TSS-8

Infobox_OS
name = TSS-8
logo =


caption =
developer = Digital Equipment Corporation
source_model = Closed Source
kernel_type = Time-sharing operating systems
supported_platforms = PDP-8
ui = Command line interface
family = DEC OS family
latest_release_version = 8.24
latest_release_date = February 1975 [ [http://www.oshistory.net/metadot/index.pl?id=2248 OS history] ]
marketing_target =
prog_language = ALGOL, BASIC, FOCAL, Fortran D, PAL-D
updatemodel =
package_manager =
working_state = Discontinued
license = Proprietary
website =

TSS-8 was a 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.

"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." [ [http://www.faqs.org/faqs/dec-faq/pdp8/section-15.html FAQs] ]

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."

"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." [ [http://www.faqs.org/faqs/dec-faq/pdp8/section-10.html FAQs] ]

The RSTS-11 operating system is a descendant of TSS-8.

References