Operating Systems ~ Categorized

• ·         Batch Systems

     SCOPE, an acronym for Supervisory Control Of Program Execution, was the name used by the Control Data Corporation for a number of operating system projects in the 1960s.

SCOPE for the CDC 6000 series

This operating system was based on the original Chippewa Operating System. In the early 1970s, it was renamed NOS/BE for the CDC Cyber machines. The SCOPE operating system is a file-oriented system using mass storage, random access devices. It was designed to make use of all capabilities of CDC 6000 computer systems and exploits fully the multiple-operating modes of all segments of the computer. Main tasks of SCOPE are controlling job execution, storage assignment, performing segment and overlay loading. Its features include comprehensive input/output functions and library maintenance routines. The dayfile chronologically records all jobs run and any problems encountered. To aid debugging, dumps and memory maps are available. Under control of SCOPE, a variety of assemblers (COMPASS), compilers (ALGOL, FORTRAN, COBOL), and utility programs (SORT/MERGE, PERT/TIME, EXPORT/IMPORT, RESPOND,SIMSCRIPT, APT, OPTIMA etc.) may be operated. The computer emulation community has made repeated attempts to recover and preserve this software without success.

     BKY - A batch-oriented OS for the CDC 6600 at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories. Early 1970s.”  Professor Jim Mooney’s list of Batch Systems for Large Computer

• ·         Interactive Systems

Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) was an extremely influential early time-sharing operating system. The project was started in 1964.

It had numerous features intended to result in high availability so that it would produce a computing utility similar to the telephone and electricity services. Modular hardware structure and software architecture were used to achieve this. The system could grow in size by simply adding more of the appropriate resource—computing power, main memory, disk storage, etc. Separate access control lists on every file provided flexible information sharing and complete privacy when needed. It had a number of standard mechanisms to allow engineers to analyse the performance of the system as well as a number of adaptive performance optimisation mechanisms.

• ·         Real-time systems

PikeOS is a microkernel-based real-time operating system made by SYSGO AG. It is targeted at safety and security critical embedded systems. It provides a partitionedenvironment for multiple operating systems with different design goals, safety requirements, or security requirements to coexist in a single machine.

If several programs having different criticality levels are to coexist in one machine, the underlying OS must ensure that they remain independent. Resource partitioning is a widely accepted technique to achieve this. PikeOS combines resource partitioning and virtualisation: Its virtual machine environments (VMs) are able to host entire operating systems, along with their applications. Since PikeOS uses paravirtualisation, operating systems need to be adapted in order to run in one of its VMs. Application programs, however, can run unmodified.

• ·         Hybrid Systems

NeXTSTEP is the object-oriented, multitasking operating system developed by NeXT Computer to run on its range of proprietary workstation computers, such as the NeXTcube, and later, other computer architectures. NeXTSTEP was a combination of several parts:

·         a Unix-like operating system based on the Mach kernel, plus source    code from BSD

·         Display PostScript and a windowing engine

·         the Objective-C language and runtime

·         an object-oriented (OO) application layer, including several "kits"

·         development tools for the OO layers

• ·         Embedded Systems

Magic Cap (short for Magic Communicating Applications Platform) was an object-oriented operating system for PDAs developed by General Magic. Tony Fadell was in charge of the platform. 

Magic Cap incorporated a "room metaphor", where the user navigated from room to room to perform various tasks (E.G. a home office to perform word processing, or a file room to clean up the system files). The interface resembled that of Microsoft Bob, though Magic Cap lacked an office assistant.

Several electronic companies came to market with Magic Cap devices, the most notable of which being the Sony Magic Link released in 1994 and the Motorola Envoy, also released in 1994. None of these devices were commercial successes.