Gcos

3 definitions found

From Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (Version 1.9, June 2002) [vera]:

  GCOS
       General Comprehensive Operating System (Honeywell, OS, Honeywell Series
       60, Honeywell Series 6000)
       
       



From Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) [jargon]:

  GCOS /jee'kohs/ n. A {quick-and-dirty} {clone} of System/360 DOS that
     emerged from GE around 1970; originally called GECOS (the General
     Electric Comprehensive Operating System). Later kluged to support
     primitive timesharing and transaction processing. After the buyout of
     GE's computer division by Honeywell, the name was changed to General
     Comprehensive Operating System (GCOS). Other OS groups at Honeywell
     began referring to it as `God's Chosen Operating System', allegedly in
     reaction to the GCOS crowd's uninformed and snotty attitude about the
     superiority of their product. All this might be of zero interest, except
     for two facts: (1) The GCOS people won the political war, and this led
     in the orphaning and eventual death of Honeywell {{Multics}}, and (2)
     GECOS/GCOS left one permanent mark on Unix. Some early Unix systems at
     Bell Labs used GCOS machines for print spooling and various other
     services; the field added to `/etc/passwd' to carry GCOS ID information
     was called the `GECOS field' and survives today as the `pw_gecos' member
     used for the user's full name and other human-ID information. GCOS later
     played a major role in keeping Honeywell a dismal also-ran in the
     mainframe market, and was itself mostly ditched for Unix in the late
     1980s when Honeywell began to retire its aging {big iron} designs.
  
  

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  GCOS
       
           /jee'kohs/ An {operating system} developed
          by {General Electric} from 1962; originally called GECOS (the
          General Electric Comprehensive Operating System).
       
          The GECOS-II operating system was developed by {General
          Electric} for the 36-bit {GE-635} in 1962-1964.  Contrary to
          rumour, GECOS was not cloned from {System/360} [{DOS/360}?] -
          the GE-635 architecture was very different from the {IBM 360}
          and GECOS was more ambitious than DOS/360.
       
          GE Information Service Divsion developed a large special
          multi-computer system that was not publicised because they did
          not wish {time sharing} customers to challenge their bills.
          Although GE ISD was marketing {DTSS} - the first commercial
          time sharing system - GE Computer Division had no license from
          Dartmouth and GE-ISD to market it to external customers, so
          they designed a time-sharing system to sell as a standard part
          of GECOS-III, which replaced GECOS-II in 1967.  GECOS TSS was
          more general purpose than DTSS, it was more a programmer's
          tool (program editing, e-mail on a single system) than a BASIC
          TSS.
       
          The {GE-645}, a modified 635 built by the same people, was
          selected by {MIT} and {Bell} for the {Multics} project.
          Multics' infancy was as painful as any infancy.  Bell pulled
          out in 1969 and later produced {Unix}.
       
          After the buy-out of GE's computer division by {Honeywell},
          GECOS-III was renamed GCOS-3 (General Comprehensive Operating
          System).  Other OS groups at Honeywell began referring to it
          as "God's Chosen Operating System", allegedly in reaction to
          the GCOS crowd's uninformed and snotty attitude about the
          superiority of their product.  [Can anyone confirm this?]
          GCOS won and this led in the orphaning and eventual death of
          Honeywell {Multics}.
       
          Honeywell also decided to launch a new product line called
          Level64, and later DPS-7.  It was decided to mainatin, at
          least temporarily, the 36-bit machine as top of the line,
          because GCOS-3 was so successfull in the 1970s.  The plan in
          1972-1973 was that GCOS-3 and Multics should converge.  This
          plan was killed by Honeywell management in 1973 for lack of
          resources and the inability of Multics, lacking {databases}
          and {transaction processing}, to act as a business operating
          system without a substantial reinvestment.
       
          The name "GCOS" was extended to all Honeywell-marketed product
          lines and GCOS-64, a completely different 32-bit operating
          system, significanctly inspired by Multics, was designed in
          France and Boston.  GCOS-62, another different 32-bit low-end
          DOS level was designed in Italy.  GCOS-61 represented a new
          version of a small system made in France and the new DPS-6
          16-bit {minicomputer} line got GCOS-6.
       
          When the intended merge between GCOS-3 and Multics failed, the
          Phoenix designers had in mind a big upgrade of the
          architecture to introduce {segmentation} and {capabilities}.
          GCOS-3 was renamed GCOS-8, well before it started to use the
          new features which were introduced in next generation
          hardware.
       
          The GCOS licenses were sold to the Japanese companies {NEC}
          and {Toshiba} who developed the Honeywell products, including
          GCOS, much further, surpassing the {IBM 3090} and {IBM 390}.
       
          When Honeywell decided in 1984 to get its top of the range
          machines from NEC, they considered running Multics on them but
          the Multics market was considered too small.  Due to the
          difficulty of porting the ancient Multics code they considered
          modifying the NEC hardware to support the Multics compilers.
       
          GCOS3 featured a good {Codasyl} {database} called IDS
          (Integrated Data Store) that was the model for the more
          successful {IDMS}.
       
          Several versions of transaction processing were designed for
          GCOS-3 and GCOS-8.  An early attempt at TP for GCOS-3, not
          taken up in Europe, assumed that, as in {Unix}, a new process
          should be started to handle each transaction.  IBM customers
          required a more efficient model where multiplexed {threads}
          wait for messages and can share resources.  Those features
          were implemented as subsystems.
       
          GCOS-3 soon acquired a proper {TP monitor} called Transaction
          Driven System (TDS).  TDS was essentially a Honeywell
          development.  It later evolved into TP8 on GCOS-8.  TDS and
          its developments were commercially successful and predated IBM
          {CICS}, which had a very similar architecture.
       
          GCOS-6 and GCOS-4 (ex-GCOS-62) were superseded by {Motorola
          68000}-based {minicomputers} running {Unix} and the product
          lines were discontinued.
       
          In the late 1980s Bull took over Honeywell and Bull's
          management choose Unix, probably with the intent to move out
          of hardware into {middleware}.  Bull killed the Boston
          proposal to port Multics to a platform derived from DPS-6.
          Very few customers rushed to convert from GCOS to Unix and new
          machines (of CMOS technology) are still to be introduced in
          1997 with GCOS-8.  GCOS played a major role in keeping
          Honeywell a dismal also-ran in the {mainframe} market.
       
          Some early Unix systems at {Bell Labs} used GCOS machines for
          print spooling and various other services.  The field added to
          "/etc/passwd" to carry GCOS ID information was called the
          "{GECOS field}" and survives today as the "pw_gecos" member
          used for the user's full name and other human-ID information.
       
          [{Jargon File}]
       
          (1998-04-23)