Inmos Portakit
During 2012, I managed to get my hands on a copy of the Inmos Portakit User Manual (including the original 7" VAX tape). I set about firstly getting the data (if there was any?) transfered off the tape into a form I could read using a modern PC. The results were successful and all the files were intact and showed no signs of corruption. Eventually after some further post processing of the retrieved data I got the files into a PC readable form.
Towards the middle of the year I set about writing a Win32 console version of the Occam Portakit Instruction Set Interpreter to run the .pis executable files (including the Occam 1 compiler which was on the tape), based on a Pascal program example from the tape.
The Portakit Instruction Set Interpreter Win32 console (which I named portakit.exe instead of the original Inmos pis.exe file name) was based on jserver version 5.4 stripped down to the basics and modified to emulate the 39 instructions and appropriate interface changes to the OS (i.e. keyboard, screen and file handling).
In October 2012, I sucessfully ran .pis examples (taken from the original tape) using the Win32 Portakit and also compiled Occam 1 source code to .pis executable code. A screen snapshot of the Portakit banner and simple program executing is shown below.
You can find the Portakit executable (and some .pis executable examples) attached to the bottom of this website page. I have also included the Occam 1 compiler code and a copy of the README file which was on the original Inmos Portakit tape.
Note: This is BETA SOFTWARE and not fully tested.
If you want to have a play with the Inmos Portakit emulator you don’t actually need much set up in advance. Below is a brief overview of the software you will need to setup on your PC:
1. Copy the Portakit.exe binary file into a suitable directory on your computer, which is on the environment 'Path' setting.
2. To run the Portakit emulator, enter the following:
portakit /f tstout.pis
3. To recompile the tstout.occ example code using the Occam 1 compiler, enter the following:
portakit /f occam.pis -no_predefs tstout
the above will generate a new tstout.pis file which can be then be run as per 2. above.
Whilst searching around on the internet, I recently found a link to a port of the Inmos Occam Portakit for the Atari ST computer which was done by Kuma Computers circa. 1984-1986. The link is titled "K-OCCAM - The first Occam Compiler for the ST" and can be found here: