| CTOS/BTOS [message #419747] |
Fri, 24 March 2023 04:46  |
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Originally posted by: vallor
Thought I'd better introduce myself:
I was in the USCG in the 80's, and we used the Convergent
Technologies Operating System (CTOS), which became _BTOS_
(Burroughs)(that is to say, Unisys) while I was in the service.
I was the ship's "systems manager".
CTOS was a message-passing microkernel OS that had almost
transparent access to some devices over the network. The shell
on it was the "Executive", where the user would fill out
a form with all of a command's options, then hit a special
"go" button on the keyboard. I thought that was a great interface.
And it was a great operating system, ahead of its time in a lot
of ways. They wrote it in assembly: I believe the source files
were entitled "Project Olympia".
Does this even count as computer folklore? The processors
they used in the New Generation (NGEN) CTOS/BTOS workstations
were a bit unusual: 80186's.
--
-Scott Doty
vallor@vallor.earth
(my email address does work)
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| Re: CTOS/BTOS [message #419748 is a reply to message #419747] |
Fri, 24 March 2023 07:12  |
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Originally posted by: gareth evans
On 24/03/2023 08:46, vallor wrote:
>
> Does this even count as computer folklore? The processors
> they used in the New Generation (NGEN) CTOS/BTOS workstations
> were a bit unusual: 80186's.
30 years ago I was part of the design team of a PABX that
used the 80186, the Interconnect Ltd I3000.
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| Re: CTOS/BTOS [message #419749 is a reply to message #419747] |
Fri, 24 March 2023 18:48 |
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Originally posted by: drb
> CTOS was a message-passing microkernel OS that had almost
> transparent access to some devices over the network. The shell
> on it was the "Executive", where the user would fill out
> a form with all of a command's options, then hit a special
> "go" button on the keyboard. I thought that was a great interface.
There's a fellow, AJ Palmgren, who has attended the VCFmw show several
times who has a number of these and has been working to sort out various
problems and learn about them. He has a youtube channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/@ConvergentMightyFrame/featured
De
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| Re: CTOS/BTOS [message #419754 is a reply to message #419749] |
Sat, 25 March 2023 04:20 |
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Originally posted by: vallor
On Fri, 24 Mar 2023 22:48:38 +0000, Dennis Boone wrote:
>> CTOS was a message-passing microkernel OS that had almost
>> transparent access to some devices over the network. The shell on it
>> was the "Executive", where the user would fill out a form with all of
>> a command's options, then hit a special "go" button on the keyboard.
>> I thought that was a great interface.
>
> There's a fellow, AJ Palmgren, who has attended the VCFmw show several
> times who has a number of these and has been working to sort out various
> problems and learn about them. He has a youtube channel here:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/@ConvergentMightyFrame/featured
>
> De
Thank you for the pointer, I've subscribed to his
channel. :)
--
-v
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| Re: CTOS/BTOS [message #419905 is a reply to message #419754] |
Mon, 10 April 2023 15:45 |
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Originally posted by: Timothy McCaffrey
On Saturday, March 25, 2023 at 4:20:58 AM UTC-4, vallor wrote:
> On Fri, 24 Mar 2023 22:48:38 +0000, Dennis Boone wrote:
>
>>> CTOS was a message-passing microkernel OS that had almost
>>> transparent access to some devices over the network. The shell on it
>>> was the "Executive", where the user would fill out a form with all of
>>> a command's options, then hit a special "go" button on the keyboard.
>>> I thought that was a great interface.
>>
>> There's a fellow, AJ Palmgren, who has attended the VCFmw show several
>> times who has a number of these and has been working to sort out various
>> problems and learn about them. He has a youtube channel here:
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/@ConvergentMightyFrame/featured
>>
>> De
> Thank you for the pointer, I've subscribed to his
> channel. :)
>
> --
> -v
That is a the Convergent Unix (nee CTIX) system, not CTOS (and I think it used 68000s, not 8086s).
I think you could hook up CTOS systems to CTIX and have the CTIX systems provide services to
the CTOS systems, but I never had the "pleasure" of working with CTIX (although we did have
several at one point).
I worked with BTOS systems quite a bit, 30+ years ago. When they switched to protected mode
they (Convergent) made some really iffy design decisions that badly affected some aspects of the
performance.
I think the original OS was written in PL/M. It may have been ported to C later on when they moved
up to the 386 & 32 bit.
- Tim
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