Anyone ever heard of...

Data General created a separate business unit in the mid '70s called the Commercial Systems group to market systems to business VARs and end users. Previously DG tried to sell hardware/software on technical merits rather than a an overall "business solution" basis. DG sold pre-packaged hardware configurations along with proprietary Interactive COBOL or Business BASIC, and called the major products the "CS" line. This designation had nothing to do with the type of computer that came with a pre-determined configuration, only a crude approximation of the relative power or number of users supported within a given line. By 1982 DG eventually ended up with following CS product line: product processor # of users CS/10 microNova 1 CS/20 microNova 1 CS/30 microNova 3 CS/40 Nova 3 9 CS/50 Nova 4 15 CS/60 S/130 25 CS/70 C/150 32 CS/100 S/20 32 CS/200 S/140 64 Within each product line were sub-groups, usually given the designation "Cx", where "x" was the relative power, or number of users supported, by that sub-group. For example, the CS/40 had a C1, C3, C5 and C9 configuration which supported the corresponding number of users. DG originally used its RDOS operating system in 1975 for the first CS/40 system (yes, they started out with the CS/40 system as their first delivery). Marketing then said that a "real time system should not be used for business applications", so they chanced the name to ICOS (Interactive COBOL Operating System) which was the same as RDOS but with a different boot message. (Okay, hard-core Nova'files know that there was one "control/D" enhancement put on the operating system.) After 1981 DG finally decided to ship all CS systems with RDOS officially again as support of two "different" systems was not worth the marketing benefits (which were found to be none). The high-end CS/200 systems used AOS rather than RDOS. Most CS systems were DG ICOBOL based, but Business Basic was sometimes used. ICOBOL is still a useful product over 25 years later (and our company still provides products and services for this and other DG markets). The DG ICOBOL language was an extension of ANSI '74, and compiled to an intermediate code. This code was then "executed" by an interpreter written for each of the different DG hardware platforms. Program object files could be used on any DG computer without any changes or modifications whatsoever, as could the data files. It worked and overall worked quite well. Does this concept sound familiar to some "new technology" language touted today? Bruce Ray Wild Hare Computer Systems bkr(a)WildHareComputers.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf(a)siconic.com> To: "Classic Computers Mailing List" <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Saturday, February 03, 2001 11:10 AM Subject: Anyone ever heard of... Festival ---- http://www.vintage.org