Commercial Operating System

Commercial Operating System (COS)
Developer	Digital Equipment Corporation
Initial release	1972
Available in	English
Platforms	PDP-8, PDP-11, DECmate II
License	Proprietary
Preceded by	MS/8

Commercial Operating System (COS) is a discontinued family of operating systems from Digital Equipment Corporation.^[2]

They supported the use of DIBOL, a programming language combining features of BASIC, FORTRAN and COBOL.^[3] COS also supported IBM RPG (Report Program Generator).^[1]

Implementations

The Commercial Operating System was implemented to run on hardware from the PDP-8^[4] and PDP-11 families.

COS-310

COS-310 was developed for the PDP-8 to provide an operating environment for DIBOL. A COS-310 system was purchased as a package which included a desk, VT52 VDT (Video Display Tube), and a pair of eight inch floppy drives. It could optionally be purchased with one or more 2.5 MB removable media hard drives. COS-310 was one of the operating systems available on the DECmate II.^[a]^[b]

COS-350

COS-350 was developed to support the PDP-11 port of DIBOL, and was the focus for some vendors of turnkey software packages.^[5]

Pre-COS-350, a PDP 11/05 single-user batch-oriented implementation was released; the multi-user PDP 11/10-based COS came about 4 years later.^[1] The much more powerful PDP-11/34 "added significant configuration flexibility and expansion capability."^: p.69

Notes

^ the other was WPS-8
^ There was a product named COS-300, and some DEC manuals are named with both 300 & 310.

References

^ ^a ^b ^c DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION - Nineteen Fifty-Seven To The Present (PDF). Digital Equipment Corporation. 1978.
^ Binh Nguyen. Linux Dictionary. p. 424., citing "QUECID".
^ "Time-Sharing Uses Emphasized For DEC Datasystem 350 Series". Computerworld. July 30, 1975. p. 19. Dibol Under COS: The series operates under the Commercial Operating System (COS) 350, which provides timesharing with a high-speed response.
^ PDP 8/e Small Computer Handbook. Digital Equipment Corporation. 1973. pp. 2-19 thru 2-20.
^ "Time-Sharing Uses Emphasized For DEC Datasystem 350 Series". Computerworld. July 30, 1975. p. 19.

[5] the other was WPS-8

[6] There was a product named COS-300, and some DEC manuals are named with both 300 & 310.

[D1957-1] DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION - Nineteen Fifty-Seven To The Present (PDF). Digital Equipment Corporation. 1978.

[2] Binh Nguyen. Linux Dictionary. p. 424., citing "QUECID".

[3] "Time-Sharing Uses Emphasized For DEC Datasystem 350 Series". Computerworld. July 30, 1975. p. 19. Dibol Under COS: The series operates under the Commercial Operating System (COS) 350, which provides timesharing with a high-speed response.

[HandB.8e-4] PDP 8/e Small Computer Handbook. Digital Equipment Corporation. 1973. pp. 2-19 thru 2-20.

[7] "Time-Sharing Uses Emphasized For DEC Datasystem 350 Series". Computerworld. July 30, 1975. p. 19.

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