MPE (Multi-Programming Executive) is a discontinued business-oriented

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real-time

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

developed by

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

for their

HP 3000 The HP 3000 series is a family of 16-bit computing, 16-bit and 32-bit computing, 32-bit minicomputers from Hewlett-Packard. It was designed to be the first minicomputer with full support for time-sharing in the hardware and the operating system, ...

computers. While the HP 3000s were initially mini-mainframes, the final high-end systems supported 12

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and over 2000 simultaneous users.

Description

It runs on the HP 3000 family of computers, which originally used HP custom

16-bit 16-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 16-bit microprocessors. A 16-bit register can store 216 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 16 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two ...

stack architecture CISC

and were later migrated to

PA-RISC Precision Architecture reduced instruction set computer, RISC (PA-RISC) or Hewlett Packard Precision Architecture (HP/PA or simply HPPA), is a computer, general purpose computer instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Hewlett-Packard f ...

where the operating system was called MPE XL. In 1983, the original version of MPE was written in a language called SPL (

System Programming Language A system programming language is a programming language used for system programming; such languages are designed for writing system software, which usually requires different development approaches when compared with application software. Eds ...

). MPE XL was written primarily in Pascal, with some

assembly language In computing, assembly language (alternatively assembler language or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence bet ...

and some of the old SPL code. In 1992, the OS name was changed to MPE/iX to indicate

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interoperability with the addition of

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compatibility. The discontinuance of the product line was announced in late 2001, with support from HP terminating at the end of 2010. A number of 3rd party companies still support both the hardware and software. In 2002 HP released the last version MPE/iX 7.5.

Commands

Among others, MPE/iX supports the following list of common commands and programs.MPE/iX Commands Reference Manual - HP 3000 MPE/iX Computer Systems - Edition 11
/ref> * =SHUTDOWN *

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* CHDIR * COPY *

DEBUG In engineering, debugging is the process of finding the root cause, workarounds, and possible fixes for bugs. For software, debugging tactics can involve interactive debugging, control flow analysis, log file analysis, monitoring at the ap ...

ECHO In audio signal processing and acoustics, an echo is a reflection of sound that arrives at the listener with a delay after the direct sound. The delay is directly proportional to the distance of the reflecting surface from the source and the lis ...

* ELSE * EXIT * FORTRAN *

HELP Help may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * Help (2010 film), ''Help'' (2010 film), a Bollywood horror film * Help (2021 theatrical film), ''Help'' (2021 theatrical film), a British psychological thriller film * Help (2021 TV ...

* IF * PASCAL * PRINT * RENAME * SH * WHILE

References

External links

Allegro Consultants, Inc.
Free HP 3000 Software, MPE Software Support
Beechglen Development Inc.
MPE Software Support
HP MPE/iX homepage

openMPE
Advocates of continued MPE and IMAGE source code access beyond 2010 Discontinued operating systems Multi-Programming Executive Proprietary operating systems 1974 software {{operating-system-stub