ian@wcwvax.UUCP (Ian Kemmish) (09/13/85)
Sorry to be a net.fogey, but I can't let the assertion that TRIPOS is named after Cambridge three-part degrees go past! A tripos is a three-legged stool. The reason that the TWO-PART degrees at Cambridge are named after it is that that is what the young hopefuls used to sit on during exams. They were probably a $%^& sight better than the rickety benches they were still using five years ago!!
jons@islenet.UUCP (Jonathan Spangler) (09/15/85)
What the heck does 'TRIPOS' have do with the Amiga?
not a whole lot...perhaps someone
ccould elaborate on this.
Aloha,
Jonathan Spangler
{ihnp4,dual,ucbvax}!islenet!jonsmjg@ecsvax.UUCP (Michael Gingell) (09/19/85)
> What the heck does 'TRIPOS' have do with the Amiga? > not a whole lot...perhaps someone > ccould elaborate on this. > > Aloha, > Jonathan Spangler > {ihnp4,dual,ucbvax}!islenet!jons The operating system in the Amiga was done by Metacomo, Bristol UK and is based on the TRIPOS operating system developed for the Cambridge Ring (a local area network system). Presumably the authors graduated from Cambridge University where the exams are called the TRIPOS after the 3 legged stools students had to sit on in times of yore. To Net.fogey - sorry for suggesting the TRIPOS was a 3 part exam - I should have known better, being English myself. Mike Gingell
west@cs.reading.UUCP (Jerry West) (09/25/85)
Summary: Expires: Sender: Followup-To: Distribution: Keywords: Xpath: reading cs gateway.cs In article <1624@islenet.UUCP> jons@islenet.UUCP (Jonathan Spangler) writes: >What the heck does 'TRIPOS' have do with the Amiga? AmigaDOS = TRIPOS + some Tripos was developed at Cambridge University, and designed to work with the 'Cambridge Ring' Network. It was originally a research project to investigate 'portability' of operating systems by writing them in a high level language whilst still fitting onto mini-computers (as then was). The original implementation (in BCPL with a machine code kernal) found the 28k words of a PDP-11 'distinctly cramping' but ran 'in considerable luxury' on a 64k word addressed mini (the LSI-4). The original implementation is detailed in "TRIPOS - A Portable Operating System for Mini-computers" by Richards, Aylward, Bond, Evans and Knight in Software - Practice and Experience, Vol 9, No 7, pp 513-526 (1979). A tripos is (was) a three-legged stool on which the Cambridge undergrads used to perch whilst taking exams. This was then used to refer to the (two-part) exams themselves and later filched as a suitable name for an Operating System. TRIPOS was ported to the 68000 (and rewritten in C, I believe) by Metacomco, a UK s/w house. Commodore filled it in for the Amiga. I don't know how much AmigaDOS differs from TRIPOS, the use of the CLI etc suggests very little, so the article may be of some interest still. It gives a brief overview of the filing system and the task handler. It mentions that all tasks run in the same address space, and that there are 4 standard tasks - the CLI, a debugger, the console handler and the file handler. Presumably, it would be very little work to replace the console handler by your favourite shell. The article also demonstrates the ease with which inter-process communication is accomplished and goes on to say that memory mapping facilities are being accomodated. If the Amiga uses the raw CLI in 'line mode' then the sooner someone adapts one of the pd shells the better! The CLI appears to be 1970's syntax at its worst! In its favour, however, is the fact that TRIPOS is (or should be) an extensively tested and debugged system, capable of linking into a local area (ring) network without major change. Jerry ----- west%rdg.cs@ucl-cs.ARPA | Department of Computer Science, ..ukc!reading!cs.reading!west | University of Reading, PO Box 220, west@uk.ac.reading.cs (JANET) | Whiteknights, READING, RG6 2AX U.K.