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Nina Kalinina

Well, to be more precise, the system I am about to show you is called B-right/V release 4.5 from 2006. It is an implementation of BTRON, Business TRON specification. You can think about it this way: FreeBSD is a UNIX system. Bright/V is a TRON system.

TRON, or The Real-time Operating system Nucleus, began as an open architecture project by Japanese professor Ken Sakamura in 1984. There are multiple sub-projects, including ITRON for electronics and cars, BTRON for desktops and PDAs, CTRON for telecoms, and many more.

There is a lot of information on its English website tronweb.super-nova.co.jp/homep but it barely scratches the surface.

Yes, TRON was used for NTT DoCoMo i-mode phones and some Roland synthesisers, and most camera operating systems are also TRON forks. Yes, it runs on pretty much any 8, 16 or 32 bit architecture you can think of. Yes, it was used in home automation and cars, too.

But this system is also the basis for Mentor Graphics Nucleus RTOS, and eCos and RTEMS APIs, and that makes it BIG.
6 February at 14:17 | Open on tech.lgbt
65 comments
Nina Kalinina

Space probes, smart phones, dumb phones, calculators, and even some Intel motherboard chips are running TRON systems or their derivatives.

This system is THAT big. Perhaps, today there are more choices among embedded operating systems, and more devices are simply running Linux, but I think the claim that in 2003 TRON used to be the most popular operating system is somewhat substantiated.

Now, tell me, HOW COME no one in the West have heard about desktop version of TRON that could run on i286/386, and, from what I can tell, Sun workstations?

Edu-rant is over, time to show you the system :D Follow me!

Space probes, smart phones, dumb phones, calculators, and even some Intel motherboard chips are running TRON systems or their derivatives.

This system is THAT big. Perhaps, today there are more choices among embedded operating systems, and more devices are simply running Linux, but I think the claim that in 2003 TRON used to be the most popular operating system is somewhat substantiated.
6 February at 14:25 | Open on tech.lgbt
Nina Kalinina

These days, finding the installation media for the B-right/V OS itself can be hard. But the operating system is still sold on Amazon as "Chokanji V, TRON runs on Windows" input system. 超漢字V means "Super Kanji 5", by the way. There is MacOS X version, too.

Either version is just installing BTRON in VMWare, and runs the input method somewhat seamlessly.

Archive.org has installation media for B-right/V 4.5 from 2006, but it will not run in Qemu properly. archive.org/details/chokanji

The iso contains a file called bright00 which is a boot floppy for B-right/V installer. It should work on most i386-based computers, but it requires supported CD, IDE and mouse. After a bit of tinkering with PCem, I managed to make it work.

These days, finding the installation media for the B-right/V OS itself can be hard. But the operating system is still sold on Amazon as "Chokanji V, TRON runs on Windows" input system. 超漢字V means "Super Kanji 5", by the way. There is MacOS X version, too.

Either version is just installing BTRON in VMWare, and runs the input method somewhat seamlessly.
6 February at 14:35 | Open on tech.lgbt
Nina Kalinina

The installer shows not one but two splash screens: B-right/V TRON OS first, and Chokanji V second. Then it starts a very simply-looking disk partitioning and OS installing tool. Make no mistake, at this point TRON OS is already running. The mouse cursor is a bit funny/unusual, showing cup of green tea whenever there's a delay ("hourglass").

While it loads, you might contemplate: why did they bother to make a whole OS? Well, my dear friends, they needed a system that could support kanji, RTL and vertical input before Unicode was invented.

The installer shows not one but two splash screens: B-right/V TRON OS first, and Chokanji V second. Then it starts a very simply-looking disk partitioning and OS installing tool. Make no mistake, at this point TRON OS is already running. The mouse cursor is a bit funny/unusual, showing cup of green tea whenever there's a delay ("hourglass").
6 February at 14:39 | Open on tech.lgbt
Nina Kalinina

The installer partitions and formats the disk, asks whether you want full setup (all fonts) or minimal setup (less fonts), copies the files, and invites you to remove the floppy from the drive 0 and reboot.
6 February at 14:42 | Open on tech.lgbt
mmu_man

@nina_kali_nina oh a hand-mouse-cursor… not unlike BeOS. Cute wait cursor though 🙂

6 February at 14:45 | Open on m.g3l.org
Nina Kalinina

@mmu_man This system often gives me BeOS vibes, but from what I can tell from old photos, this UI probably was in TRON since late 80s. So, who copied whom? :)

6 February at 15:46 | Open on tech.lgbt
Nina Kalinina

First launch.

