[1] : Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms (Version 1.9, June 2002)

gcos
     general comprehensive operating system honeywell, os, honeywell series
     60, honeywell series 6000
     
     

[2] : Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001)

gcos /jee'kohs/ n. a quick-and-dirty clone of system/360 dos that
   emerged from ge around 1970; originally called gecos the general
   electric comprehensive operating system. later kluged to support
   primitive timesharing and transaction processing. after the buyout of
   ge's computer division by honeywell, the name was changed to general
   comprehensive operating system gcos. other os groups at honeywell
   began referring to it as `god's chosen operating system', allegedly in
   reaction to the gcos crowd's uninformed and snotty attitude about the
   superiority of their product. all this might be of zero interest, except
   for two facts: 1 the gcos people won the political war, and this led
   in the orphaning and eventual death of honeywell multics, and 2
   gecos/gcos left one permanent mark on unix. some early unix systems at
   bell labs used gcos machines for print spooling and various other
   services; the field added to `/etc/passwd' to carry gcos id information
   was called the `gecos field' and survives today as the `pw_gecos' member
   used for the user's full name and other human-id information. gcos later
   played a major role in keeping honeywell a dismal also-ran in the
   mainframe market, and was itself mostly ditched for unix in the late
   1980s when honeywell began to retire its aging big iron designs.


see also:
quick-and-dirty clone multics big iron 

[3] : The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03)

gcos
     
         /jee'kohs/ an operating system developed
        by general electric from 1962; originally called gecos the
        general electric comprehensive operating system.
     
        the gecos-ii operating system was developed by general
        electric for the 36-bit ge-635 in 1962-1964.  contrary to
        rumour, gecos was not cloned from system/360 dos/360? -
        the ge-635 architecture was very different from the ibm 360
        and gecos was more ambitious than dos/360.
     
        ge information service divsion developed a large special
        multi-computer system that was not publicised because they did
        not wish time sharing customers to challenge their bills.
        although ge isd was marketing dtss - the first commercial
        time sharing system - ge computer division had no license from
        dartmouth and ge-isd to market it to external customers, so
        they designed a time-sharing system to sell as a standard part
        of gecos-iii, which replaced gecos-ii in 1967.  gecos tss was
        more general purpose than dtss, it was more a programmer's
        tool program editing, e-mail on a single system than a basic
        tss.
     
        the ge-645, a modified 635 built by the same people, was
        selected by mit and bell for the multics project.
        multics' infancy was as painful as any infancy.  bell pulled
        out in 1969 and later produced unix.
     
        after the buy-out of ge's computer division by honeywell,
        gecos-iii was renamed gcos-3 general comprehensive operating
        system.  other os groups at honeywell began referring to it
        as "god's chosen operating system", allegedly in reaction to
        the gcos crowd's uninformed and snotty attitude about the
        superiority of their product.  can anyone confirm this?
        gcos won and this led in the orphaning and eventual death of
        honeywell multics.
     
        honeywell also decided to launch a new product line called
        level64, and later dps-7.  it was decided to mainatin, at
        least temporarily, the 36-bit machine as top of the line,
        because gcos-3 was so successfull in the 1970s.  the plan in
        1972-1973 was that gcos-3 and multics should converge.  this
        plan was killed by honeywell management in 1973 for lack of
        resources and the inability of multics, lacking databases
        and transaction processing, to act as a business operating
        system without a substantial reinvestment.
     
        the name "gcos" was extended to all honeywell-marketed product
        lines and gcos-64, a completely different 32-bit operating
        system, significanctly inspired by multics, was designed in
        france and boston.  gcos-62, another different 32-bit low-end
        dos level was designed in italy.  gcos-61 represented a new
        version of a small system made in france and the new dps-6
        16-bit minicomputer line got gcos-6.
     
        when the intended merge between gcos-3 and multics failed, the
        phoenix designers had in mind a big upgrade of the
        architecture to introduce segmentation and capabilities.
        gcos-3 was renamed gcos-8, well before it started to use the
        new features which were introduced in next generation
        hardware.
     
        the gcos licenses were sold to the japanese companies nec
        and toshiba who developed the honeywell products, including
        gcos, much further, surpassing the ibm 3090 and ibm 390.
     
        when honeywell decided in 1984 to get its top of the range
        machines from nec, they considered running multics on them but
        the multics market was considered too small.  due to the
        difficulty of porting the ancient multics code they considered
        modifying the nec hardware to support the multics compilers.
     
        gcos3 featured a good codasyl database called ids
        integrated data store that was the model for the more
        successful idms.
     
