Idris (operating system)
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software development |
| Founded | 1970s |
| Headquarters | Westford, Massachusetts , United States |
| Products | Idris operating system |
Idris was a multi-user, multi-tasking, real-time operating system with a Unix-like design, developed by Whitesmiths based in Westford, Massachusetts. It was sold commercially from 1979 until 1988 but is now discontinued.
Background
The development of Idris began in August 1978 by P. J. Plauger specifically for the PDP-11. It maintained binary compatibility with Unix V6 on the PDP-11 platform, yet it also operated on systems lacking a memory management unit, such as the LSI-11 or various PDP-11/23 models. The operating system's kernel demanded 31 KB of RAM, and the accompanying C compiler along with the standard V6 utilities required a comparable amount of memory.
Ports
While Idris was initially designed for the PDP-11, it was subsequently adapted to several other hardware platforms including the VAX, Motorola 68000, System/370, and Intel 8086. An implementation utilizing bank-switching techniques for memory management was also developed for the Intel 8080.
In 1986, David M. Stanhope at Computer Tools International successfully ported Idris to the Atari ST, creating a ROM boot cartridge and adapting the X to run on Idris. This version was marketed by both Computer Tools and Whitesmiths as an alternative to the native Atari TOS, targeting enthusiasts within the ST community.
A DOS-compatible variant named CoIdris was distributed as a .COM file, offering fundamental low-level I/O functionality.
Additionally, John O'Brien of Whitesmiths Australia ported Idris to the Apple Macintosh, known as MacIdris, which remained available into the early 1990s. MacIdris operated as an application within either the Finder or its multitasking extension, MultiFinder.
After Whitesmiths merged with Intermetrics, Real Time Systems Ltd undertook porting Idris and its development tools to the INMOS T800 transputer architecture used in the multiprocessor system Parsytec SN1000.