BTRON1, BTRON2, BTRON3

The BTRON project began with Matsushita Electric Industrial and Personal Media prototyping "BTRON286," an implementation on a 16-bit CPU 286 for the CEC machine described below. BTRON1 specifications include the BTRON1 Programming Standard Handbook, which describes the OS API, and the BTRON1 Specification Software Specification. which describes the OS API.

BTRON2 is planned to be implemented on TRONCHIP, and only the specification^[1] has been created and published. It is planned to be implemented on evaluation machines equipped with TRON chips made by Fujitsu^[2] and named "2B".^[3] One of its features is that all OS-managed computing resources such as memory, processes, and threads are handled in a real/pseudomorphic model, a feature of BTRON.

SIGBTRON's TRON chip machine MCUBE implemented "3B," which is 32-bit and uses an ITRON-specification RTOS (modified from "ItIs") for the microkernel. 3B and The B-right specification used in Cho-Kanji, etc. is "BTRON3" (currently, the microkernel is I-right); the specification that B-right/V conforms to is published as the BTRON3 specification.

μBTRON

This is a BTRON subset that was envisioned as a popular version. With the performance of computer hardware at the time of its conception, a computer that can implement the ideal BTRON would be a workstation-class computer, so it is also positioned as BTRON for general households.

BTRON is a subset of a dedicated machine with fixed applications (like a dedicated machine word processor), and is based on the concept of a "dedicated communication machine. Specific applications include "communication with oneself (creative activities)", "communication with others (Internet communication)", and "communication with machines" (e.g. data exchange with peripheral devices, such as digital cameras).^[4][5]

Linkage with the last peripheral device was envisioned as the key to adding functions to a dedicated machine to which no additional programs could be added. This peripheral device was called "electronic stationery". For communication with these peripherals, a prototype of the real-time "μBTRON bus" (see below) was developed. Note that BrainPad TiPO, a BTRON-equipped PDA realized later, was given the name "electronic stationery" and also called μBTRON, but it was not subsumed to become a dedicated machine and did not implement the μBTRON bus.

Hardware

TAD

For data handled by BTRON, a basic format for exchange called TAD (Tron Application Databus) has been defined, and basic data can be freely exchanged between arbitrary applications, advocating Databus. Standards have been established for text (including word-processing modifications) and graphics (both raster and vector), and for the rest, a header indicating the length of the chunks is common at the beginning, so that applications can skip over unsupported data if they find it. Data chunks are referred to as segments in the BTRON specification, etc.^[8]

In addition, since the TRON chip was big-endian, TAD was also designed in big-endian, but when BTRON286 was implemented, a quasi-TAD that was modified to little-endian was defined, and the current widely used implementations are all in that format, including the one on MCUBE that uses the TRON chip.

Image (raster) data is defined in the direction of adapting to any hardware scheme, including palette and direct specification, packed pixels and planes, and so on. Both are solid, uncompressed. For compression, only the MH (facsimile#1D encoding (MH)) method for black and white images was defined. There are working implementations of moving images,^[9] but there is no description of any time axis within the published TAD specification. In actual applications, there are some that store their own data as TAD segments according to TAD policy, but there are also some that read and write records directly instead of using TAD.

Real body/pseudo body

BTRON adopts a network-type model with an arbitrary directed graph structure called a real/pseudomorphic model as a file management model, instead of the conventional tree structure model with directories (folders). BTRON2 also manages all computer resources in a real/pseudo model. As for the functions provided to users, the real/pseudomodel of BTRON (BTRON1 and BTRON3, which are widely used implementations) is a convenient hypertext environment.

In the past, files and folders were used to distinguish between entities that contain data and indexes that point to them, but BTRON has done away with such distinction. In the body/pseudo-body model, the entire body of data is defined as a Real Object, and the part of the Real Object that points to another Real Object is defined as a Virtual Object.

A real body is like a file in the sense that it holds data, but it is also like a folder in the sense that it has the ability to point to another real body by the temporary body it contains as its contents.

While almost all current UNIX do not allow the creation of alias hard links that point to directories, BTRON's real/pseudo links are like hard links that can freely create arbitrary links including such links. In Unix, a link to the parent indicated by "..." is used. In Unix, the fact that there is only one link to the parent indicated by "..." is a problem, but this is not a problem in BTRON because it has abandoned tree-like management in the first place.

Confirmation that the real body is no longer referenced by deleting a link is done by the reference count method, as in the Unix file system, but since arbitrary structures are allowed, as is well known as a weakness of the reference-counting method, loops can cause the file system to occupy disk space even though it cannot be reached from anywhere. Currently, a function is implemented to check for such entities by disconnecting the file system or (in the case of system disks) booting the system in a special state and performing a check similar to fsck as well as the so-called stop-the-world method of garbage collection. In addition, most of the previous versions of the software

Also, unlike most previous file systems, the name ("real name") is basically not used for identification (as an ID) on the system side, so the user can give a name freely (currently there is a length limit for implementation reasons).

