This page introduces the basic functions of the TOPS-10 operating system for new users. For general information on the operating system, systems operated by ICM, and guest user accounts, see the TOPS-10 page.

After connecting to one of the TOPS-10 systems from the SDF Vintage Systems menu, the system will display a period (.) command prompt. If the command prompt does not appear, press the Enter key until the system responds.

At the command prompt, enter the LOGIN command followed by your project-programmer number or user name.

(A project-programmer numbers (PPN) identifies a user of the TOPS-10 system. PPNs are composed of a pair of octal numbers separated by a comma and enclosed in square brackets (for example, “[100,200]”) (brackets are optional for the LOGIN command). Later versions of TOPS-10 allow a user name to be used in place of a PPN.)

Enter your password when the system displays the Password: prompt.

TOPS-10 displays a . prompt whenever it is ready for you to enter a command. Commands are between one and six characters in length, but may be abbreviated to the shortest unique prefix. (On this page the minimum prefix of commands is shown in BOLD.)

Command names are defined in upper-case, but lower-case input is automatically converted to upper-case.

Some TOPS-10 functions are accessed through system programs. System programs can be run with the R command, for example, R BASIC.

The following special characters can be used while entering commands:

The Esc key is used by some programs to indicated the end of user input, and is displayed as $.

End your TOPS-10 session with the command KJOB. (Use KJOB/F on TOPS-10 version 6.)

If the Vintage Systems menu is not displayed, press Ctrl-] then enter q at the lcmtelnet> prompt.

TOPS-10 has on-line help.

TOPS-10 identifies files by the following elements:

• device: the physical or logical storage device on which the file resides. Represented by a string of one to six alphanumeric (SIXBIT) characters followed by a colon.
• filename: one to six SIXBIT characters.
• extension: indicates the type of data in the file. A period followed by zero to three characters.
• directory: identifies the disk area in which the file is stored. Two octal numbers separated by a comma and enclosed in square brackets (the PPN of the user who owns the files in the directory).

A file specification has the following format:

File elements can be specified in any order, with or without spaces between the elements, with the exception that the device must be preceded by a space if it follows the filename or extension.

If the device or directory are omitted from a file specification, TOPS-10 will assume the user's default device and directory.

Wildcard characters * (to match a string of any characters of any length) and ? (to match any single character) can be used in the filename, extension, or directory components (project or programmer) to designate multiple files with a single specification.

Use the following commands to work with files:

A number of text editors run on TOPS-10.

If SOS, TECO, or EDIT (DTECO) are run without a filespec, the file most-recently edited in the same TOPS-10 session will be loaded for editing.

SOS (Son Of Stopgap) is a line-oriented text editor for PDP-10 computers based on the PDP-6's “temporary” stopgap editor. SOS also supports character-oriented editing of single lines with Alter mode.

To quit SOS, press Esc if you are in input mode, then enter the command E to save changes, or EQ to quit without saving.

• SOS cheat sheet

TECO is a programmable, character-oriented text editor programmed in 1962 by Dan Murphy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC) PDP-1 computer and ported to many other DEC computers.

To quit DTECO, press Esc if you are in input mode, then enter EX and press Esc twice to save changes, or press Ctrl-C twice to quit without saving.

• Survival TECO

DTECO is a version of TECO that displays the current contents of the file being edited on the terminal. The current pointer position is indicated with /\.

Editing commands are the same as TECO.

To quit DTECO, press Esc if you are in input mode, then enter EX and press Esc twice to save changes, or press Ctrl-C twice to quit without saving.

• Survival TECO

AMIS is a clone of EMACS programmed in Pascal and MACRO-10 for TOPS-10 by the Stacken Computer Club at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.

Quit AMIS by pressing Ctrl-X, Ctrl-Z.

TOPS-10 systems provide a number of languages for user programming. The following languages are available on most systems and have been integrated into TOPS-10 to improve programmer productivity.

To create and run a program on TOPS-10, the following steps are necessary:

1. Create the program source file (See Editing files). Give the source file a unique¹⁾ filename. Use the extension for the program's language indicated above.
2. Translate the program source into machine language. This produces a relocatable binary file (called an “object file” on other systems) with the same filename as your source file and extension .REL.
3. Load the machine code from relocatable file into memory.
4. Start program execution.

Steps 2. through 4. can be performed with a single TOPS-10 command:

There are also commands to perform each step individually:

The commands COMPIL, EXECUT, and LOAD are collectively called “COMPIL-class commands”. In addition to their basic functions described above, the COMPIL-class commands share the following features:

• If the extension is omitted from the filespec, the programming language for translation will be determined by the extension of the file with the indicated filename.
• If the filespec is omitted, the file used by the previous COMPIL-class command invoked in the current TOPS-10 session will be processed.

These features, along with the similar features of the editing commands EDIT, SOS, and TECO enable the user to rapidly repeat the edit-translate-test cycle for a program with minimal typing.

The TOPS-10 BASIC system program provides a unified environment for creating, editing, and running programs with the BASIC programming language.

Quit BASIC by entering the command SYSTEM.

• Getting Started With DECsystem-10
• DECsystem-10 Operating System Commands
• DECsystem-10 SOS User's Guide (General introduction to SOS)
• TOPS-10 SOS Reference Manual (Detailed explanation including Alter mode)
• DECsystem-10 Introduction to TECO
• DECsystem-10 BLISS-10 Programmer's Reference Manual
• PDP-10 COBOL Programmer's Reference Manual
• DECsystem-10 FORTRAN-10 Language Manual
• DECsystem-10 Macro Assembler Reference Manual
• Advanced BASIC for the PDP-10