Students in the Computer Science department at Cambridge affectionately refer to TRIPOS as the Terribly Reliable, Incredibly Portable Operating System.
TRIPOS provided features such as pre-emptive multi-tasking (using strict-priority scheduling), a hierarchical file system and multiple command line interpreters.
[clarification needed] TRIPOS was ported to a number of machines, including the Data General Nova 2, the Computer Automation LSI4, Motorola 68000 and Intel 8086- based hardware.
It was offered as the standard operating system on the Microbox III, a computer based on the Motorola 68010 produced by Micro Concepts, alongside alternatives such as CP/M and OS-9.
[2] Cintpos is an experimental interpretive version of TRIPOS which runs on the Cintcode BCPL virtual machine, also developed by Martin Richards.