Currently, BTMemo for Windows is available as software that reproduces the feeling of using BTRON.

The existing implementations of BTRON3 and BTRON1 realize the above functions on a file system with multi-record functions: one file corresponds to one entity, has a record containing the data body, and also has a "link record" that points to a file corresponding to the entity to which the temporary body contained by the entity points. In addition, there is a "link record" that points to the file corresponding to the real body to which the temporary body that the real body contains points. Because of this design, the real body data by TAD itself is not affected by the way links are represented in the underlying system.

Real-time operation

The BTRON-specification OS is a real-time OS, capable of stably processing tasks that require real-time processing, such as video and audio. BTRON3 uses ITRON as a microkernel, and although care must be taken to avoid memory page-out, real-time processing is possible.

In Windows, the graphics card driver is tuned by the manufacturer, while in BTRON there is no such graphics acceleration, etc., so screen rewriting can feel slow. BTRON has short boot time, though it stems from its limited number of daemons and supported devices, which makes it less of an advantage compared to other operating systems.

HMI

Not only BTRON, but the TRON project has also standardized the human-machine interface and published it as the TRON Human Interface Standard Handbook, and BTRON's user interface is designed in accordance with this.

TRON code

BTRON (like OS/omicron, etc.) was designed on the premise of representing characters in 16 bits. The character code for TAD, the data format, is TRON code, which switches between multiple 16-bit planes by escaping 0xfe**, allowing the space to be expanded arbitrarily. The current implementation uses 32 bits as the internal code.

Start of the BTRON sub-project

The earliest records include the reference to "B-TRON" in "TRON Project" in the Proceedings of the International Conference on Microcomputer Applications '84 (1984), and "TRON Total Architecture" in "TRON Total Architecture," and "Proposal of a Unified Operation Model for BTRON" in "Information Processing" Vol. 26 No. 11 (1985/Nov, 25th Anniversary Special Issue).

In 1986, the BTRON Project was fully launched as a sub-project of the TRON Project, and the BTRON Technical Committee was established in the TRON Association. The initial concept was summarized in an article in IEEE Micro's special issue on TRON (Vol. 7, No. 2 (1987/Apr)), and can be read in "TRON Introduction," a translation of the same issue.

The June 1988 issue of TRON Review contains several screen shots and a report on BTRON286 by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.

In December 1988, the TRON Association released an outline of the "BTRON/286" specification, and the following year, in March 1989, Matsushita Electric completed a practical level machine that was designated as the "Educational PC Specification Standard Concept," which was intended for educational use as described in the next section.

Introduction plan for educational PCs

Based on the "Second Report on Educational Reform" issued by the Rinkyoin Council in April 1986, the Computer Education Development Center (CEC) was established in July of the same year under the joint jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. The CEC established the Educational Software Library in April 1987, and held a symposium in July 1987. In August of the same year, CEC called for prototypes of educational personal computers under the title of "CEC Concept Model '87", and the prototypes gathered in response to the call were exhibited to the public in July of the following year, showing a willingness to show the direction of educational personal computers.^[11][12]

In March 1989, CEC made the decision to use TRON for personal computers to be installed in schools.^[13] This seemed to be a stepping stone to the spread of (B)TRON, but it became the subject of a complaint in the trade issue described in the next section.

The keyboard and key layout of the "educational PC" presented at this time was not based on the TRON keyboard, but on the New JIS layout.

It is not unheard of to use a product that does not have a large market share for educational use, such as the Acorn Computer in the UK.

Trade Issues

In 1989, a report by the Office of the United States Trade Representative cited TRON as a trade barrier in Japan.

The details are as follows: "1989 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers" ("Report on Foreign Trade Barriers" (ISSN 0898-3887 1989)) issued by the USTR on April 12, 1989. Other Barriers" in the report on Japan's trade barriers in "1989 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers" ("Report on Foreign Trade Barriers" (ISSN 0898-3887) 1989 edition), in Section 7 "7. In Section 7 "7. OTHER BARRIERS", TRON was one of those listed with subsections such as "Large-scale Retail Stores Act". The naming of specific systems is bizarre compared to the others, which basically list fields.

The report points out that several US companies are also members of the TRON Association, but no US company is in a position to sell TRON-based PCs or communication devices, and that the Japanese government's support for TRON could give Japanese manufacturers an advantage, especially in the education sector (referring to the aforementioned CEC) and communication sector (referring to NTT's adoption of CTRON), which is already happening.

Furthermore, he points out that in the education field, TRON has enabled the emergence of US OS (specifically MS-DOS, OS/2, UNIX^[14] is being excluded from the huge new market, and that in the long run TRON could affect the entire market of electronics in Japan. The last paragraph of the report states that already on September 9, 1988 (and later), the U.S. had informed Japan of its interest in these matters, and that in March 1989 negotiations were underway to provide detailed specifications for NTT's requirements, and that further information on TRON was being investigated through the Japanese government. The report concludes.

