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If Microsoft CEO Bill Gates hadn't acted to suppress the development of the TRON platform, they would have been first to market even before Apple. While purporting to support the TRON consortium MS acted on Capitol Hill to have TRON denied access to the US market. ''We don't want the Japanese to create a specification that would preclude competition,'' 1989. A similar strategy applied to Sendo a British maker of handsets. Who of course were bilked over and went broke in litigation with Microsoft. So that's TWICE or THREE times if you include Nokia, that the worlds chief software visionary didn't get it.

Microsoft could have owned mobile space way back in the 1980s if they had promoted the TRON real-time operating system, instead of joiing the TRON consortium and then acting to have it suppressed through the use of legislation in Washington.

"Microsoft's decision to join the T-Engine Forum is not without irony. The company was the main beneficiary of U.S. government actions against the TRON project in 1989" ref

Microsoft vs. Historical Fact

"How did Microsoft squander the lead they had with the Windows CE devices? They had a great lead, they were years ahead. And they completely blew it. And they completely blew it because of the bureaucracy." ref

They didn't, they could have been way ahead of the curve, when they joined the Tron consortium, but not totally owning it, they acted to supress it in the US while promoting the much inferior WinCE. A replay of the WinNT - OS/2 collaboration/war with IBM.

'Microsoft Teams Up with Japanese Group That Promotes Archrival Tron'

'Microsoft Corp said on Thursday it would collaborate with a consortium that promotes an open operating system for consumer electronics called TRON'

'Microsoft Corp., which was the first U. S. supplier to lobby Washington about TRON'

'We don't want the Japanese to create a specification that would preclude competition,', former Deputy U. S. Trade Representative Michael B. Smith

"How did Microsoft squander the lead they had with the Windows CE devices? They had a great lead, they were years ahead. And they completely blew it. And they completely blew it because of the bureaucracy." ref

They didn't, they could have been way ahead of the curve, when they joined the Tron consortium, but not totally owning it, they acted to supress it in the US while promoting the much inferior WinCE. A replay of the WinNT - OS/2 collaboration/war with IBM.

'Microsoft Teams Up with Japanese Group That Promotes Archrival Tron'

'Microsoft Corp said on Thursday it would collaborate with a consortium that promotes an open operating system for consumer electronics called TRON'

'Microsoft Corp., which was the first U. S. supplier to lobby Washington about TRON'

'We don't want the Japanese to create a specification that would preclude competition,', former Deputy U. S. Trade Representative Michael B. Smith

Wayback in 2003, Microsoft achieved dominance in the mobile consumer electronics market with TRON, the real-time OS, or they would have if they didn't perceive it (and everything else) as a threat to the Windows platform.

Microsoft v. Tron

That Tron http://tronweb.super-nova.co.jp/sakamura.html get sabotaged by Microsoft (with US government help), so tron can't enter PC OS market ?

Yes, I did - I've also worked on networking products (network probes and LAN analyzers). Even had one of those protocol charts above my desk, so I've got a good idea of how "the tubes work".

The Japanese have always had these grand computer initiatives (the last couple were "The TRON project", and Fifth Generation computing (AI, Expert Systems, Automated Learning).

The TRON project was an attempt to have computers be able to have a standard communication protocol:


First, there is the problem of reliability. Has your Internet service provider's server every gone down unexpectedly? Is it shut down regularly for maintenance causing you to lose access to the Internet? Have you ever sent an e-mail message that was never received by the person to whom you sent it? Has a person to whom you sent an e-mail message ever written back saying the header was received but there was no message attached to it? In the case of most people, the answer to these questions is "yes." But in comparison, loss of telephone service is now an extremely rare occurrence that happens mainly due to natural disasters. When it's a result of an error by the telephone company, all hell breaks loose and large-scale rebates have to be paid out to placate angry customers. ...
Of course, there are very understandable reasons why the Internet has its loyal supporters. Most importantly, the fact that governments don't control the Internet means it can give a voice to people or groups of people certain governments would like to suppress. So in that sense, it is of immense cultural importance. Another important feature of the Internet is that it is still "open technologically," so anyone can become a player without paying royalties or worrying about a lawyer from a large software company walking through the door with a ultimatum to either sign a highly unfavorable contract or have access to the Internet denied. However, in the final analysis, even the hard core fans of the Internet have to admit that when it comes to underlying technologies, the Internet is lacking in many areas.

