12 Apr
2007
12 Apr
'07
10:06 p.m.
On 12/04/07, Ken <kenzolist at counterfolk.com> wrote:
[snip]
One day, I caught wind of a crisis in the newsroom:
"The mainframe is down!" Having had worked with mainframes (and minis and
PC's...) since I was 6 or 7, I decided to investigate to see if I could help out.
What I discovered were these terminals running an MS-DOS-based word processor (I
don't remember which one - was probably WordPerfect, and certainly not Wordstar), all
hooked up to a single IBM PC that had a set of about 5 interface cards driving those
terminals. Mainframe indeed!
My last two employers were both resellers of an operating system
called "BOS", later "Global System Manager". It originally did
basically the same thing, [1] running multi-user via serial
terminals, but on a vast range of hardware. It wasn't DOS, but
basically an interpreted system that provided a virtual but consistent
environment - 64K swap backed memory space per process (and up to 9 of
them per physical terminal!) and the data //AND APPLICATIONS// could
be copied over from one system to another without change, be it
sometihng PC based, pdp-11, rs/6000 .. I should see if I've still got
an old manual with a list of platforms in it..
software wise you were limited to accounting applications, some very
basic office style apps, and some third party vertical markets
(doctors systems, import control systems, etc). Company is still
going, but I wonder if there is anybody preserving the old stuff... I
know that when I was working in with them, a few years ago, they
didn't have any of the real old stuff any more.
[1]current version is just an app running under windows acting as a
standalone environment..
http://www.oneoffice3000.com/g2000.asp