The TRON Association protested in writing to the USTR representative in May, and TRON was removed.^[15] However, in June of the same year, the mass media reported "abandonment of BTRON adoption for educational PCs".^[16] For example, "Nikkei Computer" reported "BTRON-based educational PCs: Standardization virtually impossible".^[17] Although there were twists and turns, in the end, the introduction of BTRON proposed by CEC was not implemented, and what was introduced to school education was MS-DOS machines, including the PC-9801. This led to a period of stagnation for the TRON project, especially the BTRON project, with some labeling it as a "failure.

The background to this uproar is that in the 1990s, NEC had the majority share of the PC market, and at the time of the CEC selection in 1988, it was opposed by a coalition of all other companies, led by Matsushita, which also included IBM,^[13] "For example, note 25 of "TRON Today" in Shozaburo Nakamura's Dennou Mandara (1995 edition) says, "At the time, the anti-TRON forces were NEC and Microsoft, which had already established themselves. It is a well-known fact that NEC and Microsoft had already established their positions. In addition to the long-standing Japan-US trade friction, there was also the Japan-US high-tech friction of the 1980s, Japan bashing, the Nippon K.K. theory, the IBM industrial espionage case, and the cover illustration of the September 1983 issue of CACM,^[18] was still fresh in our minds, and TRON itself was still in its infancy. IEEE Micro ran a special issue on TRON (April 1987, for example), and there were factors that would have made TRON stand out in the US.

According to Eiji Oshita's "Masayoshi Son: The Young Lion of Entrepreneurship," Masayoshi Son, who had been working hard for some time to create an industry structure that would make his own business, software distribution, profitable, was agitated that TRON would cause Japanese industry to fall behind global standards and be left behind by the rest of the world. Masayoshi Son, who had been working hard to set up the industry so that it could profit from TRON, was about to "lay the rails for the destruction of TRON" with Yuji Tanahashi (then Director General of the Machinery and Information Industry Bureau) and Ryozo Hayashi (then Director of the Information Processing Promotion Division), who were introduced by Akio Morita. The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) stopped the introduction of TRON into schools.^[19] The book's headline reads "Stopping the spread of TRON at the water's edge".

There was an unusual display of opinion on the part of the TRON project on this matter. In the 60th issue of TRONWARE magazine edited and published by Personal Media Corporation (December 1999), p. 71, an article titled "People who blocked the TRON project" signed by the editorial staff introduced the aforementioned biography as someone who published a book "boasting of his achievements" (in blocking TRON). The article introduced Sun's opposition to the MSX and his apparent support for UNIX. Sakamura's testimony about the conference where Sun, Kazuhiko Nishi, and Sakamura got together was that it was supposed to be a conference for Unix engineers, and that he and Nishi talked about technology, but Sun talked about business and seemed to be out of place.　But overall, the article sums up the situation as "Is it right to destroy the seeds of original technology?

In December 1988, Softbank (then Softbank Japan Corp.) Publishing Department (now Softbank Creative) published a book titled "The Tron Revolution" (ISBN 4-89052-037-6).

PanaCAL ET

In preparation for the inclusion of "information" in the optional content of junior high school technology courses from 1993, the Ministry of Education started the "Educational Computer Assistance Program" in 1990.

In conjunction with this, Matsushita Communication Industrial released the PanaCAL ET, an educational personal computer equipped with the BTRON286-based OS "ET Master" as a BTRON machine. The hardware was based on the Panacom M, with enhanced 24-dot font ROM and other features for educational use.^[20]

However, most of the machines introduced to schools at this time were PC-9800 series, probably because they could inherit BASIC programs and data from word processing software, which had already been created in large numbers by enterprising teachers.

90s onwards

(Stub) The addition of this section is desired.

• December 1989 BTRON1 software specification released.
• December 1989 Development of a reservation system using BTRON by Japan Airlines
• 1990 Matsushita Communication Industrial releases PanaCAL ET equipped with BTRON1 specification (based on BTRON286) "ET Master
• 1991 Release of 1B/Note
• 1994 Release of 1B/V1, a general-purpose PC/AT compatible machine
• 1995 Release of 1B/V2
• 1996 Release of BrainPad TiPO
• 1996 Release of 1B/V3
• 1998 Release of B-right/V
• 1999 Release of Cho-Kanji (B-right/V R2)
• 2000 Release of Cho-Kanji 2 (B-right/V R2.5)
• 2000 Release of GT typeface
• 2001 Release of Cho-Kanji 3 (B-right/V R3)
• 2001 T-Engine and T-Kernel released
• 2001 Release of Cho-Kanji 4 (B-right/V R4)
• 2006 Cho-Kanji V (B-right/V R4.5)