Fortunately, there are other global network development efforts under way in addition to the Internet. One of these is the TRON Hypernetwork (in technical parlance, the highly functional distributed system [HFDS]), a vast, high-performance, real-time hypernetwork of innumerable open and closed subordinate networks based on the TRON total architecture that is being planned for computerizing human living spaces and human work environments in the 21st century. This hypernetwork is in the process of being built around a central framework of real-time servers and digital exchanges based on the Central and Communication TRON (CTRON) architecture, one of the first tasks of which is to support today's Internet protocols.


Looks like this is another attempt to revamp the TRON project (which also had its own networked CPU).

Yes, I did - I've also worked on networking products (network probes and LAN analyzers). Even had one of those protocol charts above my desk, so I've got a good idea of how "the tubes work".

The Japanese have always had these grand computer initiatives (the last couple were "The TRON project", and Fifth Generation computing (AI, Expert Systems, Automated Learning).

The TRON project was an attempt to have computers be able to have a standard communication protocol:


First, there is the problem of reliability. Has your Internet service provider's server every gone down unexpectedly? Is it shut down regularly for maintenance causing you to lose access to the Internet? Have you ever sent an e-mail message that was never received by the person to whom you sent it? Has a person to whom you sent an e-mail message ever written back saying the header was received but there was no message attached to it? In the case of most people, the answer to these questions is "yes." But in comparison, loss of telephone service is now an extremely rare occurrence that happens mainly due to natural disasters. When it's a result of an error by the telephone company, all hell breaks loose and large-scale rebates have to be paid out to placate angry customers. ...
Of course, there are very understandable reasons why the Internet has its loyal supporters. Most importantly, the fact that governments don't control the Internet means it can give a voice to people or groups of people certain governments would like to suppress. So in that sense, it is of immense cultural importance. Another important feature of the Internet is that it is still "open technologically," so anyone can become a player without paying royalties or worrying about a lawyer from a large software company walking through the door with a ultimatum to either sign a highly unfavorable contract or have access to the Internet denied. However, in the final analysis, even the hard core fans of the Internet have to admit that when it comes to underlying technologies, the Internet is lacking in many areas.

Fortunately, there are other global network development efforts under way in addition to the Internet. One of these is the TRON Hypernetwork (in technical parlance, the highly functional distributed system [HFDS]), a vast, high-performance, real-time hypernetwork of innumerable open and closed subordinate networks based on the TRON total architecture that is being planned for computerizing human living spaces and human work environments in the 21st century. This hypernetwork is in the process of being built around a central framework of real-time servers and digital exchanges based on the Central and Communication TRON (CTRON) architecture, one of the first tasks of which is to support today's Internet protocols.


Looks like this is another attempt to revamp the TRON project (which also had its own networked CPU).

Security has been considered and is to be provided using a piece of hardware called eTRON. eTRON can be used for encrypting communications, digital IDs, and even monetary transactions like tickets, etc. Every T-Engine platform is equipped with an eTRON interface (Standard, micro, nano, pico) so that security in the system should be transparent to the system designer.

Take a look through the Overview of T-Engine:
http://www.t-engine.org/english/whatis.html

If you're keen to find out more, the main links:
http://tronweb.super-nova.co.jp/
http://www.onghu.com/te/

Cheers

MOV @(RDQ_TBL+4,R2*8),Rn
MOV R1,@(RDQ_TBL+4,R2*8)
MOVA @(RDQ_TBL,R2*8),@(R1,FOR)
MOV Rn,@(R1,BACK)
MOV R1,@(Rn,FOR)

As always, the TRON Web is the most valuable source of infomation on the TRON project in English.
You can find some good articles on the T-Engine platform here.

