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Source: ndwiki article "SINTRAN III"

  • Live page: https://www.ndwiki.org/wiki/SINTRAN_III
  • Copy used here: Wayback Machine snapshot of 17 December 2024 http://web.archive.org/web/20241217193317/https://www.ndwiki.org/wiki/SINTRAN_III
  • Fetched: 2026-08-27, by Ronny's request.

Status: SECONDARY, and largely redundant with material this repo already holds - except at both ends. It closes with a long list of real ND document numbers, so its detail is traceable even though the body is not footnoted.

Read this next to SINTRAN/Release-Documentation/SINTRAN-III-Release-History.md, which is better. That file covers versions J through N in depth, compiled from the primary release manuals we hold, with monitor calls, commands, file system and hardware support per version. Anything this wiki page says about J to N should defer to it.

What the wiki page adds that our file does not

  • Versions A through I. Our release history starts at J. The wiki sketches the earlier ones - A possibly 1974, F corresponding to ND-60.125.02 of October 1981, H the last version available for the NORD-10, and I as the first with the four VSE/VSX product numbers (ND-10174 VSE, ND-10575 VSX, ND-10175 VSE-500, ND-10576 VSX-500). Thin, and openly unsure - "Released which year? 1974?"
  • The predecessors. SINTRAN III dates from 1974 and, "unlike its predecessors SINTRAN I and II, it was entirely written by Norsk Data". SINTRAN I is a name in nothing else we hold. Before SINTRAN III you had to choose between SINTRAN II for real-time and NORD-TSS for timesharing; III did both.
  • What it was written in: the SINTRAN III core and file system in NORD PL.
  • How it felt to use - the part no manual captures well. Command and filename abbreviation between hyphens, so LIST-ALL-FILES becomes L-A-F and PED H-W opens HELLO-WORLD:SYMB if that is the only match; trailing commas to skip prompts, LI-FI,,,; double quotes to force a new file rather than match an existing one. The page notes the hyphen sits where a US keyboard has the slash, on Norwegian keyboards. The USER-ENVIRONMENT shell was the popular way to constrain users.
  • How timesharing actually worked: a real-time background program per terminal, priorities adjusted continuously by the RT monitor rather than fixed, with dedicated RT programs able to outrank any timesliced terminal program. Release J made the priority sequence configurable; release K let any RT program be timesliced.
  • VSE and VSX spelled out: VSE is Virtual Storage Extended, VSX is the same for CX CPUs. K was the last version with both; L onward is VSX only and needs an ND-100/CX or newer.

Two things to check against our own file

  • When the NORD-10 was dropped. The wiki says H was the last version available for the NORD-10. Our release history has "NORD-10 dropped" under J. If H was the last, the drop happened at I, not J. One of the two is off.
  • The K-version date. The wiki cites release notes ND-60.230.4 from May 1987; our file lists K as ND-60230.5 (v5), May 1988. These may simply be two editions of the same release information rather than a contradiction - but note the wiki also mislabels that document's title as "J-version".

Incidentally

The photograph at the top of the article is captioned "A booting SINTRAN III VSX/500 K on a ND-110 Satellite" - another machine variant name, and further evidence that the Satellite range was real and shipped.

The reference list independently repeats ND-60.081 NORDNET SYSTEM DOCUMENTATION, which the primary SINTRAN III Communication Guide also carries.

Note on scope: per CLAUDE.md, operating-system detail belongs under SINTRAN/, not in the machine history. This source is kept here because it arrived with the history research; the substance belongs in the SINTRAN tree.

Verbatim extract

A booting SINTRAN III VSX/500 K on a ND-110 Satellite. Photo of the terminal connected to the console.

SINTRAN III is a real-time, multitasking, multi-user operating system used with Norsk Data computers from 1974. Unlike its predecessors SINTRAN I and II, it was entirely written by Norsk Data.

Sintran III core and file system was written in NORD PL, intermediate language for Norsk Data computers.[1]

SINTRAN was primarily a command line based operating system though there were several shells which could be installed to control the user environment more strictly, by far the most popular of which was USER-ENVIRONMENT.

