TRIPOS (''TRIvial Portable Operating System'') is a

computer A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

. Development started in 1976 at the Computer Laboratory of

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

and it was headed by Dr. Martin Richards. The first version appeared in January 1978 and it originally ran on a PDP-11. Later it was ported to the Computer Automation LSI4 and the Data General Nova. Work on a Motorola 68000 version started in 1981 at the University of Bath. MetaComCo acquired the rights to the 68000 version and continued development until TRIPOS was chosen by Commodore in March 1985 to form part of an operating system for their new Amiga computer; it was also used at Cambridge as part of the Cambridge Distributed Computing System. Students in the Computer Science department at Cambridge affectionately refer to TRIPOS as the ''Terribly Reliable, Incredibly Portable Operating System''. The name TRIPOS also refers to the Tripos system of undergraduate courses and examinations, which is unique to Cambridge University.

Influences on the Amiga computer

In July 1985, the Amiga was introduced, incorporating TRIPOS in the

AmigaDOS AmigaDOS is the disk operating system of the AmigaOS, which includes file systems, file and directory manipulation, the command-line interface, and file Redirection (computing), redirection. In AmigaOS 1.x, AmigaDOS is based on a TRIPOS port by ...

module of

AmigaOS AmigaOS is a family of proprietary native operating systems of the Amiga and AmigaOne personal computers. It was developed first by Commodore International and introduced with the launch of the first Amiga, the Amiga 1000, in 1985. Early versions ...

. AmigaDOS included a

command-line interface A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via command (computing), commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user ...

and the Amiga File System. The entire AmigaDOS module was originally written in BCPL (an ancestor of the C programming language), the same language used to write TRIPOS. AmigaDOS would later be rewritten in C from AmigaOS 2.x onwards, retaining backwards compatibility with 1.x up until

AmigaOS 4 AmigaOS 4 (abbreviated as OS4 or AOS4) is a line of Amiga operating systems which runs on PowerPC microprocessors. It is mainly based on AmigaOS 3.1 source code developed by Commodore International, Commodore, and partially on version 3.9 develop ...

(completely rewritten in C) when AmigaDOS abandoned its BCPL legacy.

Features

TRIPOS provided features such as pre-emptive multi-tasking (using strict-priority scheduling), a hierarchical file system and multiple command line interpreters. The most important TRIPOS concepts have been the non-memory-management approach (meaning no checks are performed to stop programs from using unallocated memory) and message passing by means of passing pointers instead of copying message contents. Those two concepts together allowed for sending and receiving over 1250 packets per second on a 10 MHz Motorola 68010 CPU. Most of TRIPOS was implemented in BCPL. The kernel and

device driver In the context of an operating system, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabli ...

s were implemented in

assembly language In computing, assembly language (alternatively assembler language or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence bet ...

. One notable feature of TRIPOS/BCPL was its cultural use of shared libraries, untypical at the time, resulting in small and therefore fast loading utilities. For example, many of the standard system utilities were well below 0.5 Kbytes in size, compared to a typical minimum of about 20 Kbytes for functionally equivalent code on a modern Unix or Linux. TRIPOS was ported to a number of machines, including the Data General Nova 2, the Computer Automation LSI4, Motorola 68000 and

Intel 8086 The 8086 (also called iAPX 86) is a 16-bit computing, 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel between early 1976 and June 8, 1978, when it was released. The Intel 8088, released July 1, 1979, is a slightly modified chip with an external 8-b ...

- based hardware. It was offered as the standard operating system on the Microbox III, a computer based on the Motorola 68010 produced by Micro Concepts, alongside alternatives such as CP/M and OS-9. It included support for the Cambridge Ring

local area network A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, campus, or building, and has its network equipment and interconnects locally managed. LANs facilitate the distribution of da ...

. More recently, Martin Richards produced a port of TRIPOS to run under

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

, using Cintcode BCPL virtual machine. , TRIPOS is still actively maintained by Open G I Ltd. (formerly Misys Financial Systems) in

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England. It is bordered by Shropshire, Staffordshire, and the West Midlands (county), West ...

, UK. Many British insurance brokers have a Linux/Intel based TRIPOS system serving networked workstations over a

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...

connection—the systems are used to run Open G I's BROOMS Application suite. Open G I have added a number of features to support the modern office such as the ability to integrate into many mainstream applications and services such as SQL server, Citrix XENAPP, terminal servers, etc.

Commands

The following list of commands is supported by the TRIPOS CLI. * ALINK * ASSEM * ASSIGN * BREAK * C * CD * CONSOLE * COPY * DATE * DELETE * DIR * DISKCOPY * DISKDOCTOR * ECHO * ED * EDIT * ENDCLI * FAILAT * FAULT * FILENOTE * FORMAT * IF * INFO * INSTALL * JOIN * LAB * LIST * MAKEDIR * MOUNT * NEWCLI * PATH * PROMPT * PROTECT * QUIT * RELABEL * RENAME * RUN * SEARCH * SKIP * SORT * STACK * STATUS * TYPE * VDU * WAIT * WHY

Cintpos

Cintpos is an experimental interpretive version of TRIPOS which runs on the Cintcode BCPL

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization or emulator, emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide the functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve ...

, also developed by Martin Richards.

References

Reference manuals

External links