As always, the TRON Web is the most valuable source of infomation on the TRON project in English.
You can find some good articles on the T-Engine platform here.

However (as I tried to emphasize), ASCII is binary too. It's not that binary is inherently more difficult to debug. It's that we need a binary standard as universal as ASCII has become.

Imagine debugging before in the 1960's, when ASCII wasn't standardized. We forget about those times now, because ASCII has been there for nearly 50 years. But go ahead, take a look.

Believe it or not, there were over 60 binary text standards in use before ASCII. I think we should be thanking Bob Bemer (the father of ASCII) a whole lot more often.

There have been various *TRON-based desktops in Japan for quite a while. See bTRON. Looking at those screenshots it looks like this is what the T-Cube is running, although it's been renamed and remarketed. Same company, PMC.

Indeed, without a big, slow OS a lot can be done. Certain things will be slow no metter the OS on a 400 MHz CPU- MP3 encoding, for example. My main machine is a 400 MHz WindowsCE box. Tiny, light, and fast as hell. Anything else that Win9x/NT has I don't need and haven't missed. And in a ROM of 32 MB the whole OS and a ton of support apps fit.

A lot of people are probably wondering here why I'd be running Windows CE instead of Linux on a slower CPU. There are a lot of reasons, the biggest being that Linux can't hack it in this area yet. The Zaurus C760- even with the same CPU, twice the RAM and twice the ROM- is less functional and tons slower. I may run Linux on my file server (was a desktop, long ago), but I'm not going to cripple myself again. One day I'll be able to switch back on my primary...

TRON Web has received many requests for information about a royalty-free, open source TRON operating system. Such an operating system system does exist; it is a ITRON4.0-specification real-time kernel called "TOPPERS/JSP," which stands for "Toyohashi OPen Platform for Embedded Real-time Systems/Just Standard Profile." The source code, which runs on MS Windows-based machines among others, can be downloaded from the following link.

As a sidenote, the main thrust of the T-Engine platform is high portabilty of middlewares across various embedded emvironments with different CPUs. This portabilty is made possible by a standard opensource kernel, which is based on micro-ITRON 3.0, and standalization of hardware. Dr. Sakamura even said he is going to fix the specification of the realtime kernel by the end of year and it will not be changed for the next HUNDRED years for the sake of comatibilty of middlewares. Moreover, there are rumors that a subsidary of Panasonic is developing a desktop operating system based on T-Engine. This is a very exciting year for the TRON project indeed.

against Japanese TRON system to stop its penetration into PC market.

Brief History of Character Codes

So how are things going to turn out in the future? That's hard to predict, but unless the American computer vendors with or without the help of the U.S. government try to force Unicode on the rest of the world in some sort of "market opening campaign," the most likely outcome is that there will be a battle between competing standards that will eventually be decided on the basis of what computer users, not computer vendors, prefer. The commercially available BTRON-based operating system currently runs on the same hardware as Unicode-based Windows NT, so all users will have to do in Japan is switch from one side of a hard disk partition to the other to select the system of their choice. Moreover, the Internet communication protocols, as noted above, allow for multiple character sets and encoding methods to be used, so this battle between competing multilingual character code sets and encoding systems will have little effect on data networks.

from: Tron: twenty years on

BTRON ran into trouble, though--political trouble. In April 1989, the fledgling OS specifications became embroiled in a trade dispute between Japan and the United States when the United States Trade Representative got wind of the Japanese government's plans to use BTRON as the OS for computers to be used in Japanese classrooms. The USTR said BTRON's use would constitute "actual and potential market intervention" and placed BTRON on the list of products to be sanctioned under the Super 301 article of the U.S. Omnibus Trade Act.

