TOPS-10

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The TOPS-10 System was a computer operating system from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) for the PDP-10 released in 1964, the resulting systems being referred to as "DECsystem-10".

TOPS-10 supported shareable memory and allowed the development of one of the first true multi-player computer games. The game was called DECWAR and was a text-oriented Star Trek type game. Users at terminals typed in commands and fought each other in real time.

Another groundbreaking application was called FORUM. This application was perhaps the first so-called "CB simulator" that allowed users to converse with one another in what is now known as a chat room. This application showed the potential of multi-user communication and led to the development of CompuServe's chat application.

TOPS-10 had a very robust API that used a mechanism called UUOs for Unimplemented User Operation. UUOs implemented operating system calls in a way that made them look like machine instructions. The API was called Monitor Calls and was very much ahead of its time like most of the operating system. System programming on DECsystem-10s was simple and powerful thanks to this extremely flexible operating system API.

TOPS-10 had an interesting scheduler with many run queues, unlike OpenVMS for example which has two run queues, and inserts processes into the queue depending on process priority. The TOPS-10 Operating System also included User file and Device independence.

TOPS-10 was a very fast and flexible operating system that was far ahead of its time.

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