Tripos

Few people have heard of TripOS outside the Amiga market. As a standalone operating system it is unremarkable, however its relation to the AmigaOS makes it interesting. TripOS was developed at Cambridge University on an IBM 3081 (or an earlier IBM mainframe) running a locally-written OS called Phoenix during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The name is derived from the course description at the university. For example, it is possible to read for the mathematics tripos. It is also possible that the 'pos' suffix stood for Portable Operating System.

At some point during the early 1980s Dr. Tim King ported the OS to the Motorola 68k. The operating system exists on a range of platform during this period, including the PDP11, DG Nova, 68000 (a homebrew 68k machine?), and the GA-16/220.

The story continues at Commodore in 1984. AmigaOS's Development had fallen behind schedule, particularly in the development of the original Disk Operating System, dubbed CAOS. Instead of Caos, then, Commodore decided to substitute it with an already working DOS, Tripos. MetaComCo were chosen as the contractor, as a result of their existing TripOS 68k port.

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