[Coco] [Color Computer] The evolution of the Coco..

[James Jones]

John R. Hogerhuis wrote:

> I believe the compiler that is used to build Tanenbaum's Minix has a
> 6809 target. Maybe it would "just work" with just serial port or a
> console I/O driver adapted to the coco.

That's correct; Tanenbaum is also the man behind the "Amsterdam Compiler
Kit," a retargetable compiler that uses a stack machine as its
intermediate form and has a 6809 target. A stack machine is a closer fit
to a computer that is relatively starved for registers in comparison
with modern processors.

OK... http://www.cs.vu.nl/vakgroepen/cs/ack.html, the web page for ack,
doesn't list a 6809 back end, but I know that they had one at one time.
ack appears to be available for ftp, so it's worth investigating. They
don't mention what the licensing terms are on the web page.

It would be worth contacting the authors and asking whether the 6809
back end could still be had; it would likely require some reworking to
fit the OS-9 model that eschews absolute addressing.

pause to download...

A 6809 assembler, at least, is still there. ack itself appears to have a
 BSD-like license, so it shouldn't be a problem to use.

	James