The system is booting, and it is quite fast. Before we can begin, we should answer a few simple questions.

Do we want BTRON style settings or Windows style settings?
Which key you want as KANA key?
Romaji input - BTRON style or Windows style?
Ctrl+ZXCV behaviour - BTRON or Windows?

I am curious how things are in BTRON, but not enough to set it to non-Windows and get lost/confused.
6 February at 14:46 | Open on tech.lgbt
Nina Kalinina

The desktop after the launch has two important windows. The smaller one shows your running applications - inbox, applets tool, "Notice from Personal Media Inc" and "Choukanji V tutorial". The bigger window has buttons to create new documents of all the registered types (text, drawing, cabinet, email, browser and many more).

Windows don't have any controls or menus. If you want to interface with a window, you just right-click it to call a pop-up menu. It has application options like "save" and "exit", as well as OS-wide options (start an applet, rearrange windows). The pop-up shows a long list of applets, let's check them out!

The desktop after the launch has two important windows. The smaller one shows your running applications - inbox, applets tool, "Notice from Personal Media Inc" and "Choukanji V tutorial". The bigger window has buttons to create new documents of all the registered types (text, drawing, cabinet, email, browser and many more).
6 February at 14:51 | Open on tech.lgbt
Nina Kalinina

The most important applet of them all is System Settings. You can change things from wallpapers to PCMCIA IRQs here.

Then there is glossary/help system. You search for a topic, and then you can read a document about it. Note that the help document here has hyperlinks. In fact, "Choukanji V Tutorial" launched on the start is also just a BTRON document. TRON specifies a standard data bus for data exchange between the apps, so it only makes sense they'd do that.

Then there's kanji search, which is super important for anyone who works with kanji. Like, seriously.

And then there's a post-code look up applet. It can find a Japanese post code by address, and address by post code. I have no idea why include this into your core OS, but perhaps it's an important tool for businesses.

The most important applet of them all is System Settings. You can change things from wallpapers to PCMCIA IRQs here.

Then there is glossary/help system. You search for a topic, and then you can read a document about it. Note that the help document here has hyperlinks. In fact, "Choukanji V Tutorial" launched on the start is also just a BTRON document. TRON specifies a standard data bus for data exchange between the apps, so it only makes sense they'd do that.
6 February at 14:56 | Open on tech.lgbt
Nina Kalinina

I wanted to tell you more about other applets, like on-screen keyboard, calculator, backup, clock and file manager, but I found a KITTEN.

This app serves the same purpose as the "mouse pointer trail" in Windows, but instead of the trail, your computer mouse is chased by computer kittens. You can have up to 8 of them on your desktop, and not all of them will be following the cursor - some will get tired and will fall asleep on the spot.

You can give belly rubs to all your computer kittens. Hey @netkitty can I give you a belly rub too?

I wanted to tell you more about other applets, like on-screen keyboard, calculator, backup, clock and file manager, but I found a KITTEN.

This app serves the same purpose as the "mouse pointer trail" in Windows, but instead of the trail, your computer mouse is chased by computer kittens. You can have up to 8 of them on your desktop, and not all of them will be following the cursor - some will get tired and will fall asleep on the spot.
6 February at 15:01 | Open on tech.lgbt
David JONES

@nina_kali_nina if there are different fonts installed, would be nice to see what sort of variation in Kanji style is available. Or maybe it's just more sizes of (unscaled) bitmap fonts.

6 February at 15:06 | Open on typo.social
Nina Kalinina replied to David

Let me boot into it and take a few screenshots a bit later!

6 February at 15:10 | Open on tech.lgbt
Nina Kalinina replied to David

@drj here are more or less all the fonts available in the text editor. Some of the font options looked just like other options, but used Chinese versions of kanji instead of Japanese ones.
6 February at 15:42 | Open on tech.lgbt
David JONES replied to Nina

@nina_kali_nina aha, nice to see. Line 2 is "that crappy Roman Latin font that seems to be ubiquitous among Japanese phototypesetters" spaced badly/full-kanji-width.

6 February at 15:49 | Open on typo.social
Nina Kalinina replied to David

@drj isn't it 明朝? It is Mincho, right?

