As a large computer running time-sharing for many users, one important concern for the operating system is how to mediate access to peripheral devices. There are essentially two options on TOPS-10

Spoolers allow several people to share a device. The operating system maintains a queue of jobs entered by different users, and processes them one at a time. These spooler jobs are run under the operator's ID via a system called OPSER, which you can see running on the operator's console after you boot the system. The line printer is an example of a spooled device.

Assignable devices allow you to request sole access to a device, giving it a logical device name you can use instead of the real physical device. This is useful for magnetic tape drives, where there may be several allocated on an as-needed basis to users.

The choice of how to share devices was up to each site and can be configured in the monitor; we'll just use how it is set up on the quickstart disk images without changing these.

The line printer is a good way to get text data out of the system. This is a spooled device available as device LPT:. To print a single file, use the PRINT command

.print hworld.for
Total of 1 block in 1 file in LPT request

You'll see a message on the operator's console saying this is being processed.

!11:34:52(L\7)
        Job HWORLD file DSKB1 :HWORLD.FOR   [64,64] for [64,64] started 
        D:HWORLD.FOR   [64,64] Done

Then look in the file units/printer.txt on the host system to find your output. You'll see the name of the file you requested to be printed in large letters (on a physical printer this would allow easy identification of jobs) followed by the file's text.

You can also use the device name where a file would be normally used. For example, to print all the Fortran files in your directory:

copy lpt:=*.for

Note when using the device, the files will not be printed until your job terminates, ie you log out.

In simh, where printer output goes on the host is controlled by the attach lpt command in the configuration file. On the quickstart, see common.ini:

at lpt  -n units/printer.txt

The -n switch will start a new file each time the system is booted. If you'd prefer to keep the contents of the file over each session and append to it, replace -n with -a.

If you want to extract several files from TOPS-10, here is a method using emulated tapes and the TOPS-10 backup program.

You will need to get the back10 utility by Johnny Eriksson running on your PC. Download the file back10.tar from the linked page, untar t an empty directory and run make to compile the binary back10. Place this on your PATH somewhere.

Next, on the simh console, we will create a blank tape file on your PC backup.tap and attach it to the emulated tape drive MTA1.

Press Control-E to enter simh command mode and then type the following at and set commands, then ~c` to resume TOPS-10.

Simulation stopped, PC: 000001 (SOJG 6,1)
sim> at mta1 backup.tap
%SIM-INFO: MTA1: creating new file
%SIM-INFO: MTA1: Tape Image 'backup.tap' scanned as SIMH format
sim> set mta1 write
sim> c

Switch to your TOPS-10 login. We will assign the tape to logical name TAP: and run BACKUP . The prompt will change to a /. We'll then use the following BACKUP commands

• tape to select the tape drive
• save to add files - below we add all Fortran files in our home directory
• unload to finalise the tape

Press Control-C to get back to the command level. and finally deassign the logical tape name. The session will look something like this:

.assign mta1: tap:
MTA001 assigned

.r backup

/tape tap:
/save *.for
!100,100	DSKB

"Done

/unload

[MTA001: WRITE(C/H/S) = 10880/0/0]
/^C

.deassign tap:

You may get a message "Tape write locked–add write ring then type "GO"" - just type GO as suggested in this case.

On your host PC, use back10 with the -l switch to list the contents of the tape file

$ back10 -lf backup.tap
  21-Apr-1978 11:13:59  <057>  dskb:[100,100]ftest.for
  17-Jan-1979 14:40:59  <057>  dskb:[100,100]hworld.for

Use the -x option to extract files. Here I use -R and a wildcard to extract everything.

$ back10  -xf backup.tap  -R '.'  '*.*'
  dskb:[100,100]ftest.for
  dskb:[100,100]hworld.for

Adding the -b option will create a directory tree, ie create files named like dskb/100,100/hworld.for.

To upload files from your PC to TOPS-10, we can use the same technique bur in reverse. First, use back10 with the -c option to create a backup tape file. Here we create the tape transfer.tap containing a single file test.for. Note we provide destination disk and user information using the -U switch which will help simplify things when we extract the files later.

