2 Feb
2015
2 Feb
'15
11:06 a.m.
I could never afford it & figured I wouldn't understand it if I did.
But it sounded really cool.
Well, as of last month, it's now FOSS.
http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/source.php
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) ? +420 702 829 053 (?R)
2 Feb
2 Feb
12:08 p.m.
On Mon, 2 Feb 2015, Liam Proven wrote:
I could never afford it & figured I wouldn't
understand it if I did.
But it sounded really cool.
Well, as of last month, it's now FOSS.
http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/source.php
The manual was VERY good as I recall.
g.
--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.
ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!
1:45 p.m.
On 2/2/2015 3:08 PM, geneb wrote:
On Mon, 2 Feb 2015, Liam Proven wrote:
It was. And even I could afford it while in college - $99.95 from Mark
Williams Company. It was a revelation compared to DOS. Actual
multitasking on my '286. Actual tools like lex and yacc just like the
big systems at school (HP mumble-thousands and Sun 2s). I wasn't in the
Emacs camp, so the first thing I did was find a vi clone (elvis) to
compile and use. Lovely system it was.
- David
I could never afford it & figured I
wouldn't understand it if I did.
But it sounded really cool.
Well, as of last month, it's now FOSS.
http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/source.php
The manual was VERY good as I recall. 
3 p.m.
Ah the good old days! Bought v3 shortly after it was released, and ran it 24/7 on my 286.
I even had about a dozen local users that would dial in to send/receive e-mail and read
newsgroups via elm and trn.
Here's the UUCP map entry for it...
#N bedrock
#S Epson Equity II+ (80286); Coherent UNIX V3.2.0
#O Infinite Concepts
#C Alex D
#E bedrock!root
#T +1 416 525 4604
#P 195 Markland Street #2, Hamilton Ontario Canada L8P-2K7
#L 43 16 N / 73 55 W city
#R Digital Image Processing, Hardware/Software Development
#U blunile
#W bedrock!alex (Alex D); Sat Feb 8 08:31:06 EST 1992
#
# Now part of .guild.org domain
#
bedrock = bedrock.guild.org
#
# BP=both poll, WP=we poll, TP=they poll
#
bedrock blunile(EVENING) # WP 2400bps, downstream mail
--
alex
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Schmidt" <david at
attglobal.net>
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Sent: Monday, February 2, 2015 1:45:47 PM
Subject: Re: Remember Coherent?
On 2/2/2015 3:08 PM, geneb wrote:
On Mon, 2 Feb 2015, Liam Proven wrote:
It was. And even I could afford it while in college - $99.95 from Mark
Williams Company. It was a revelation compared to DOS. Actual
multitasking on my '286. Actual tools like lex and yacc just like the
big systems at school (HP mumble-thousands and Sun 2s). I wasn't in the
Emacs camp, so the first thing I did was find a vi clone (elvis) to
compile and use. Lovely system it was.
- David
I could never afford it & figured I
wouldn't understand it if I did.
But it sounded really cool.
Well, as of last month, it's now FOSS.
http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/source.php
The manual was VERY good as I recall.
6 Feb
6 Feb
9:13 a.m.
On 2 February 2015 at 22:45, David Schmidt <david at attglobal.net> wrote:
And even I could afford it while in college - $99.95
from Mark Williams
Company.
Ahh, the differences in trans-Atlantic pricing.
When I was at uni -- 1985-1988 -- I had a Sinclair 128K Spectrum with
an MGT DISCiPLE floppy interface, a single 780kB 5?" drive and a
Panasonic 9-pin dot-matrix printer. I was far & away the most
high-tech person in my year. That little assortment cost me about ?300
over 2-3y, and that was a massive stretch of my budget. Each single
component was as far under GBP100 as I could find, because there was
no way in heck I could afford to drop a hundred on my computer.
So any thought of a PC-compatible (price then, several thousand
pounds) was not even a daydream.
A year or so after I left, I bought an Acorn Archimedes A310 -- an
8MHz ARM2 with 512kB of RAM, a 20MB ST-506 HD and an 800kB 3?" floppy
drive. With an actual *monitor!* (I used a TV on the Sinclair.) That
had multitasking & a GUI and everything & I lost interest in x86 kit
until it finally died, about 5y later.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) ? +420 702 829 053 (?R)
2 Feb
2 Feb
3:57 p.m.
On 02/02/2015 11:06 AM, Liam Proven wrote:
I could never afford it & figured I wouldn't
understand it if I did.
But it sounded really cool.
Well, as of last month, it's now FOSS.
http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/source.php
A buddy of mine knows a lot of the inside stories about Coherent - his
company (he was the president at the time) was one of the ones that
helped create it (as I recall the conversation).
I'll see if I can get him to tell his story - and post it here.
John :-#)#
--
John's Jukes Ltd. 2343 Main St., Vancouver, BC, Canada V5T 3C9
Call (604)872-5757 or Fax 872-2010 (Pinballs, Jukes, VideoGames)
www.flippers.com
"Old pinballers never die, they just flip out"
5:24 p.m.
