Tim King, AmigaDOS developer, has died
Points and comments are a snapshot, not live.
AmigaDOS developer Dr. Tim King died in late July 2026, his family confirmed.
King earned his Ph.D. at Cambridge in 1979, where he created the Tripos operating system. In 1984, King joined MetaComCo and brought Tripos, which became AmigaDOS after integration into the Amiga. He later founded Perihelion (operating systems, parallel processing) and ISP UK Online.
What commenters are saying
Commenters expressed gratitude and shared personal stories. Many credited AmigaDOS as their introduction to command-line interfaces and C programming. Several noted King's 68000 port of TRIPOS saved the Amiga launch after the original CAOS project failed. Others shared memories of meeting King or using UK Online. A video interview from October 2021 was linked.
Some commenters discussed the technical history: TRIPOS was developed at Cambridge, the Amiga team contracted out CAOS but it failed, and King's existing 68000 port was adopted instead. One commenter noted TRIPOS/BCPL code persisted in Amiga's dos.library until v36.