Computing Dictionary
EPOC definition
operating system A family of graphical
operating systems developed by
Psion for portable devices, primarily
PDAs. The name EPOC came from epoch, the beginning of an era, but was backfitted by the engineers to "Electronic Piece Of Cheese". The first version, later known as EPOC16, was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s for Psion's "
SIBO" (SIxteen Bit Organisers) devices. All EPOC16 devices feature an
8086-family processor and a 16-bit architecture. EPOC16 is a single-user
pre-emptive multitasking operating system, written in Intel 8086
assembler language and
C and designed to be delivered in
ROM. It supported a simple programming language called
OPL and an
IDE called
OVAL.
EPOC16 was followed by
EPOC32 in 1997.
(2009-05-26)