6 February at 15:52 | Open on tech.lgbt
David JONES replied to Nina

@nina_kali_nina tbh, i don't know. i don't do Kanji font recognition; was going off the Latin part. But just on the basis of its ubiquity, Mincho would be a good guess.

6 February at 15:56 | Open on typo.social
KITTEN.EXE

@nina_kali_nina i’ll allow it :3 what nice computer kitty friends!

6 February at 15:07 | Open on hackers.town
Nina Kalinina

Time to explore the business applications. To start a business application, you either open an existing document, or choose the document type from the "box of templates". Whenever you click a link in the "box of templates", the OS will ask you to give a name to your new file, and will add it to the main "Chokanji" window. Internet browsing session is also a document.

If you open lots of documents, it creates a lot of clutter in your main window, which is incidentally a task switcher. Not very convenient.

Among document templates, there is "Applet window" template, that allows to run some of the applets not listed in the right-click menu. Disk utility (the one used by installer) and shell are among those. There's a curious file called "unixemu", but trying to execute it causes a segfault, which creates a window with lots of unnecessary for a regular user information.

A few more boring applets that I didn't include in the list were serial terminal and dialer.

Time to explore the business applications. To start a business application, you either open an existing document, or choose the document type from the "box of templates". Whenever you click a link in the "box of templates", the OS will ask you to give a name to your new file, and will add it to the main "Chokanji" window. Internet browsing session is also a document.
6 February at 15:09 | Open on tech.lgbt
Nina Kalinina replied to Nina

Text processor looks simple - just a window for text input, but it is actually a proper word processor, with formatting and such hidden behind the right mouse button click.

Drawing application has an external movable window with a tool palette. It seems to be vector editor, but the OS supports common image formats (GIF, JPEG and probably more).

There's some sort of email client, but email session is a "document". There's a web browser (I'll show it to you soon), and a spreadsheet tool with yet another multi-window interface. Note how trying to copy something from a spreadsheet asks for the clipboard format - plain text, CSV, image or "precise".

There is also some sort of cardfile application, and there seems to be an ability to create SCRIPTs, but it will be impossible to figure out without reading the documentation, so maybe some other time.

Text processor looks simple - just a window for text input, but it is actually a proper word processor, with formatting and such hidden behind the right mouse button click.

Drawing application has an external movable window with a tool palette. It seems to be vector editor, but the OS supports common image formats (GIF, JPEG and probably more).
6 February at 15:15 | Open on tech.lgbt
Umur Gedik replied to Nina

@nina_kali_nina oh it uses maru instead of checkmark for confirmation. makes sense

6 February at 15:19 | Open on mastodon.social
Nina Kalinina replied to Nina

Setting up the Internet requires two things. First, invoking "System settings" applet and adding your network card there. There is a wide list of supported cards, from ISA and PCI to PCMCIA. Then, there is a separate applet called "Network settings" that is used just for IPv4 settings - set up your IP and DNS there. It doesn't seem to support DHCP.

After that, you need to create a "Browser document" that will allow you to access some of the web over HTTP. The default site is chokanji's home page.

The browser is quite basic, with GIF/JPEG and some table support, but generally it feels close to Links than to even Internet Explorer. Google works, but HTTPS sites won't. It IS pretty cute.

Setting up the Internet requires two things. First, invoking "System settings" applet and adding your network card there. There is a wide list of supported cards, from ISA and PCI to PCMCIA. Then, there is a separate applet called "Network settings" that is used just for IPv4 settings - set up your IP and DNS there. It doesn't seem to support DHCP.
6 February at 15:20 | Open on tech.lgbt
Nina Kalinina replied to Nina

And that's basically it. This is all B-right/V Business TRON OS implementation has to offer. To shutdown your computer, RMB click main "Chokanji" window and choose "Close". It will create a pop-up "Do you want to finish?", and after that the only things left will be KITTENS and a dialogue window "Chokanji has been shut down. Reboot. Finish". Kittens will follow your mouse, but they always stop at pop-up window boundaries, it seem. That leaves them helpless against surprise belly rubs, highly recommend.

After you press "Finish", the screen will show white text on the black screen: "Please turn off the power switch".

It's time to make some green tea and reflect on all the incredible software that we use daily and don't notice. Don't get me wrong, there is massive difference between desktop B-TRON, embedded I-TRON, and Nucleus on phones and cameras... But it is more ubiquitous than JAVA, and yet almost no one knows about it.