$ back10 -cf transfer.tap -U dskb:100,100 tesr.for

Switch back to the simh console, press Control-E and attach the new file.

sim> at mta1 transfer.tap
%SIM-INFO: MTA1: Tape Image 'transfer.tap' scanned as SIMH format
sim> c

Go to your TOPS-10 login and use BACKUP with the RESTORE command to get all the files in the archive:

assign mta1: tap:

.r backup

/tape tap:
/restore *.*
!100,100	DSKB

"Done

/^C

There are several other BACKUP commands available at the / prompt. Type HELP for more information. One is PRINT, which will print a listing of the tape on the line printer

One potential way to interchange files is Kermit, which allows you to send and receive files interactively over your terminal connection. There is a version on the TOPS-10 v6.03 disk images that we are using, but it only works for download of files from TOPS-10 to your local machine, uploads do not work. A thread on the PiDP-10 group indicates that there is a newer version of Kermit that does work, but it is only compatible with TOPS-10 v7.

See the Operating Systems Command Manual on Bitsavers for full documentation of TOPS-10 commands such as PRINT and BACKUP.

I welcome any questions or comments, and also especially any corrections if I have got something wrong. Please email me at rupert@timereshared.com and I will add it here and update the main text.

A draft version of this article was publushed in error on 8-Feb-2026.

Type sos file.ext: if this is a new file SOS will print INPUT and put you in a mode where you can type lines. If it is an existing file it will print EDIT and you will be in command mode.

SOS will automatically assign numbers to each line which you will see on the left. You can type each line normally, making corrections using Delete, Control-U like on the command line. When you have finished inserting text, press Escape; SOS will print $ and return you to command mode.

At the * prompt, SOS accepts commands which are generally single letters followed by which lines to work on.

Let's load up and print our hello world program from before.

.sos hworld.for
Edit: HWORLD.FOR
*p
00100		DO 1 J=1,5
00200	1	WRITE(5, 2)
00300	2	FORMAT(' HELLO, WORLD')
00400		END
*

Once you select a line (eg via p 500 above) you can quickly move up and down by pressing Escape to move up one line and Control-J to move down one line; SOS will print the line it has moved to.

The R, I and D commands replace, insert and delete lines. Each take a line specification like above. R will prompt you to enter the new line to replace it. I will insert a line after the one you specified, giving it an appropriate line number. An example of changing our hello world program to print a different message twice:

*r300
00300	2	FORMAT(' GOODBYE, WORLD')
1 Lines (00300/1) deleted
*i100
00150		WRITE(5,2)
*p^:*
00100		DO 1 J=1,5
00150		WRITE(5, 2)
00200	1	WRITE(5, 2)
00300	2	FORMAT(' GOODBYE, WORLD')
00400		END

At the * prompt, type E to save and exit, ES to save without line numbers and exit, and EQ to exit without saving changes. Some programs do not accept line numbers hence the ES option; even if you do remove them, if you edit the file in SOS again it will add them back.

Those are all the commands you need to do most editing tasks. But read on for additional features that make life easier. Alternatively, you can type H at the prompt to view the help file.

The F command finds the next line with the specified text. You type F, then the text to find, then Escape and finally Return and it will print out the matching line. Note that SOS prints $ when you type Escape.

*fgoodbye$
00400	2	FORMAT('GOODBYE, WORLD')

After the Escape, but before the Return, you could also type a line number range.

To find the next instance of the same text, just type F on its own again.

To replace part of text without retyping the whole line, use the S command. Type S, the old text to replace, Escape, the new text and then Escape. You then must add a line range before pressing Return, so to replace on the current line you could use ..

00400	2	FORMAT('GOODBYE, WORLD')
*sGOODBYE$HELLO$.
00400	2	FORMAT('HELLO, WORLD')

This is a special mode where you can edit a line using interactive commands. Type A and your line number (or .) and SOS will print the line number. You can then type Space to move forwards one character, Delete to move back one character. SOS will print character by character as you do this navigation so you can see where you are.

D will delete the next character; I will allow you to insert text until you press Escape. Commands take prefixes to say how many characters to operate on.

In the example below I wanted to change HELLO to GOODBYE. I pressed Space until I got to the start of the word then pressed 5D to delete HELLO. I then pressed I, typed GOODBYE, then Escape, then finally Return to accept the rest of the line.

*p400
00400	2	FORMAT(' HELLO, WORLD')
*a.
00400	2	FORMAT(' \\HELLO\\GOODBYE, WORLD')

Instead of saving and exiting with E, you can type G and it will save and then execute (compile, load, run) the file - more precisely, it will remember the last command you ran and execute that. But this allows rapid edit-compile-run-edit loops.

The N command will renumber your lines - useful if you have done a lot of inserts into existing text.

There's more, such as the ability to take editing commands from a file and to cut/copy text to move it around the file: see the Reference Guide linked below for details.

