TSS-8
Developer | Digital Equipment Corporation |
---|---|
Written in | ALGOL, BASIC, FOCAL, Fortran D, PAL-D |
OS family | DEC OS family |
Working state | Discontinued |
Source model | Closed source |
Latest release | 8.24 / February 1975 [1] |
Platforms | PDP-8 |
Kernel type | Time-sharing operating systems |
Default user interface | Command line interface |
License | Proprietary |
TSS-8 is a discontinued little time-sharing operating system co-written by Don Witcraft and John Everett at Digital Equipment Corporation in 1967. The operating system ran on the 12-bit PDP-8 computer and was released in 1968.
Authorship
TSS/8 was designed at Carnegie-Mellon University with graduate student Adrian van de Goor, in reaction to the cost, performance, reliability, and complexity of IBM's TSS/360 (for their Model 67). [2]
Don Witcraft wrote the TSS-8 scheduler, command decoder and UUO (Unimplemented User Operations) handler. John Everett wrote the disk handler, file system, TTY (teletypewriter) handler and 680-I service routine for TSS-8.Roger Pyle and John Everett wrote the PDP-8 Disk Monitor System, and John Everett adapted PAL-III to make PAL-D for DMS. Bob Bowering, author of MACRO for the PDP-6 and PDP-10, wrote an expanded version, PAL-X, for TSS-8.[3]
Architecture
This timesharing system:
was based on a protection architecture proposed by Adrian Van Der Goor, a grad student of Gordon Bell's at Carnegie-Mellon. It requires a minimum of 12K words of memory and a swapping device; on a 24K word machine, it could give good support for 17 users. [4]Each user gets a virtual 4K PDP-8; many of the utilities users ran on these virtual machines were only slightly modified versions of utilities from the Disk Monitor System or paper-tape environments. Internally, TSS-8 consists of RMON, the resident monitor, DMON, the disk monitor (file system), and KMON, the keyboard monitor (command shell). BASIC was well supported, while restricted (4K) versions of FORTRAN D and Algol were available.[5]
Historical notes
- TSS/8 sold about 100 copies
- Operating costs were about 1/20th of TSS/360. TSS/8 was also designed to be more cost-effective than the PDP-10 "for jobs with low computational requirements (like editing)." [6] [7]
- The RSTS-11 operating system is a descendant of TSS-8. [8]
References
- ↑ OS history
- ↑ p.180,COMPUTER ENGINEERING" (C)'78 by DEC/Digital Press. C.Gordon Bell, J.Craig Mudge, John N. McNamara, ISBN 0-932376-00-2
- ↑ FAQs
- ↑ https://raymii.org/s/articles/Running_TSS_8_on_the_DEC_PiDP-8_i_and_SIMH.html
- ↑ FAQs
- ↑ http://www.computer.org/csdl/trans/tc/1969/11/01671170-abs.html
- ↑ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gbell/CGB%2520Files/Design%2520and%2520Behavior%2520of%2520TSS8%2520IEEE%25206906%2520c.pdf
- ↑ p.181,COMPUTER ENGINEERING" (C)'78 by DEC/Digital Press. C.Gordon Bell, J.Craig Mudge, John N. McNamara, ISBN 0-932376-00-2