General Comprehensive Operating System
The General Comprehensive Operating System (usually given as the acronym, GCOS) was the most common operating system for Honeywell 6000 series mainframes and descendants, from Honeywell, and then Groupe Bull - themselves descendants of earlier machines (GE 600 series) from General Electric (GE). It was still in use recently (in its most recent versions - GCOS 7 and GCOS 8) on follow-on machines from Groupe Bull.
GCOS itself was an evolution of the earlier GECOS (General Electric Comprehensive Operating Supervisor) from GE, from before Honeywell bought GE's mainframe computer business, when GE decided to leave that market (although early Honeywell documentation continued to call it GECOS). Groupe Bull, in turn, inherited GCOS when Honeywell in turn decided to exit the large-scale computer business.
GCOS did mot initially support virtual memory; the machines on which it then ran only had base and bounds memory management hardware.
It was originally developed by GE for the GE 600 series in 1962–1964; GE released GECOS I in April, 1965, on the GE-635.
External links
- GECOS - for the GE-6xx
- GE-635 Comprehensive Operating Supervisor (July 1964)
- GECOS-III
- Large Systems - numerous GECOS sub-folders
- GCOS - at the Multics Wiki; contains much information about GCOS
- From GECOS to GCOS8: Part II - The Honeywell years
