09-09-2025, 10:57 PM
Hello Ewan,
All noted. I still run a lot of old 68k UNIX and UNIX-like systems and don't mind the slowness. Anything from the era is no rocket-ship for sure.
I strongly suspect that emotionally, the Gamma is a bit like the Amiga4000 or the Atari Falcon030 (sparrow) or C65 in that it was the last thing AE was working on.. so it's that mystical "Never was" that's so intriguing. The only other Z8k Coherent system I can think of was the Commodore C900 which only ever shipped to developers prior to cancellation.
I understand what you mean regarding the large scope of the complexity, I've seen and worked on bringing back some of the early SUN and SGI designs. Z8k though is a very rare beast. I've oft wondered wondered as to the legal status of the AE port of Mark Williams Company's Coherent to Z8k is and if any of the /usr/include/sys equiv has survived. I've only dabbled in FPGA's in the past but the support logic for a more modern CPU would probably fit into not terribly many cells.
Just dreaming still I guess >35+ years on. I was extremely excited to see the working system at VCF-Canbs. That was ..honestly moving.
Kind Regards,
Al Boyanich
P.S. Apparently Coherent is now open-source under a BSD-3 Clause license. over here..
That'll want some reading.
All noted. I still run a lot of old 68k UNIX and UNIX-like systems and don't mind the slowness. Anything from the era is no rocket-ship for sure.
I strongly suspect that emotionally, the Gamma is a bit like the Amiga4000 or the Atari Falcon030 (sparrow) or C65 in that it was the last thing AE was working on.. so it's that mystical "Never was" that's so intriguing. The only other Z8k Coherent system I can think of was the Commodore C900 which only ever shipped to developers prior to cancellation.
I understand what you mean regarding the large scope of the complexity, I've seen and worked on bringing back some of the early SUN and SGI designs. Z8k though is a very rare beast. I've oft wondered wondered as to the legal status of the AE port of Mark Williams Company's Coherent to Z8k is and if any of the /usr/include/sys equiv has survived. I've only dabbled in FPGA's in the past but the support logic for a more modern CPU would probably fit into not terribly many cells.
Just dreaming still I guess >35+ years on. I was extremely excited to see the working system at VCF-Canbs. That was ..honestly moving.
Kind Regards,
Al Boyanich
P.S. Apparently Coherent is now open-source under a BSD-3 Clause license. over here..
That'll want some reading.