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In Reply to: What is hell like? posted by Bruce Kendall on February 18, 2007 at 15:44:56:
... has never been a favourite of mine - with its counter-intuitive command set.That's not to say that Windows is any better - it may have a more intuitive user-interface but it has this nasty habit of gobbling system resources and going catatonic from time to time...
For my money, the finest desktop/depatrmental operating system to date just has to be CTOS (Convergent Technologies Operating System).
Back in 1982-ish, CTOS was already offering the following functionality on Intel 8088 and 8086 processor chipsets:
- Multi-tasking (1 foreground task + multiple background services)
- Multi-User (first distributed client-server environment)
- Plug&Play Networking (clustering interface in all workstations - just cable needed)
- Disk Sharing (all stations access server disk, local disk visible on server)
- Printer Sharing (with print spooling and "device driver" concept)By the mid 1980's, CTOS hardware had embraced modular design concepts and was sold in neat clip-together modules - by this time with Intel's iAPX chipsets (up to and including 80386):
I can recall at one stage having a system that resembled a bloody aircraft-carrier...
Unfortunately, when Convergent was acquired by Burroughs/Unisys, the company and its product began its slide into obscurity, as internal politics, internal competition for R&D funding, sheer greed, etc. saw CTOS die an unnatural death.
Sigh!
Follow Ups:
One other thing that helped kill BTOS-CTOS and that was it was
expensive compaired to the PC.
Too bad. It was a multiuser, multitasking networked OS
long before the Winblose.
I spent a total of 3 months (in 3 x 1-month slots) at Camarillo between 1987 and 1992...
Remember the orginal B20, & B21's?
They were brown.
Slow as molassesEver see an OfficeFile?
It took 2 of us to lift the 60mb disk drive.
... Sure, I remember the the B21/22 range - I was an instructor in Sales Training from mid-1982 to mid-1984 and cut my teeth on Multiplan and Word Processor.Later (around 1987) switched back to sales in Banking Sector and got immersed in BTOS and FSA Finesse and some home-grown data comm applications handling upstream SNA and downstream TDI-Poll/Select (where a B39 was used a concentrator for up to 16 x S4000 cheque processors and also for IBM host communications as well as logging everything to local disk for reporting).
Later, took over BTOS/CTOS Marketing and ran the show until the early 1990's...
I remember having a particularly soft spot for one 3rd party CTOS application - Fasport from Software Research, Inc. in Cleveland (Will Limkemann's firm) - particularly in it's final incarnation as Fasport2000. Developed some systems with that product:
a) Golf Scoring with real-time leaderboard display
b) HR Skills Inventory and Profile Matching
c) Audio Dealer Client Management and Inventory
d) Municipal Services Billing
e) Banking Behavioural and Credit Scoring
etc...I was particularly angry when - in 2000 - they quietly pulled the plug on CTOS (and still mutter about it from time to time).
BTW, did you ever manage to lay your hands on a copy of the one book on CTOS ever published - "Exploring CTOS"? I've still got mine...
I was waiting to see how the talk about merger of Windows NT and CTOS
would turn out. But CTOS-BTOS equipment was getting to expensive compaired to the PC and with PC's becoming so dominate I think
that's what killed the deal.
The Yapahnk plant was a major player in the testing and helping to
straighten out Convergent's B21 & B22.
Our QC guys were mortified when the toured CT plant and found out
what was really going on there. It took a lot of effert to get them to straighten up.
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