I have an old Tegra Genesis laser printer that, IIRC, runs Coherent in the
image processor. I have not fired it up in 20 years, so my memory may be
faulty on that, and it may have been one of the other Unix clones.
On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 6:57 PM, John Robertson <jrr at flippers.com> wrote:
On 02/02/2015 11:06 AM, Liam Proven wrote:
I could never afford it & figured I
wouldn't understand it if I did.
But it sounded really cool.
Well, as of last month, it's now FOSS.
http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/source.php
A buddy of mine knows a lot of the inside stories about Coherent - his
company
(he was the president at the time) was one of the ones that helped
create it (as I recall the conversation).
I'll see if I can get him to tell his story - and post it here.
John :-#)#
--
John's Jukes Ltd. 2343 Main St., Vancouver, BC, Canada V5T 3C9
Call (604)872-5757 or Fax 872-2010 (Pinballs, Jukes, VideoGames)
www.flippers.com
"Old pinballers never die, they just flip out"
3 Feb
3 Feb
5:12 p.m.
I remember it well. I bought version 3 around 1989 and ran in on my 286.? It was pretty
amazing running something so much like Unix on my tiny home computer.?
In order to "civilize" it a bit, I ported an Emacs-like editor called
"elle", sz, rz, zip, unzip, and adventure.? I also ported Ken Almquists
'ash', which I called 'dash', adding command history and programmable
command line editor (with vi and emacs modes).? I was amazed at what that little system
could do, and at how complete an environment those guys at Mark Willarms put together from
scratch.
I used it until December 1991 (guess why. . .)
I had the manual for many years afterward, even though I never really used it.? It was
such a great well written reference, even without Coherent, it was just fun to keep.? I
wish I still had it. . .
Dave
On Monday, February 2, 2015 1:06 PM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
I could never afford it & figured I wouldn't understand it if I did.
But it sounded really cool.
Well, as of last month, it's now FOSS.
http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/source.php
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) ? +420 702 829 053 (?R)
8:01 p.m.
Hello Dave,
Are you aware that the "excellent" Coherent manual is available online in
electronic format?
Its been posted here a couple of times since I have subscribed, but if you don't
have it, I can repost it.
Jerry
On 02/ 3/15 07:12 PM, Dave wrote:
I remember it well. I bought version 3 around 1989 and
ran in on my 286. It was pretty amazing running something so much like Unix on my tiny
home computer.
In order to "civilize" it a bit, I ported an Emacs-like editor called
"elle", sz, rz, zip, unzip, and adventure. I also ported Ken Almquists
'ash', which I called 'dash', adding command history and programmable
command line editor (with vi and emacs modes). I was amazed at what that little system
could do, and at how complete an environment those guys at Mark Willarms put together from
scratch.
I used it until December 1991 (guess why. . .)
I had the manual for many years afterward, even though I never really used it. It was
such a great well written reference, even without Coherent, it was just fun to keep. I
wish I still had it. . .
Dave
On Monday, February 2, 2015 1:06 PM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com>
wrote:
I could never afford it & figured I wouldn't understand it if I did.
But it sounded really cool.
Well, as of last month, it's now FOSS.
http://www.nesssoftware.com/home/mwc/source.php
4 Feb
4 Feb
2:24 a.m.
Are you aware that the "excellent" Coherent manual is available online in
electronic format?
Yes, and the source for it is included in the recently released sources as well.? But the
paper book was fun to flip through in a way that browsing electronically does not quite
reproduce (for me at least).? Still, it's nice to know it wasn't lost.
Dave
5:39 a.m.
I vaguely remember coherent from back in the day when it was on the market. A quick
perusal of Wikipedia shows there was an early version for the PDP11. Has that version
survived at the download link or is it just the PC version?
J
6:01 a.m.
Zitat von Jay West <jwest at classiccmp.org>:
I vaguely remember coherent from back in the day when
it was on the
market. A quick perusal of Wikipedia shows there was an early
version for the PDP11. Has that version survived at the download
link or is it just the PC version?
Anybody looked in the download already?
I remember somebody porting it to 68000 back then.
Any chance the port is in the download?
6:40 a.m.
That was my first question as well! I haven?t found any info on the PDP-11 version yet.
While looking for PDP-11 info, I happened to read up on the interesting history of The
Mark Williams Company. Apparently they were originally a soft drink company, which Robert
Swartz moved into software in the 80?s. And, Robert Swartz is the father of Aaron Swartz!
Their soft drink, Dr. Enuf, is apparently still sold and is in the Cracker Barrel gift
shops. I propose it to become the official soft drink of classic computing.
--
Ben Sinclair
ben at bensinclair.com
On Feb 4, 2015, at 7:39 AM, Jay West <jwest at
classiccmp.org> wrote:
I vaguely remember coherent from back in the day when it was on the market. A quick
perusal of Wikipedia shows there was an early version for the PDP11. Has that version
survived at the download link or is it just the PC version?
J
3607
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12 comments
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azd30＠telus.net -
ben＠bensinclair.com -
david＠attglobal.net -
dfnr2＠yahoo.com -
emu＠e-bbes.com -
geneb＠deltasoft.com -
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