/tops-ten/ DEC's proprietary OS for the fabled PDP-10 machines, long a favourite of hackers but now effectively extinct. A fountain of hacker folklore. See also ITS , TOPS-20 , TWENEX , VMS , operating system . TOPS-10 was sometimes called BOTS-10 (from "bottoms-ten") as a comment on the inappropriateness of describing it as the top of anything.
[ Jargon File ]