AmigaDOS pioneer Dr. Tim King dies at 70
Obituary: AmigaDOS developer Dr. Tim King has passed away
Dr. Tim King, a key developer of AmigaDOS, has passed away at the end of July. King studied computer science at Cambridge, where he created the Tripos operating system. He later brought Tripos to MetaComCo, where it was adapted for the Amiga and became AmigaDOS. After MetaComCo, he founded Perihelion, focusing on parallel processing and transputers, and later the ISP UK Online. His work left a lasting mark on the Amiga's software history.
"King has made a significant contribution to the history of the Amiga."
- goatforce5
I dropped out of a decidedly average university to do customer support for the first ISP in Australia. After a couple of years of that, I got itchy feet and found myself in London, England. The plan was to follow the footsteps of many thousands of Australians before me, and get a job in a bar (note: I had zero experience in bar work), and get enough money to hang out in London for a while, and maybe do some side trips into Europe.
It was '96 or '97, and the dotcom boom was just getting started. Deciding to try my luck, I picked up one of the trade papers to look at the job listings. I bought myself a suit at Marks and Spencers and jumped on a tube to go to my first job interview. I took the tube home, and by the time I got to the other end I had a message waiting for me saying I got the job.
I found myself reporting to the brilliant Jack Lang (https://www.cst.cam.ac.uk/news/farewell-jack-lang), tweaking software developed by Tim King's company, Perihelion. I really was just making minor tweaks to a bunch of perl scripts, so I managed to stumble through it and not make a total fool of myself. Even though I was working with folks with extremely impressive bodies of work behind them and I was just some scruffy backpacker dude, they were always kind and generous to me. I met some great people there.
I never did get a chance to learn how to pour a beer.
- alienbaby
Aww. Well, cheers for the large number of hours I spent with my Amiga, Dr King. I actually went through a phase of stripping my Amiga back so it booted exclusively to amigaDOS, without the full 'desktop' windowing system available. (~ if I remember this rightly)..
Which was a foot-gun when I came back to it years later, turned it on and discovered I had forgotten everything I needed to know to get it to do anything anymore!
I ended up putting the pack together for a local isp for Amiga users, TCP / ppp and all that jazz. Back when isp's were crawling out of the woodwork all over the place :)
- Cockbrand
I had never heard this name until now, but I owe Dr. Tim King a significant part of my career. Never having been a DOS user, AmigaDOS was my gateway drug to the command line interface, and to me learning the Linux CLI a few years later.
Thank you, Dr. King!
- Angostura
I knew him as the founder of UK Online - only met him a few times but he seems a really friendly, helpful guy. Sorry to hear of his passing
- muyuu
interview from October 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm-szurM5VY
*corrected date