🚀 go-pugleaf

John Levine <jo...@taugh.com> writes:

> In article <504928995.556023147.9526...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> Peter Flass  <peter...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> More to the point, the /44 only implemented a subset of the 360's
>>> instruction set, so even with different peripherals it couldn't run
>>> any other OS.
>>
>>I understand there was a later microcode update so it could run OS/360.
>
> So the IBM web site says, but I doubt it was very popular.  Why get a
> machine with strange realtime peripherals if you want to run OS?
>
>>> Yes.  I never entirely understood the difference between BOS and DOS.
>>> I realize that BOS could run in 8K and DOS needed 16K, but what else
>>> did BOS leave out?
>>
>>I don't know that much about BOS either. I used to think it was a subset of
>>OS, but Bitsavers has some manuals and it appears it was a subset of DOS.
>>I'll have to read the manuals. I would assume it at least left out
>>multiprogramming. I think BOS could be run from cards.
>
> I've read the manuals too.  The card version of BOS was called BPS,
> and none of BOS, DOS, or TOS, could do multiprogramming until much
> later versions of DOS.  It looks to me like the disk management was
> even more primitive than DOS, with sets of disk tracks explicitly
> assigned to files, and it didn't work with more than 32K which
> suggests they used direct addressing and 16 bit adcons.

I implemented a multiprogrammed online system on a very early
version of DOS, long before DOS/VS.  I think ATTACH and friends
were pretty much there from the beginning.

Never saw BOS put to serious use, I think BOS gave you about a 4K
supervisor where DOS would be 10K or so.

-- 
Dan Espen