*sip*

And that's basically it. This is all B-right/V Business TRON OS implementation has to offer. To shutdown your computer, RMB click main "Chokanji" window and choose "Close". It will create a pop-up "Do you want to finish?", and after that the only things left will be KITTENS and a dialogue window "Chokanji has been shut down. Reboot. Finish". Kittens will follow your mouse, but they always stop at pop-up window boundaries, it seem. That leaves them helpless against surprise belly rubs, highly recommend.
6 February at 15:27 | Open on tech.lgbt
Wolf480pl replied to Nina

@nina_kali_nina hmm if this system is so ubiquitous, we need to ask the important question:

does TRON fight for the Users?

6 February at 19:29 | Open on mstdn.io
Rafael replied to Nina

@nina_kali_nina
Wow! What a gorgeous UI! I had heard of TRON but only as the OS for cellphones and microwaves. 😅

Thank you so much for this great overview!

6 February at 15:28 | Open on mastodon.sdf.org
Felipe Kinoshita replied to Nina

@nina_kali_nina have you tried pasting the selected drawing into the text editor? there's some pretty strange embedding things on the system!

6 February at 20:14 | Open on mastodon.social
Nina Kalinina replied to Felipe

@fkinoshita I haven't, but I imagine it will work similarly to OLE in Windows 3.1, where an app will be embedded inside of an app!

6 February at 20:18 | Open on tech.lgbt
Felipe Kinoshita replied to Nina

@nina_kali_nina Yes, you can even embedded the webpages and it preserves all links inside it!

6 February at 20:31 | Open on mastodon.social
Andrew Warkentin replied to Nina

@nina_kali_nina @fkinoshita It's kind of similar, but unlike OLE, every file is also a directory and actually contains all the documents linked into it more or less. It's similar to how hard links work on Unix, although the name is associated with the inode equivalent (the real object), not the directory entry equivalent (virtual object a.k.a. link record)

7 February at 1:28 | Open on social.restless.systems
Andrew Warkentin replied to Nina

@nina_kali_nina unixemu is a system program (basically a kernel module), not a user program. It only implements Unix API compatibility, and not a shell environment. A Unix shell environment with development tools can be found at chokanji.com/developer/downloa (specifically selfenv.bin). Once you've installed it, you can run /SYS/ucli from the console to get a Unix shell, although it's a bit limited

7 February at 1:35 | Open on social.restless.systems
Nina Kalinina replied to Andrew

@andreww thank you for the explanation! This is what I expected. Kind of sad they didn't put it on the CD, there was still plenty space left.

Also, curiously, the 4.5 release looks just like 1.1 release os-museum.com/brightv/brightv.

p.s. Thank you for your OS archival and museum efforts :)

7 February at 12:42 | Open on tech.lgbt
Andrew Warkentin replied to Nina

@nina_kali_nina B-right/V's appearance barely changed across versions, with probably the biggest change being the wallpaper. Even the last version of its 16-bit predecessor, 1B/V3, looks pretty similar (although 1B/V1 and 1B/V2 were much flatter). AFAIK there were some major changes between B-right/V versions that weren't immediately obvious (for instance, B-right/V R2 a.k.a. Chokanji 1 added support for all codepoints of the TRON character set and Chokanji 4 added shared libraries)

7 February at 22:38 | Open on social.restless.systems
Andrew Warkentin replied to Andrew

@nina_kali_nina Here's Chokanji 4, which is very similar to Chokanji V (AFAIK the biggest changes in V are the VMware guest enhancements and a different beginner's guide)
7 February at 22:42 | Open on social.restless.systems
Andrew Warkentin replied to Andrew

@nina_kali_nina And here's 1B/V3. Despite looking similar, 1B and B-right/V are actually distinct OSes, although AFAIK at least some code was carried over from 1B to B-right (mostly in the GUI and applications). Despite being released in 1996, 1B/V3 is still a 16-bit 286 protected mode OS (the first versions came out in the late 80s). The demo version fits on 2 floppies but still has quite a bit of functionality
7 February at 23:13 | Open on social.restless.systems
Nina Kalinina replied to Andrew

@andreww oh, do you have the demo somewhere? I would love to try it out on my 286!