See the SOS User's Guide and the SOS Reference Manual on Bitsavers.

I welcome any questions or comments, and also especially any corrections if I have got something wrong. Please email me at rupert@timereshared.com and I will add it here and update the main text.

Files are named file.ext where file is 1-6 characters long and ext 0-3. The extension is used to identify the type of file, eg HELLO.FOR would be a Fortran source code file.

The * and ? wildcards operate like we are used to now, ? matching one character and * matching any number of characters. An example using the DIR command:

.dir hworld.*

HWORLD	FOR     1  <057>   12-Jan-79	DSKB:	[100,100]
HWORLD	REL     1  <057>   12-Jan-79
  Total of 2 blocks in 2 files on DSKB: [100,100]

COPY, RENAME and DELETE do what you'd expect, but note that for the first two you put the new name first followed by an =. For example, to copy HWORLD.FOR to H2.FOR and then rename it to H#.FOR you'd do:

.copy h2.for=hworld.for

.rename h3.for=h2.for
Files renamed:
H2.FOR 

.dir h*.for

HWORLD	FOR     1  <057>   12-Jan-79	DSKB:	[100,100]
H3	FOR     1  <057>   15-Jan-79
  Total of 2 blocks in 2 files on DSKB: [100,100]

Many of these commands are implemented using the PIP utility, which I'll look at in a later post.

Users are identified by a project number and a programmer number. These are both octal values (ie they consist of the digits 0-7), and values for both lower than 7 are reserved by the operating system. If you followed the quick start you logged in as project 100, programmer 100.

This is tied together with the concept of the directory. There is a Master File Directory and below that a User File Directory for each valid project/programmer pair. These are enclosed in square brackets when referencing files, for example:

.dir [100,100]hworld.for

HWORLD	FOR     1  <057>   12-Jan-79	DSKB:	[100,100]

Project/programmer numbers can also be wirldcarded.

[1,1] is also the Master File Directory, so you can see a list of all User File Directories by:

.dir [1,1]

     1,1	1  <555>   21-Apr-78	DSKB:	[1,1]
     1,4	4  <775>   21-Apr-78
     3,3	0  <777>   21-Apr-78
...

You can create sub-directories using the CREDIR command. For example, to create a sub-directory test under my user directory I would run CREDIR and at the prompt give the response [,,test]. I could have typed [100,100,test] but as this is my current log on it allows me to omit it. Running this looks like the below:

.r credir

Create directory: [,,test]
  Created DSKB1:[100,100,TEST].SFD/PROTECTION:775
Create directory: ^C

I can then use this in commands.

.dir [,,test]

%WLDDEM Directory DSK:[100,100,TEST] is empty

It is possible to change your current directory, but it is a little more involved then typing cd on modern systems. Use the SETSRC program and give it the CP command followed by the desired directory at the * prompt. The TP command will list your current directory. Type Control-C to exit.

.r setsrc

*tp
[100,100]/NOSCAN
*cp [,,test]

*tp
[100,100,TEST]/NOSCAN
*^C

To delete a sub-directory, ensure it is empty and then use DELETE on the SFD file representing the directory. So for our example here, test, you would do DELETE TEST.SFD.

Physical devices, such as tape drives, disks and the terminal, are referred to by device names which are 1-3 characters long, an optional digit followed by a colon. Some examples:

You can see a list of physical devices on the system by typing RESOURCES.

These can be referred to in commands. To type the contents of HWORLD.FOR to your terminal you'd normally do TYPE HWORLD.FOR but you could also do COPY TTY:=HWORLD.FOR.

There are also device names pointing to directories. An example is SYS:, the location on disk where system executable files are stored. We can see from the DIR command below that SYS~ points to user [1,4].

.dir sys:pip.exe

PIP	EXE    44  <155>    8-Nov-76	33B(260)	DSKB:	[1,4]

You can create logical device names. Say your program was reading from a DECTape where the unit may change depending on what is in use. Rather than hard-coding the physical name, you can set up a logical name with ASSIGN - for example ASSIGN DTA000: ABC: - and then use ABC: to refer to the tape. DEASSIGN will remove the logical name.

A file has a protection code which is 3 octal digits enclosed in angle brackets like <O57>. Each digit applies to a different class of user..

The values for each digit and their meaning:

So a code of <057>, which is the default, means you can do anything, people in your project can read/execute, and all other users have no access.

Protection can be applied using the PROTECT command:

protect hworld.for<025>

Or directly at file creation time, eg via copy

copy world.for<000>=hworld.for

The default protection can be changed with SET DEFAULT PROTECTION.

