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Idris operating system (PDP-11, Mac, PC, Atari ST, etc.)

U

Uityyy

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Has anyone here used the Idris operating system? What do you know about it's history, coolness etc.?

It was a very early UNIX clone. Various forms were available starting with PDP11s and later riding on top of DOS and early Mac OS (MacIDRIS). There was an Atari ST ROM version with X per Wikipedia. I have not seen any original copies or gotten to see the system in action. From Wikipedia it looks like the original author is still alive, and the likely rights holder -- if anyone wanted to get this out there for the community in a manner similar to Coherent -- is L3.
 
Not the only place for information. A copy of the Idris 2.2 User Manual is floating out there. Bitsavers has what is listed as the 68K IDRIS; two disks at about 200k each. Look for Whitesmiths.
 
tingo said:
It seems that Wikipedia has the only info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idris_(operating_system)
Click to expand...

This is out there as well, 1990 usenet post which I assume was spidered into this site: http://www.verycomputer.com/26_b1f1dff61e5c220e_1.htm

According to the post, MacIdris may have been structurally similar to Unix V6 but they had completely changed the naming standards so nothing worked the way you'd think. The Atari version seems to have been a much more traditionally Unix-oriented port. https://www.atarimagazines.com/startv2n6/multipowerst.html
 
Yes, I used IDRIS on a Nicolet Analytical Instruments Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer somewhere in the mid 80's to early 90's when Nicolet switched to using Windows based computers to do the transforms. I never did have a PDP11 or a Nova Data General computer just a box with a dedicated computer with a 24bit operating system that was optimized for doing the Fourier Transforms on the infrared scans. I used the standard Unix commands and the structure was the same as Unix but there were added commands that were specific for the calculations we were doing,
 
I was another who used IDRIS back in the 80s. It was running on a computer vision system. CRS was the manufacturer IIRC. IDRIS was used for development work. The vision system was used to prototype validation and location of material going into a garment assembly robot system. There was another real time O/S that was used when the system was operating.
 
I used Whitesmiths IDRIS (COIDRIS) running on a 8086 PC under DOS to develop embedded software for Motorola 68k systems using a C cross-compiler also from Whitesmiths. I still have a copy somewhere. I also have the manuals.
 
We used Idris on the Sage IV at Amiga and later on a Stride 460 at Commodore Amiga for developing the Amiga software.
I have most of the documents and a box of floppies, mostly Amiga source backups on 640k 5.25 floppies, which I'm presently trying to read in.
I've currently taken a snapshot from github of some fellas unix v6 reader code and modifying to pick apart these floppies, which are formated with Idris's version of v6 filesystem.
 

Whitesmiths - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Whitesmiths was the first company to produce a C compiler product, and eventually a Unix V6-like operating system (IDRIS).
Their C compiler system is a little weird because their standard libraries are only superficially similar to later libraries, since
Plauger left BTL before 'modern' libraries like STDIO existed.

Trying to find the current owners of the IP would be difficult, because of the chain of company acquisitions,
and it is unlikely much has survived inside whoever owns the
rights, much like all the rest of the software produced in the 1970s

I am saddened, but not surprised, so little exists through basic web searches on the company.
 
Co-Idris is fascinating -- I hadn't heard of it until seeing the recent activity on this thread. Very nice that the documentation has been preserved, too. I was able to learn that it uses the "split I/D" approach on the 8086, where program text is in its own CS segment (possibly shared by multiple processes) and each process has its own data segment (for SS, DS, and ES). Using MS-DOS for access to the hardware is also pretty cool. I'm looking forward to trying it out on some real 8088 hardware in the future.
 
I have got a homebuilt machine that runs 68k Idris. There was a computer club in Sweden called PD68. They did a project together with some Norwegian hobbyists who created a single board 68k computer.

IMG_5022.jpeg


I dumped image. It is a NEC 20 mbyte drive.

I have unfortunately no install media.
 
The Wikipedia page claims there was a port of Idris that ran on the 8080 CPU. I can’t find any further references for this claim. Does anyone know more?
 
kdr said:
Co-Idris is fascinating -- I hadn't heard of it until seeing the recent activity on this thread. Very nice that the documentation has been preserved, too. I was able to learn that it uses the "split I/D" approach on the 8086, where program text is in its own CS segment (possibly shared by multiple processes) and each process has its own data segment (for SS, DS, and ES). Using MS-DOS for access to the hardware is also pretty cool. I'm looking forward to trying it out on some real 8088 hardware in the future.
Click to expand...
COIDRIS was a very functional UNIX like OS running on top of MSDOS. Using COIDRIS I developed a range of data-comms products (X.25 router, X.25 PAD, IP router, terminal servers, etc.) using the Whitesmiths Motorola 68k cross-compiler available under COIDRIS. Early on a co-worker developed an in-house screen editor with similar features to VI to replace the line editor that came with COIDRIS. I used COIDRIS from 1989 to 1995.
 
tdr said:
The Wikipedia page claims there was a port of Idris that ran on the 8080 CPU. I can’t find any further references for this claim. Does anyone know more?
Click to expand...
Not sure specifically about Idris, but VenturCom allegedly had an internal build of V7 Unix that could run on a Z80. However, it doesn't look like it got released, and my internal ex-employee source doesn't recall anything about it otherwise.

@MattisLind, that is a beautiful system!
 
It is indeed a really nice system. Unfortunately I cannot get it to run. Checked out the PSU and everything is fine. No output from the serial ports. The EPROM contents are verified against checksum written on them. Probing with a scope give that the CPU performs 13 memory accesses and then just stops. I have no schematic for it and it is a quite complex board. I have created this thread in case anyone want to add something: https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/pd68-68000-based-vme-system-running-idris.1252893/

I don't really understand the Idris system. On the image I cannot really find anything that looks like a kernel. Is the kernel in the EPROM on the board? The total EPROM size is 32kbyte so a small kernel would fit there.

The image I made public is now withdrawn. I recognised that on the image there are some personal info. The files are deleted but nevertheless it would be possible to extract the information. I will try to clean that away and then make it public again.
 
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