8 February at 0:09 | Open on tech.lgbt
Andrew Warkentin replied to Nina

@nina_kali_nina Yes, I've uploaded both the 1B/V3 demo and Chokanji 4 to the Internet Archive:

archive.org/details/1bv3_demo
archive.org/details/brightv400

Both of these include both installer and pre-installed images (PCem for 1B and QEMU for Chokanji)
I've never actually tried to run 1B/V3 on an actual 286. The PCem configuration is for a Pentium

8 February at 0:15 | Open on social.restless.systems
Mark Eichin

@nina_kali_nina
... looks like the same pixel art that xneko/oneko used, was there just one cat animation in the early 90s that everyone used?
@netkitty

6 February at 15:14 | Open on mastodon.mit.edu
sebastian replied to Mark

@eichin
Seems so. The wikipedia page for neko even has a section about other software using its sprites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_(software)#Other_appearances that's larger than the article itself.

@nina_kali_nina @netkitty

6 February at 16:08 | Open on schottkydio.de
Nina Kalinina replied to Mark

@eichin @netkitty please look closely, the art is very different!
6 February at 16:08 | Open on tech.lgbt
Mark Eichin replied to Nina

@nina_kali_nina
Oh, yeah, I guess I just cued on the line style and the sitting-up one, but on closer inspection (even discounting the color) they are much more different than I realized. Thanks, the closeups make this much more obvious!
@netkitty

6 February at 16:39 | Open on mastodon.mit.edu
Gorgeous na Shock!

@nina_kali_nina @netkitty Eat your hearts out, PF Magic and Neko98. 😺

6 February at 16:47 | Open on mastodon.social
ĸurth
Lily

@nina_kali_nina
> TRON specifies a standard data bus for data exchange between the apps, so it only makes sense they'd do that.

this and the way window management is done via right click gives me very plan9 vibes

i wonder if someone at bell labs used a system like this.

7 February at 12:42 | Open on glaceon.social
Nina Kalinina

@lily I think both are based on Xerox PARC concepts. The author of the OS mentions that he saw Alto and was majorly inspired, but couldn't work on related concepts at first due to politics

7 February at 13:21 | Open on tech.lgbt
David JONES

@nina_kali_nina time for a cup of tea; does it really take that long? In the 1990s, for Garbage Collection purposes, we joked about having a range of mouse-wait icons for various expected GC pause times: wristwatch / cup-of-tea / bedtime / star-exploding.

6 February at 14:50 | Open on typo.social
ĸurth
Andrew Warkentin

@nina_kali_nina I have both Chokanji 4 and V running in QEMU 5.2.0. 4 installs fine without any special considerations. The issue with V is that Chokanji's VMware driver doesn't get along with QEMU's limited and somewhat broken implementation of the VMport. Disabling the VMport by using the -M pc,vmport=off option to QEMU fixes the VMport incompatibility (4 lacks the VMware driver). The only other QEMU-related issue I've found is the floppy doesn't work so you have to boot from CD

7 February at 6:09 | Open on social.restless.systems
F4GRX Sébastien

@nina_kali_nina i knew that nspire and bada OS were running on *nucleus*

Why is the tron name never mentioned?

6 February at 15:18 | Open on chaos.social
Nina Kalinina

@f4grx because TRON is more of a specification, and I guess it is obscure enough to not mention it outside of devs. Wikipedia does mention TRON a few times on Nucleus RTOS page.

6 February at 15:51 | Open on tech.lgbt
Chip

@nina_kali_nina Since TRON is more of an architectural specification than a concrete OS implementation, I’m guessing these have way more differences than similarities. Was there a common (presumably commercial) ancestor for most TRONs, or is it really a diversity of OSes sharing a common specification?

6 February at 18:30 | Open on awesome.garden
Nina Kalinina

@bytex64 there's a bunch of open-source kernels that work on very wide range of hardware, from 8051 to RP2040, and the license allows using the code mostly free, it seems.

6 February at 20:08 | Open on tech.lgbt
Kevin Granade

@nina_kali_nina oh wow that takes me back. My first job out of college was at Mentor Graphics working on the networking stack and their internal openSSL.

I doubt it's available anywhere but they had a solution for running Nucleus on top off Windows. Not an emulator but an API shim like Wine.

6 February at 17:04 | Open on tech.lgbt
Nina Kalinina

@kevingranade thank you for your work! I've been using Nucleus-based phones from 2005 to 2010 and absolutely loved them. Sadly, very few manufacturers released API for their phones back then or even allowed installing native applications, but mine did ;p

6 February at 17:09 | Open on tech.lgbt
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