One of the clever features was to be able to abbreviate commands and filenames between hyphens, for example LIST-FILES when typed would ask you for several prompts including print, paging etc, you could override this using the following LI-FI,,, which would abbreviate the LIST-FILES command prompt and bypass any of the prompts. One could also refer to files in this way, say, with PED H-W which would refer to HELLO-WORLD:SYMB if this was the only file having H, any number of characters, a hyphen, a W, any number of characters, and any file ending.

In case the user wanted to actually edit a new file called H-W:SYMB (with no automatic expansion to match an existing file), the file name would have to be enclosed in double quotes, i.e. PED "H-W:SYMB". The double quotes automatically created a new file. The other common way to create a file was to use the SINTRAN command CREATE-FILE.

The abbreviation concept saved quite a lot of keystrokes and would allow users a very nice learning curve, from complete and self-explanatory commands like LIST-ALL-FILES to L-A-F for the advanced user. (The hyphen key on Norwegian keyboards resides where the slash key does on U.S. ones.)

SINTRAN III implements timeslicing, needed for timesharing, by dedicating a real-time background program to each terminal. The priority of these RT background programs are not fixed, but are regularly adjusted by the RT monitor. Unless in I/O wait the program with the highest priority runs, and the RT monitor lowers the priority of the active program if its allocated time has been consumed. Dedicated real-time programs may still have a higher priority than the highest possible priority of the time-sliced terminal RT background programs (i.e. an RT program not in I/O wait, or otherwise suspended, will have priority). Initially the sequence of priorities the background program went through was fixed, but SINTRAN III Release J made this configurable. From SINTRAN III Release K it was also possible to run any RT program as a timesliced program. Prior to SINTRAN III one would have to decide between SINTRAN II for real-time use, or NORD-TSS for timesharing. SINTRAN III serves both purposes.

Contents

  • 1 See also
  • 2 Releases
  • 3 VSE/VSX
  • 4 References
  • 5 External links

See also

  • SINTRAN III Real Time system
  • SINTRAN III Disk Layout
  • SINTRAN III Commands
  • File Formats
  • Programming Languages
  • NORD PL
  • PLANC, Program LAnguage for Norsk Data Computers

Releases

This section lists the releases of SINTRAN III.

A-version Released which year? 1974? B-version

C-version

D-version

E-version

F-version 1981? ND-60.125.02 SINTRAN III INTRODUCTION from October 1981 says "Corresponds to the F version of SINTRAN III". G-version

H-version Last version available for NORD-10. I-version

SINTRAN III VSE, version I ND-10174 SINTRAN III VSX, version I ND-10575 SINTRAN III VSE-500, version I ND-10175 SINTRAN III VSX-500, version I ND-10576

J-version Release notes (ND-60.230.01 SINTRAN III J-version Release Information ) from January 1985.

Introduced time-slice classes and a new time slicer program, and commands to define time-slice classes and specify time-slice class for programs. Modified monitor calls: BRKM (MON 4), FIXC5 (MON 61), ABSTR (MON 131), LAMU (MON 315). New monitor calls: FSMTY (MON 327), TERST (MON 330), TREPP (MON 332), UDMA (MON 333), GETXM (MON 334), IOMTY (MON 336), SPCHG (MON 337)

K-version Release notes (ND-60.230.4 SINTRAN III J-version Release Information ) from May 1987.

Any RT-program can now be time sliced. New commands: DEFINE-MASS-STORAGE-UNIT, DELETE-MASS-STORAGE-UNIT, GIVE-OBJECT-BLOCKS, LIST-MASS-STORAGE-UNITS, SET-INITIAL-FILE-ACCESS, SET-INITIAL-FRIEND-ACCESS, TAKE-OBJECT-BLOCKS, UNLOCK-DIRECTORY. Commands removed: COMMUNICATIONS-LINE-STATUS, COMMUNICATIONS-STATUS, LOCAL, REMOTE, REMOTE-LOAD, REMOTE-PASSWORD, START-COMMUNICATION, STOP-COMMUNICATION. New monitor calls: RSREC (MON 340), SGMTY (MON 341), ADP (MON 342), CONFG (MON 343), PERFO (MON 344), MTAD (MON 345), 5MTRANS (MON 515).

