MetaComCo

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please improve this article if you can. (June 2007)

This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2008)

MetaComCo was a company started in 1981 and based in Bristol, England by Peter Mackeonis and Derek Budge. MetaComCo employed Dr. Tim King to market TripOS which he had previously worked on whilst a researcher at the University of Cambridge.

MetaComCo was contracted by Commodore to provide a disk operating system for AmigaOS. The fact that the time allowed for the development of the DOS was very short and that MetaComCo had previously worked on another OS for the Motorola 68000, called TripOS, was the reason they won the contract over other companies.

The development of the DOS was led by Dr. King, which resulted in AmigaDOS which shared a great deal with TripOS. MetaComCo also developed ABasiC for the Amiga which was initially provided with Amigas, as well as other software.

MetaComCo's first product was an MBASIC compatible interpreter for IBM PC's, which was licensed by Peter Mackeonis to Digital Research in 1982, and issued as the Digital Research Personal Basic, or PBASIC, running under CP/M. MetaComCo also worked with Atari to produce the BASIC that was initially provided with the Atari ST — ST BASIC, and also sold the Lattice C compiler for the Sinclair QL and the Atari ST.

MetaComCo was purchased by Commodore in 1984^{[citation needed]}.