Abstract Many choices of VME hardware module now exist but software still continues to be the major cost in systems development. As development teams face more complex projects, productivity can be improved by four approaches: the use of standard system architecture, the use of software building blocks, the use of better tools and an increase in the level of software engineering management. Some characteristics of realtime systems programming are presented. Next an overview of the VMEbus is given. Then a target operating environment for 68000-based applications in PASCAL is described. The software components are called pSOS, pHILE and pROP. These provide the realtime executive or kernel, file management system and runtime support for PASCAL respectively. Languages other than PASCAL can be used with pSOS and pHILE, but a preference is expressed for PASCAL over the language C.