Idris (operating system)

Infobox OS
name = Idris



caption = Idris and X Window on Atari ST
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developer = P. J. Plauger
family = UNIX
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working_state = Historic
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Idris is a multi-tasking, Unix-like, multi-user, real-time operating system released by Whitesmiths, of Westford, Massachusetts. The product was commercially available from 1979 through 1988.

Background

Idris was originally written for the PDP-11 by P. J. Plauger, who started working on Idris in August 1978. It was binary compatible with Unix V6 on PDP-11, but it could run on non-memory managed systems (like LSI-11 or PDP-11/23) as well. The kernel required 31 Kb of RAM, and the C compiler (provided along with the standard V6 toolset) had more or less the same size.

Ports

Although Idris was initially available for the PDP-11, it later ported to run on a number of platforms, such as the VAX, Motorola 68000, System/370 and Intel 8086. In 1986, David M. Stanhope and Skip Tavakkolian at Computer Tools International ported Idris to the Atari ST and developed its ROM boot cartridge. This work also included a port of the X Window to Idris. Computer Tools and Whitesmiths offered it to Atari as a replacement for Atari TOS, but eventually marketed it directly to ST enthusiasts.

A specific version of Idris (CoIdris) was packaged as a .com file under MS-DOS and used it for low level I/O services. Idris was ported to the Apple Macintosh (as MacIdris) by John O'Brien (of Whitesmiths Australia) and remained available until the early 1990s.

MacIdris ran as an application under the Finder or MultifinderMacWorld November 1989, page 18 [http://groups.google.es/group/comp.sys.mac/browse_thread/thread/895d09514529481d/070efaa04cc11fcd quoted] in comp.sys.mac.]

After Whitesmiths had been merged with Intermetrics, Idris — along with its development toolchain — was ported to the INMOS T800 transputer architecture.

References