How a freely available, freely traded computer operating system could be conceived of as a trade barrier was never clear. Any company in any country can freely create its own TRON OS without even bothering with the channels of international trade. It didn't take long for the USTR to recognize its mistake. BTRON was immediately removed from Super 301 sanctions and the USTR retracted its initial criticism of the Japanese government's proposed use of the OS for classroom computers.

But the damage had already been done. Sakamura believes it was fear of political fallout that caused nearly all Japanese companies to drop the BTRON project like a hot potato, while the government decided not to designate any specific OS for in-school computers.

another interesting article:
How the USTR Saved the BTRON Subproject

Unfortunately, Mr. Sakamura was not aware of key developments in microprocessor development in the USA. Just at the moment that he had announced the new TRON instruction set architecture (ISA), microprocessor development in the USA was undergoing a revolution. Numerous studies in academia were published on how compilers and programmers actually used instructions. The computer-engineering community reached a consensus that complex addressing modes should not be implemented in the hardware. This conclusion was backed by the quantitive statistical measurements of actual programs.

Unfortunately, the TRON ISA continued the mistake of using complex addressing modes (ala 68000). Instead of simply admitting that he had made a mistake, Dr. Sakamura clings stubbornly to the idea that the TRON ISA is just as good as the ISA of ARM, etc.

The American government is almost as stubborn as Ken Sakamura. The government viewed the proposed TRON ISA as a threat to the dominance of American microprocessors. This view is understandable since, at that time (mid 1980s), Japanese companies threatened American dominance in a number of American technologies. (One example is DRAM.) The Japanese government had, also, just launched their 5th generation computer project. American officials feared that Japan would soon supplant the USA as the #1 computer manufacturer. So, even though the TRON ISA was clearly inferior to most modern processor ISAs developed by American engineers, the American government went hogwild and demanded that the Japanese government stop developing a personal computer based on the TRON ISA.

In the end, this American stubbornness actually helped the Japanese government by stopping it from wasting millions of dollars on a project (to build a TRON personal computer) that would have failed. By the way, the 5th generation project was also a massive failure.

Americans should stop worrying about the superiority of American technology and morals. The 21st century never became PAX Asia despite all the doom and gloom predictions in the late 20th century. The 21st century is PAX Americana. The hordes of Asian immigrants flooding into the USA in order to get the hell out of Asia should have been a big hint.

TRON was a kick ass project. And everything we've wanted to do with TRON, we can now do with Linux.

Linux was a kick ass project. And everything we've wanted to do with Linux, we can now do with some flavor of Windows. There is no reason that what people do with Linux can't be done on Windows CE or desktop Windoze. Do we simply toss out Linux as an option because we could do the same on Windows? Do we simply toss out TRON as an option because we could do the same with Linux?

Yes, in everwhere but Japan, we'll probably never touch TRON and its family. It's all in Japanese, built by Japanese engineers for Japanese people. Which isn't to day localization to English and other languages can't be done, but with all the competition, I can't see Ken-san thinking an English version of BTRON is the most important thing for the TRON world right now. Which is a shame- BTRON is a pretty sweet system, MicroScript beating the pants off of shell scripting any day. :)

http://tronweb.super-nova.co.jp/btronproducts.html

enjoy...

OK, but there is more interesting info at:

TRON Project Information

and

TRON Web

also in english :)

bb4now,
PMC

The TRON project was started in 1984*, meaning they've been using the name for 15 years. If Nucleus wanted to press a claim, they would lose and possibly be countersued for trademark infringement, or just have the trademark lost as a generic term.

*
http://tronweb.super-nova.co.jp/projecthistory.h tm l

After all, they have spent a lot on the project already and it is optimized for use in Japan.

You can read all about Unicode's shortcomings (and its competitors) here and here.

And here's an explanation from Bob Bemer.