Each regular user has an allowance of how much data they can store on disk. A higher quota is given for when you are logged in compared to logged out, to allow for creation of temporary files. The QUOLST command allows you to see this: the units are 128-word blocks, so 576 bytes per block.

.r quolst

User:	100,100
Str	used   left:(in) (out)	(sys)
DSKB:	  135	99865	99865	132307

On an emulated system today this is not a concern. On a real system with small disks and many users, the quota could be set quite low (I read that some undergraduates were limited to 5 blocks).

An alternate way to log out of the system is KJOB. This will give options for you to manage your files to get them under quota.

The quotas are set via the user administration utility REACT, which we'll look at later.

See the Operating Systems Command Manual on Bitsavers for full documentation of TOPS-10 commands.

I welcome any questions or comments, and also especially any corrections if I have got something wrong. Please email me at rupert@timereshared.com and I will add it here and update the main text.

I have put together a repo on Github that uses Richard Cornwell's KA PDP-10 KA simh emulator along with a ready-to-use disk image or TOPS-10 6.03 produced by the PiDP-10 project, which contains a tested install of the operating system along with many additional programs such as compilers.

To use this, you will need a Unix-like environment capable of running a shell, git, make, a C compiler, wget and unzip.

You will also need the telnet command line program or a GUI telnet client.

First, clone the repo and cd into it

git clone https://github.com/timereshared/dec-tops-10-simh-quickstart.git
cd dec-tops-10-simh-quickstart

Then type ./build.sh. This will

• Download opensimh using git and compile the pdp10-ka emulator binary.
• Download a copy of the TOPS-10 disk images.

This will take around 2-3 minutes and will only need to be done once. The virtual disks are stored in disks/ and take up about 310MB of space.

Type ./run.sh. The system will boot up and the date/time will be set automatically using today's day/month but with the year set to 1979. as this version of TOPS-10 is not Y2K compliant.

Sometimes the system hangs after printing %DPA7 IS OFF-LINE. In this case, press Control-E, type q and then ./run.sh again.

If all goes well, you will see it print KA603 (time) CTY system 50.

Using a telnet client, connect to port 10603 (eg via telnet 0 10603.)

You can then login as user 100,100 and password demo1. Type login 100,100 and then enter the password at the prompt. Your screen will look something like the image at the top of this post.

The command line interface has a . as its prompt. When you type commands you can use backspace to correct mistakes, but as the system was used on teletypes it will not rub out characters, instead printing what has been deleted between backslashes. For example, if I typed abcdef, realised the last three letters were wrong, deleted them and typed xyz the screen would look like.

.ABCDEF\FED\XYZ

If you make several mistakes you can request the whole line to be retyped by pressing Control-R. Control-U can be used to delete the entire line.

Control-T will print a line of system statistics, including the current job you are running.

You can enter a command of more than a single line by typing - as the last character on a line, pressing Enter, and continuing the command text on the next line.

Commands can generally be abbreviated: for example instead of typing DIRECTORY to see a list of your files, you can just type DIR.

There is an online help facility accessed by typing HELP. You can view details of a single command by giving its full name as a parameter, eg HELP DIRECTORY.

Let's create a simple hello world program using Fortran. We will use the SOS editor to create the source file then compile it and run it.

Type SOS HWORLD.FOR to create a new file and put us in the editor. As this is a new file, the editor will allow you enter text immediately. It will precede each line with a line number (which is not a Fortran label) automatically. So the screen will look something like this after you start SOS.

.sos hworld.for
Input: HWORLD.FOR
00100

Type the following program. Where you see ⭾ below you should press the Tab key rather than typing spaces.

⭾	DO 1 J=1,5
1 ⭾	WRITE(5, 2)
2 ⭾	FORMAT(' HELLO, WORLD')
⭾	END

Now to exit inserting press Alt-mode - which is Escape on your keyboard - and SOS will respond with $ and then * to show you are back at its prompt. If you have made a mistake, you can replace a line by typing Rnnn where nnn is the line number.

When ready, type ES at the prompt to exit with unsequenced lines (ie don't preserve the line numbers).

The complete editing session will look like this:

.sos hworld.for
Input: HWORLD.FOR
00100		DO 1 J=1,5
00200	1	WRITE(5, 2)
00300	2	FORMAT(' HELLO, WORLD')
00400		END
00500	$
*es

[DSKB:HWORLD.FOR]
.

