Sintran

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Sintran
Developer Norsk Data,
Norwegian Institute of Technology, SINTEF
Written in Fortran
Working stateDiscontinued
Source modelClosed-source
Initial release1968;53 years ago (1968)
Final release Final / 1992;29 years ago (1992)
Available in English
Update methodCompile from source code
PlatformsNorsk Data minicomputers, Nord-1 terminal servers
Kernel type Monolithic
Default
user interface
Command-line
License Proprietary
Succeeded bySintran II, Sintran III

Sintran (a portmanteau of SINTEF and Fortran; stylized as SINTRAN) is a range of operating systems (OS) for Norsk Data's line of minicomputers. The original version of Sintran, was written in the programming language Fortran, released in 1968, and developed by the Department of Engineering Cybernetics at the Norwegian Institute of Technology together with the affiliated research institute, SINTEF. The different incarnations of the OS shared only name, and to a degree, purpose.

Norsk Data took part in developing Sintran II, a multi-user software system that constituted the software platform for the Nord-1 range of terminal servers. By far the most common version of the OS was Sintran III, developed solely by Norsk Data and launched in 1974. This real-time multitasking system was used for Norsk Data's server machines (such as the Nord-10, -100) for the remainder of the company's lifetime, i.e. until 1992.

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Norsk Data Norwegian computer manufacturer

Norsk Data was a minicomputer manufacturer located in Oslo, Norway. Existing from 1967 to 1998, it had its most active period from the early 1970s to the late 1980s. At the company's peak in 1987 it was the second largest company in Norway and employed over 4,500 people.

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Nord-10

Nord-10 was a medium-sized general-purpose 16-bit minicomputer designed for multilingual time-sharing applications and for real-time multi-program systems, produced by Norsk Data. It was introduced in 1973. The later follow up model, Nord-10/S, introduced in 1975, introduced CPU cache, paging, and other miscellaneous improvements.

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The Nord-100 was a 16-bit minicomputer series made by Norsk Data, introduced in 1979. It shipped with the Sintran III operating system, and the architecture was based on, and backwards compatible with, the Nord-10 line.

ND-500

The ND-500 was a 32-bit superminicomputer delivered in 1981 by Norsk Data. It relied on a ND-100 to do housekeeping tasks and run the OS, SINTRAN III. A configuration could feature up to four ND-500 CPUs in a shared-memory configuration.

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History of Norsk Data

Norsk Data (ND) was a Norwegian manufacturer of minicomputers which operated between 1967 and 1992. The company was established as A/S Nordata – Norsk Data-Elektronikk on 7 July 1967 and took into use the Norsk Data brand in 1975. The company was founded by Lars Monrad-Krohn, Rolf Skår and Per Bjørge, three computer engineers working at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment which had just built the minicomputer SAM 2. ND's first contract was the delivery of a Nord-1 computer to Norcontrol. Initially in competition with Kongsberg, ND started delivering computers to Norwegian institutions. By 1972 the company had developed Sintran operating system, the 32-bit Nord-5 and a time sharing system.

OREDA

The Offshore and Onshore Reliability Data (OREDA) project was established in 1981 in cooperation with the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate. It is "one of the main reliability data sources for the oil and gas industry" and considered "a unique data source on failure rates, failure mode distribution and repair times for equipment used in the offshore industr[y]. OREDA's original objective was the collection of petroleum industry safety equipment reliability data. The current organization, as a cooperating group of several petroleum and natural gas companies, was established in 1983, and at the same time the scope of OREDA was extended to cover reliability data from a wide range of equipment used in oil and gas exploration and production (E&P). OREDA primarily covers offshore, subsea and topside equipment, but does also include some onshore E&P, and some downstream equipment as well.