Convergent Technologies Operating System: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 21:40, 10 October 2006

Revision as of 01:49, 5 November 2006

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CTOS had many innovative features for its time.

The file system was hierarchical and allowed very long file names. Security was also hierarchical. If one knew the password, for example, for a volume, one could access any file or directory on that volume (hard disk.) Each volume and directory were referenced with delimiters to identify them, and could be followed with a file name, depending on the operation, i.e. [VolumeName]<DirectoryName>FileName.

The word processor was one of the first screen-oriented editors with many high-powered features, such as multiple views of the same file, cut/copy/paste, unlimited undo/redo, no typing lost after a crash, user-selectable fonts, and much more.

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Most of the system programs were written in [[PL/M]], an [[Algol]]-like language from [[Intel]] which compiled directly to object code without a [[runtime library]].

The system API was very elegantly presented to both high-level languages and assembly language. The assembler was very advanced, with a clever [[Lisp]]-like pattern-matching macro facility unmatched by almost any other assembler before or since.

There was a fantastic always-resident debugger.

The system shell was extensible — you could define new commands. Each command could request you fill out a form specifying the parameters it needed.

There was a very clever "rats" game, very cleverly using the programmable font generator to do simple graphics.

There was a transparent peer-to-peer network running over serial RS-422 cables, and later over twisted pair with RS-422 adapters. Each workgroup, called a "cluster," was connected via a daisy-chain topology to a server, called a "master." The workstations, normally diskless, were booted over the cluster network from the master, and could optionally be locally booted from attached hard drives.

There was a transparent peer-to-peer network running over twisted pair.

You could custom-link the operating system to add or delete features.

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A typical B25 system looks like the following:

CTOS is no longer marketed to new customers; former major customers included police forces, banks, airlines, the [[U.S. Postal Service]], the [[Drug Enforcement Administration]], the [[U.S. Army]] and the [[U.S. Coast Guard]]. The Coast Guard used the operating system from approximately 1986 until 2000.

[[CTOS B25.JPG]]

CTOS is no longer marketed to new customers; former major customers included police forces, banks, airlines, the [[U.S. Postal Service]], the [[Drug Enforcement Administration]], the [[U.S. Army]] and the [[U.S. Coast Guard]].

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