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 A computer lab is a space where computer services are provided to a defined community. These are typically public libraries and academic institutions. Generally, users must follow a certain user policy to retain access to the computers. This usua ...

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 Martin Richards may refer to: * Martin Richards (computer scientist) Martin Richards (born 21 July 1940) is a British computer scientist known for his development of the BCPL programming language which is both part of early research into porta ...

. The first version appeared in January 1978 and it originally ran on a

PDP-11 The PDP–11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers originally sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the late 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of a ...

. Later it was ported to the Computer Automation LSI4 and the

Data General Nova The Nova is a series of 16-bit computing, 16-bit minicomputers released by the American company Data General. The Nova family was very popular in the 1970s and ultimately sold tens of thousands of units. The first model, known simply as "Nov ...

. Work on a

Motorola 68000 The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector ...

version started in 1981 at the

University of Bath The University of Bath is a public research university in Bath, England. Bath received its royal charter in 1966 as Bath University of Technology, along with a number of other institutions following the Robbins Report. Like the University ...

MetaComCo MetaComCo (MCC) was a computer systems software company started in 1981 and based in Bristol, England by Peter Mackeonis and Derek Budge. A division of Tenchstar, Ltd. MetaComCo's first product was an MBASIC compatible interpreter for IBM PCs, ...

acquired the rights to the 68000 version and continued development until TRIPOS was chosen by

Commodore Commodore may refer to: Ranks * Commodore (rank), a naval rank ** Commodore (Royal Navy), in the United Kingdom ** Commodore (India), in India ** Commodore (United States) ** Commodore (Canada) ** Commodore (Finland) ** Commodore (Germany) or ' ...

in March 1985 to form part of an operating system for their new

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...

computer; it was also used at Cambridge as part of the

Cambridge Distributed Computing System The Cambridge Distributed Computing System is an early discontinued distributed operating system, developed in the 1980s at Cambridge University. It grew out of the Cambridge Ring local area network, which it used to interconnect computers. The ...

. 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

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 BCPL ("Basic Combined Programming Language") is a procedural, imperative, and structured programming language. Originally intended for writing compilers for other languages, BCPL is no longer in common use. However, its influence is still f ...

(an ancestor of the

C programming language C (''pronounced'' '' – like the letter c'') is a general-purpose programming language. It was created in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie and remains very widely used and influential. By design, C's features cleanly reflect the capabilities of ...

), 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 In computing, preemption is the act performed by an external scheduler — without assistance or cooperation from the task — of temporarily interrupting an executing task, with the intention of resuming it at a later time. This preemptive s ...

(using strict-priority scheduling), a

hierarchical file system In computing, a hierarchical file system is a file system that uses directories to organize files into a tree structure. In a hierarchical file system, ''directories'' contain information about both files and other directories, called ''sub ...

and multiple

command line interpreter A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via 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-friendly alternativ ...

s. 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 The Motorola MC68010 and Motorola MC68012 are 16/32-bit microprocessor, microprocessors from Motorola, released in 1982 as successors to the Motorola 68000. The 68010 and 68012 added virtualization features, optimized loops and fixed several sma ...

CPU. Most of TRIPOS was implemented in

. The

kernel Kernel may refer to: Computing * Kernel (operating system), the central component of most operating systems * Kernel (image processing), a matrix used for image convolution * Compute kernel, in GPGPU programming * Kernel method, in machine learnin ...

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,

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 CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/Intel 8085, 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Dig ...

and

OS-9 OS-9 is a family of real-time, process-based, multitasking, multi-user operating systems, developed in the 1980s, originally by Microware Systems Corporation for the Motorola 6809 microprocessor. It was purchased by Radisys Corp in 2001, a ...

. It included support for the

Cambridge Ring The term Cambridge Ring could refer to: * The Cambridge Ring (computer network) technology developed at the university of Cambridge, England * The Cambridge Five espionage ring. * The inner ring-road of Cambridge, England England is a Co ...

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 Finastra is a financial software company headquartered in London, England.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 broker An insurance broker is an intermediary who sells, solicits, or negotiates insurance on behalf of a client for compensation. An insurance broker is distinct from an insurance agent in that a broker typically acts on behalf of a client by negoti ...

s 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 A broom (also known as a broomstick) is a cleaning tool, consisting of usually stiff fibers (often made of materials such as plastic, hair, or corn husks) attached to, and roughly parallel to, a cylindrical handle, the broomstick. It is thus a ...

. 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 Copy may refer to: *Copying or the product of copying (including the plural "copies"); the duplication of information or an artifact **Cut, copy and paste, a method of reproducing text or other data in computing **File copying **Photocopying, a pr ...

DATE Date or dates may refer to: * Date, the fruit of the date palm (''Phoenix dactylifera'') * Jujube, also known as red date or Chinese date, the fruit of ''Ziziphus jujuba'' Social activity *Dating, a form of courtship involving social activi ...

* DELETE * DIR *

DISKCOPY In computing, diskcopy is a command used on a number of operating systems for copying the complete contents of a diskette to another diskette. Implementations The command is available in MS-DOS, IBM PC DOS, DR FlexOS, IBM/Toshiba 4690 OS, Me ...

* DISKDOCTOR *

ECHO In audio signal processing and acoustics, an echo is a reflection of sound that arrives at the listener with a delay after the direct sound. The delay is directly proportional to the distance of the reflecting surface from the source and the lis ...

* ED * EDIT * ENDCLI * FAILAT * FAULT * FILENOTE *

FORMAT Format may refer to: Printing and visual media * Text formatting, the typesetting of text elements * Paper formats, or paper size standards * Newspaper format, the size of the paper page Computing * File format, particular way that informatio ...

* IF * INFO * INSTALL *

JOIN Join may refer to: * Join (law), to include additional counts or additional defendants on an indictment *In mathematics: ** Join (mathematics), a least upper bound of sets orders in lattice theory ** Join (topology), an operation combining two topo ...

* LAB * LIST *

MAKEDIR (make directory) command in the Unix, DOS, DR FlexOS, IBM OS/2, Microsoft Windows, and ReactOS operating systems is used to make a new directory. It is also available in the EFI shell and in the PHP scripting language. In DOS, OS/2, Windows an ...

MOUNT Mount is often used as part of the name of specific mountains, e.g. Mount Everest. Mount or Mounts may also refer to: Places * Mount, Cornwall, a village in Warleggan parish, England * Mount, Perranzabuloe, a hamlet in Perranzabuloe parish, ...

* NEWCLI * PATH * PROMPT * PROTECT *

QUIT Quit or quitter may refer to: * Resignation or quit, the formal act of giving up one's duties Films * ''The Quitter'' (1916 film), an American silent western film * ''The Quitter'' (1929 film), an American silent film * ''The Quitter'' (1934 ...

* RELABEL *

RENAME Rename may refer to: * Rename (computing), rename of a file on a computer * RENAME (command), command to rename a file in various operating systems * Rename (relational algebra), unary operation in relational algebra * Company renaming, rename ...

* RUN * SEARCH * SKIP *

SORT Sort may refer to: * Sorting, any process of arranging items in sequence or in sets ** Sorting algorithm, any algorithm for ordering a list of elements ** Mainframe sort merge, sort utility for IBM mainframe systems ** Sort (Unix), which sorts the ...

* STACK * STATUS *

TYPE Type may refer to: Science and technology Computing * Typing, producing text via a keyboard, typewriter, etc. * Data type, collection of values used for computations. * File type * TYPE (DOS command), a command to display contents of a file. * ...

* 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