MeikOS

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MeikOS (also written as Meikos or MEiKOS) was a Unix-like computer operating system developed by Meiko Scientific for their transputer-based Computing Surface massively parallel computers during the late 1980s.

MeikOS was derived from an early version of MINIX, extensively modified for the Computing Surface architecture. Unlike HeliOS, another Unix-like transputer operating system, MeikOS was essentially a single-processor operating system with a distributed filesystem. MeikOS was used in conjunction with the M²VCS (Meiko Multiple Virtual Computing Surfaces) resource management software which partitioned the processors of a Computing Surface into domains, managed user access to these domains, and provided inter-domain communication.

MeikOS had "diskless" and "fileserver" variants, the former running on the so-called "seat" processor of an M²VCS domain, providing a command line user interface for a particular user; the latter running on processors with attached SCSI hard disks, providing a remote file service (called SFS, Surface File System) to instances of diskless MeikOS. The two communicated via M²VCS.

MeikOS was made obsolete by the introduction of the In-Sun Computing Surface and the Meiko MK083 SPARC processor board, which allowed SunOS and SVCS (Sun Virtual Computing Surfaces, later developed as VCS) to take over the roles of MeikOS and M²VCS respectively. The last MeikOS release was MeikOS 3.06, in early 1991.