Sintran III

Sintran III is a real-time, multitasking, multi-user operating system for Norsk Data minicomputers, in use from 1974. Unlike its predecessors Sintran I and II, it was written entirely by Norsk Data in Nord Programming Language, an intermediate language for the company machines. It appeared in pre-release form during 1974 and 1975 as the successor to Sintran II, which served real-time systems, and to TSS, which served timesharing systems on the Nord-1 and Nord-10 computers; the intent was a multi-mode system able to do both jobs. After several usable pre-releases in 1976 and 1977, official releases began in 1978. Sintran was mainly driven from a command line, with optional shells, the most popular being USER-ENVIRONMENT. Commands and file names could be abbreviated between hyphens, so LIST-FILES could be typed as LI-FI, and a batch language called JEC could run jobs such as COBOL compiles.