        several versions of transaction processing were designed for
        gcos-3 and gcos-8.  an early attempt at tp for gcos-3, not
        taken up in europe, assumed that, as in unix, a new process
        should be started to handle each transaction.  ibm customers
        required a more efficient model where multiplexed threads
        wait for messages and can share resources.  those features
        were implemented as subsystems.
     
        gcos-3 soon acquired a proper tp monitor called transaction
        driven system tds.  tds was essentially a honeywell
        development.  it later evolved into tp8 on gcos-8.  tds and
        its developments were commercially successful and predated ibm
        cics, which had a very similar architecture.
     
        gcos-6 and gcos-4 ex-gcos-62 were superseded by motorola
        68000-based minicomputers running unix and the product
        lines were discontinued.
     
        in the late 1980s bull took over honeywell and bull's
        management choose unix, probably with the intent to move out
        of hardware into middleware.  bull killed the boston
        proposal to port multics to a platform derived from dps-6.
        very few customers rushed to convert from gcos to unix and new
        machines of cmos technology are still to be introduced in
        1997 with gcos-8.  gcos played a major role in keeping
        honeywell a dismal also-ran in the mainframe market.
     
        some early unix systems at bell labs used gcos machines for
        print spooling and various other services.  the field added to
        "/etc/passwd" to carry gcos id information was called the
        "gecos field" and survives today as the "pw_gecos" member
        used for the user's full name and other human-id information.
     
        jargon file
     
        1998-04-23
     
     
see also:
operating system general electric general electric ge-635 system/360 dos/360 
ibm 360 time sharing dtss ge-645 mit 
bell multics unix honeywell databases 
transaction processing minicomputer segmentation capabilities nec 
toshiba ibm 3090 ibm 390 codasyl database 
idms threads tp monitor cics motorola 68000 
minicomputers middleware mainframe bell labs gecos field 
jargon file 

Gcos >> G Words
Gcos, definition of term: Gcos
gcos_pag1.html

GCOS Home Page
... ..
http://www.wmo.ch/web/gcos/gcoshome.html, score=100, date indexed=December 21, 2005, 3:09 am

GCOS Project Group
...GCOS mailling list: gcos-l@thur.de. send subscribe/unsubscribe ... The GCOS power point presentation from CCC '99. The GCOS power point ... ..
http://www.gcos.de/, score=40, date indexed=December 30, 2005, 12:43 am

jargon, node: GCOS
...GCOS. GCOS: /jee'kohs/ /n./ A quick-and-dirty clone of System/360 DOS ... GCOS later played a major role in keeping Honeywell a dismal also-ran ... ..
http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/g/GCOS.html, score=32, date indexed=January 4, 2006, 9:08 am

Bull: GCOS 7 servers
...GCOS 7 Mainframes. GCOS 7 enterprise servers are the production ... They complete the existing GCOS 7 offer including the Bull DPS 7000/ ... ..
http://www.eis.bull.com/gcos7/, score=27, date indexed=November 24, 2005, 12:19 pm

GCOS 8 : NovaScale 9000
...Each GCOS 8 physical partition can run up to three copies of GCOS 8, ... up to 4 partitions (1 up to 4 GCOS, 0 up to 3 Open). The GCOS 8 ... ..
http://www.bull.com/servers/gcos8/products/novascale9000/novascale9000.htm, score=26, date indexed=December 19, 2005, 5:47 pm

GCOS 7: DPS 7000/XTA
...... access to GCOS from a navigator) or TNVIP (access to GCOS from a ... This is where GCOS 7 customers can put in this open side, databases ... ..
http://www.bull.com/servers/gcos7/products/dps7xtat.htm, score=25, date indexed=November 20, 2005, 4:37 am

GCOS 7 : La gamme Bull DPS 7000/XTA
...... access to GCOS from a navigator) or TNVIP (access to GCOS from a ... This is where GCOS 7 customers can put in this open side, databases ... ..
http://www.bull.com/servers/gcos7f/products/dps7xtat.htm, score=25, date indexed=November 17, 2005, 8:15 am

GCOS 8 : DPS 9000/TA300
...With the new version of the GCOS 8 SR5.2 software, GCOS 8 applications ... to the new version of GCOS 8 is smooth and simple for both the GCOS 8 ... ..
http://www.bull.com/servers/gcos8/products/dps9000ta300/dps9000ta300.htm, score=25, date indexed=January 14, 2006, 9:26 am

GCOS
... ..
http://www.wmo.ch/web/gcos/, score=24, date indexed=November 5, 2005, 10:58 pm

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