but was not yet the "PC compatible" machine. In 1983 the United States Navy and Air Force awarded a joint contract to Zenith Data Systems to purchase 6000 Z-100 series computers, the first of many such major US government contracts to be won by Zenith. Later machines (Z-150, Z-2xx, Z-3xx ... ) were IBM PC compatible.