Branching the thread away from Compaq deskpro boards: "What We Have Lost"

[Paul Berger]

On 2021-08-01 1:14 p.m., Zane Healy via cctalk wrote:
> On Aug 1, 2021, at 7:10 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>> CP/M is surprisingly alive for something so old and rudimentary and
>> seeing some activity, e.g. CPMish, but I don't think anyone would
>> claim it has much of a future. CCP/M is dead although I think Toshiba
>> just about supports 4680 and 4690.
> I have to admit, this one surprises me.
>
>> I'm struggling to think of anything else. There are things but they're
>> even more niche than say Haiku. Redox OS? Genode? HelenOS?
> OpenVMS 9.2 will run on x86, as does the 9.1FT that’s currently out.  I believe they’ve even had it running on an Atom-based board.
>
> z/OS runs on IBM Mainframes, there is also “IBM i”, which was previously called OS/400.
>
OS/400 is a direct descendant of the operating system on S/38 one of the 
actual products that was based on ideas from the "Future Systems" 
project of the 1970s. It also had some of the ease of use features of 
the S/36 operating system rolled into it.  Even the hardware of the 
first AS/400 systems was similar to the S38. Besides the single level 
store, another major feature was user programs ran on a microcode layer 
that hid the actual hardware, this allowed for significant changes to 
the underlying hardware during the lifetime of the systems without 
impact to customer programs.

The hardware of the S/36 was much simpler and completely different it 
came from a series that started with S/32.  While unspectacular in terms 
of hardware S/36 was loved for it ease of use and the announcement of 
its demise was not well received by customers.

Paul.