GCOS! | |
GCOS is the collective name for a group of mostly-unrelated operating systems | |
from GE, Honeywell, and Bull/Atos. GCOSes run on systems ranging from the | |
Level 61 small business minicomputer to large mainframes like the DPS | |
9000/TA300. | |
GCOS 61: Long-dead OS for the Level 61 system inherited from Bull. Primitive. | |
GCOS 62 (GCOS 4): Minicomputer OS. EOL'd in Bull's markets in the late 1980s, | |
but a variant is still sold by NEC (under emulation) as ACOS-2. | |
Level 6 (GCOS 6): Minicomputer OS. Multics-like command shell. Sold for both | |
technical/control workloads and business workloads. Killed circa 1991 and | |
migrated to an AIX-based emulation environment, HVX. | |
Level 64 (GCOS 7): Entry mainframe ("midframe") OS. 32-bit, EBCDIC, and has a | |
robust UNIX environment (which also provides services for TCP/IP.) Large but | |
declining customer base in Western Europe, almost none in the US. NEC sells a | |
variant as ACOS-4, running on custom CISC CPUs; Bull's own systems were | |
moved to emulation on x86 and Itanium systems around 2001. | |
Level 66 (GCOS 8): The high end of the GCOS family. Originated at GE circa | |
1962, runs on 36-bit mainframes (until ~2006) and under emulation on Itanium. | |
GCOS 8 still has customers in both America and Europe. NEC sold a variant as | |
ACOS-6 after inheriting Toshiba's mainframe customer base, but mostly | |
abandoned 36-bit systems through the 1990s and repositioned ACOS-4 as the top | |
end of their product family. | |
A writeup I did on GCOS 8 history, hosted with permission at linkerror.com | |
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