I wonder why that's DEVS: and not D:. I thought it had been added post-TripOS but obviously not.
The manual is from May 1986, which is after Metacomco had ported TripOS for use on the Amiga. I'm pretty sure there was cross pollination.
Their assembler interface to dos in TripOS looks an awful lot like exec libraries too. It wouldn't surprise me if they didn't even have an assembler interface before commodore came along.
Essentially TripOS was a university project started in 1978, with the 68000 port started in 1981. A researcher from the university joined Metacomco in 1984 and brought the unfinished TripOS with him, this was around the time commodore got involved. He might have even based his decision on commodore becoming involved. It sounds a bit like Tim Paterson selling QDOS to Microsoft who had done a deal with IBM to supply the OS, hoping that they would be able to buy QDOS.
There is nothing to show what state TripOS was in at this point, because it was only used in a university lab and didn't get released commercially until after the Amiga was released. Some of the device features discussed before the Amiga was launched were dropped, so it's possible they took the exec concept of devices into TripOS as well. It would make sense to make the two systems as compatible as possible.
