TOPS-10 /topsten/ , n. DEC 's proprietary OS for the fabled PDP-10 machines, long a favorite of hackers but now long extinct. A fountain of hacker folklore; see Appendix A. 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.