I've ran various setups and recall to have used a regular canister coil with a 4-pin HEI module for awhile. No ballast and 12v powered. I think I went with a modern coil when I noticed they don't seem to get warm like the canister coils do.
I'm running a MegaSquirt ECU with 7-pin HEI module with a MSD e-core coil now. Dwell is controlled digitally through a rpm/load-table between 2.5 and 3.2 milliseconds.