You can use TYPE to see the contents of the file:

.type hworld.for
	DO 1 J=1,5
1	WRITE(5, 2)
2	FORMAT(' HELLO, WORLD')
	END

Now use EXECUTE to compile, load and run the program:

.execute hworld
FORTRAN: HWORLD
MAIN. 	
LINK:	Loading
[LNKXCT HWORLD Execution]

HELLO, WORLD
HELLO, WORLD
HELLO, WORLD
HELLO, WORLD
HELLO, WORLD

END OF EXECUTION
CPU TIME: 0.00	ELAPSED TIME: 0.00
EXIT

You can use DIR with a wildcard to show the files that have been created.

.DIR HWORLD.*

HWORLD	REL     1  <057>   12-Jan-79	DSKB:	[100,100]
HWORLD	FOR     1  <057>   12-Jan-79
  Total of 2 blocks in 2 files on DSKB: [100,100]

In the telnet window, type R LOGOUT to end your session.

.R LOGOUT

Job 4, User [100,100]  Logged off TTY0     1047  12-Jan-79
Saved all files (45 blocks)
Runtime 0.57 Sec

To shut down the system, switch to the simh window, press Control-E and type do shutdown.ini.

Simulation stopped, PC: 146766 (JRST 0,146772)
sim> do shutdown.ini
:kill all

 **
BOOTS
Goodbye
$

When you want to use the system again, type ./run.sh and log in as before.

In the TOPS-10 Software Notebooks on Bitsavers, Getting Started with Decsystem-10 covers similar material.

See Richard Cornwell's TOPS-10 kit page for other versions of the operating system. The kits also contain simh scripts to build the system froms scratch, which is useful if you want to customise it further.

The PiDP-10 project's software provides an integrated system that can run TOPS-10, ITS and TOPS-20, even without a physical PiDP-10.

I welcome any questions or comments, and also especially any corrections if I have got something wrong. Please email me at rupert@timereshared.com and I will add it here and update the main text.

Phil Budne's guide to TOPS-10 evolution provides an overview of release dates and features for each version. Richard Cornwell's list of software kits shows what's available.

In thus series of blog posts we're going to focus on version 6.03 from 1977, running on the PDP-10 KA processor. We'll use Richard Cornwell's pdp10-ka simh emulator to run this.

TOPS-10 has a resident supervisor which has a dual role: firstly, providing access to machine resources and scheduling tasks, similar to a kernel on Unix based OSs. Its second role is to provide the main interface to user via the command control language - similar to a shell, but with code shared by users. Scheduling was done via priority queues, with support for real-time jobs.

The system can swap jobs in and out of disk and share code segments between programs. The particular version we are looking at did not support virtual memory and paging, however.

Users are identified by a project/programmer pair of numbers - eg [10, 11] - and access to the system is controlled by a password for each user.

The file system can span multiple disks. Each user gets their own directory to store files, and can share files by granting access to them. It's also possible for users to create sub-directories.

Peripheral devices such as printers, tapes or punched can either by shared by all users, with spoolers running to marshal access, or can be allocated to a specific user via a command.

The core system provides a set of utilities to manage files - both by individual commands such as RENAME and the powerful PIP (peripheral interchange program). Several editors were provided, from the simple SOS to the more complex TECO. Compilers and interpreters were available for BASIC, Fortran, COBOL and many other languages.

The system has a batch facility that allows jobs to be run at the same time as time-sharing users are logged in.

In this series of blog posts I plan to cover

• A quick start guide to getting TOPS-10 running under emulation.
• Files and directories.
• SOS, which is a fairly easy-to-use text editor.
• Getting data into and out of the system.
• Jobs on TOPS-10
• Utilities: PIP, RUNOFF and FILCOM
• System users and creating new users
• The TECO text editor
• Installing TOPS-10 from scratch
• Programming under TOPS-10
• A look at each programming language supported.
• The DECUS software collections

Bitsavers has a wide collection of documentation: see the TOPS10 and TOPS10 Software Notebooks directories. Note that these cover different versions of the operating system, so not all features may work - check the date on each manual. A good place to start is 1974's Introduction to DECsystem-10 Software.

January 2026: Lars Brinkhoff pointed out an error I made regarding the launch date of the PDP-10 and the name change of the OS to be TOPS-10. The first PDP-10 KAs were shipped in 1967. The name TOPS-10 started being used around that time, but I could not find an exact date.

I welcome any questions or comments, and also especially any corrections if I have got something wrong. Please email me at rupert@timereshared.com and I will add it here and update the main text.