SINTRAN III/VSX ND-210575K SINTRAN III/VSX-500 ND-210576K SINTRAN III/VSX-500 (standard system D) ND-220046K03 SINTRAN III/VSX-500 (standard system C) ND-220047K03 SINTRAN III/VSX-500 (standard system B) ND-220048K03

L-version this version has Y2K patches[2].

Release notes (ND-860230.6 SINTRAN III L-VERSION RELEASE INFORMATION ) from September 1988. A ND-100/CX cpu is the minimum required hardware to run this version. New commands: AUTOMATIC-ND5000-ERROR-MESSAGES, FILE-SYSTEM-ERROR-MESSAGES, LIST-ALL-OPEN-FILES, LIST-SERVERS, SET-DIRECTORY-AVAILABLE, SET-DIRECTORY-UNAVAILABLE, START-SERVERS. Monitor calls (ND-100) modified: TERMO (MON 52), ABSTR (MON 131), WSEG (MON 164), CPUST (MON 262), MLAMU (MON 315), FSMTY (MON 327), ADP (MON 342), CONFG (MON 343). New monitor calls: NUCL (MON 347), RWSEG (MON 350).

M-version this version has Y2K patches.

New command: EXPAND-DIRECTORY. Removed command: COPY-DIRECTORY. New monitor calls: IOPEN (MON 351), EVENT (MON 352), PLACE (MON 441) (ND-500/5000 only).

N-version this version has Y2K patches.

Introduces a lot of performance enhancements (e.g. multi-threaded ND-5000 swapper).

VSE/VSX

VSE is short for Virtual Storage Extended, VSX is short for Virtual Storage Extended for CX CPU:s. Version K was the last version which had both VSE and VSX variants. Version L and later were VSX only (and work only on ND100/CX and newer systems)

References

Norsk Data Document ND-30.003.06A SINTRAN III System Supervisor printed 1985

Norsk Data Document ND-30.049.1 EN SINTRAN III TUNING GUIDE printed May 1985

Norsk Data Document ND-60.050.03 SINTRAN III USERS GUIDE printed January 1975

Norsk Data Document ND-60.051.03 SINTRAN III REAL TIME LOADER printed February 1976

Norsk Data Document ND-60.062 SINTRAN III SYSTEM DOCUMENTATION

Norsk Data Document ND-60.072 SINTRAN III REAL TIME LOADER SYSTEM DOCUMENTATION

Norsk Data Document ND-60.081 NORDNET SYSTEM DOCUMENTATION

Norsk Data Document ND-60.112 SINTRAN III SYSTEM DOCUMENTATION APPENDIX A-DATA FIELDS

Norsk Data Document ND-60.125.02 SINTRAN III INTRODUCTION printed October 1981

Norsk Data Document ND-60.128.03 SINTRAN III REFERENCE MANUAL printed February 1983

Norsk Data Document ND-60.132.01 SINTRAN III TIMESHARING/BATCH GUIDE printed June 1980

Norsk Data Document ND-60.133 SINTRAN III REAL TIME GUIDE

Norsk Data Document ND-60.134.02 SINTRAN III COMMUNICATION GUIDE printed November 1981

Norsk Data Document ND-60.136 ND-500 LOADER/MONITOR

Norsk Data Document ND-60.151.02A SINTRAN III UTILITIES MANUAL printed February 1985

Norsk Data Document ND-60.163.4 EN COSMOS USER GUIDE printed May 1986

Norsk Data Document ND-60.164 COSMOS PROGRAMMER GUIDE

  • ^ Norsk Data Document ND-60.047.03 NORD PL USER'S GUIDE Page 3
  • ^ Sintran Y2K patch kit description
  • This article was originally a copy of the English Wikipedia article SINTRAN III in 1 November 2008.
  • NODAF's guide to use of SINTRAN (Norwegian)
  • NODAF's library of SINTRAN documentation (Wiki is Norwegian, docs aren't)