Talk:General Comprehensive Operating System

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The comment in this article "While GCOS is no longer in use..." is not accurate. Bull (Europe) still has several operating systems called GCOS. One, GCOS 8, is the direct descendent of the original GECOS. The company I work for still has numerous applications running in the GCOS-8 environment on machines owned and operated by Bull Services in Phoenix, AZ...Bob

Seconded. The aforementioned paragraph must be removed. The "GCOS is no longer in use" bit contradicts information found further in the article and the bit about pw_gecos is redundant with i. f. f. i. t. a. -- Paul Tergeist

There's also an open-source BIOS for the Nintendo Gamecube with this name.

I second (third?) the first paragraph. I worked in a GCOS shop from 1975 to 1992 and was active in the GCOS Community. There are a few other inaccuracies. To the best of my recollection from ancient software manuals, the acronyms GECOS and the other GE* acronyms (e.g. GEMAP) never stood for General Electric ... It was always "GEneral Comprehensive Operating Supervisor", "GEneral Macro Assembly Program", etc. Also, GCOS 8 was not a simple renaming of GCOS III for the DPS/8. GCOS 8 was the OS for the 'New System Architecture' which was a virtual memory architecture with segmentation and paging which the GCOS III systems did not have. Finally, If GECOS/GCOS owes anything to any IBM OS, it is only that the batch job control is vaguely reminiscent of that for the IBM 700/7000 series. -- Mark Sapiro

Can I suggest to move this page to its full name rather than GCOS? This acronym is also used by the climate community to designate the Global Climate Observing System, which has its own page. Users of Wikipedia searching for 'GCOS' should reach an appropriate disambiguation page. Michel M Verstraete 21:50, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Operating System or Supervisor?

The GE 635 programming reference and the Honeywell GCOS manual for GCOS-III say "Supervisor". Can anyone cite a trustworthy source for the "S" in GCOS standing for "System"? Odam 07:55, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

If memory serves me it's actually General Comprehensive Operative Supervisor - I have some GCOS 6 Mod 400 (Level 6/DPS 6/DPS 6000) manuals somewhere and I'll see if I can find the full wording. Ian Dunster 18:13, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I've had a look and AFAIKS nowhere does any of them give the full wording! - I did have a "GCOS 6 Mod 400 Programmmer's Pocket Guide" somewhere that I think DID give the full name but that's disappeared. Ian Dunster 09:44, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] History

The original 600 series systems were intended to compete with and replace IBM 7090 series systems which were also 36-bit systems. The GE 600 series systems employed a Base Address Register that allowed the OS to segment memory dynamically providing both efficiency and program isolation.