BOS/360

History of IBM mainframe operating systems

On early mainframe computers: GM OS & GM-NAA I/O 1955 BESYS 1957 UMES 1958 SOS 1959 IBSYS 1960 CTSS 1961 On S/360 and successors: BOS/360 1965 TOS/360 1965 TSS/360 1967 MTS 1967 ORVYL 1967 MUSIC 1972 MUSIC/SP 1985

DOS/360 and successors 1966 DOS/VS 1972 DOS/VSE 1980s VSE/SP late 1980s VSE/ESA 1991 z/VSE 2005

OS/360 and successors 1966 MFT 1966 MFT II 1968 OS/VS1 1972 OS/VS1 BPE MVT 1967 65MP OS/VS2R1 (SVS) 1972 MVS (OS/VS2R2 and later) 1974 MVS/SE 1978 MVS/SE 2 1979 MVS/SP Version 1 1980 MVS/XA 1983 MVS/ESA 1988 OS/390 1995 z/OS 2000

VM line CP-40/CMS 1967 CP-67/CMS 1967 VP/CSS 1968 VM/370 1972 VM/BSE (BSEPP) VM/SE (SEPP) VM/SP 1980 VM/XA MA 1984 VM/XA SF 1985 VM/XA SP 1988 VM/ESA 1990 z/VM 2000

TPF line ACP 1967 TPF 1979 z/TPF 2005

UNIX and Unix-like UTS 1981 AIX/370 1990 AIX/ESA 1991 Linux 1999 OpenSolaris 2008 z/OS UNIX System Services

BOS/360 (Basic Operating System/360) was an early IBM System/360 operating system.

Origin

BOS was one of four System/360 Operating System Versions developed by the IBM General Products Division (GPD) in Endicott, NY to fill a gap at the low end of the System/360 line when it became apparent that OS/360 was not able to run on the smallest systems. BPS (Basic Programming support) was designed to run on systems with a minimum of 8K bytes of memory and no disk. BOS was intended for disk systems with at least 8K bytes and one 2311 disk drive. DOS and TOS were developed for systems with at least 16K bytes and either disks or tape drives.

BOS was released in October 1965, nearly two years before OS/360. Thus BOS was the only disk based operating system available at launch for a machine that was marketed as disk based.

Components

BOS consisted of the following components:

• Control programs:
  • The supervisor.
  • Job control capable of running jobs sequentially from the card reader.
  • The IPL loader.

• System Service Programs:
  • The Linkage Editor.
  • The Librarian, supporting a core-image library, and optionally a macro library and a relocatable library.
  • The "Load System Program," a sysgen program to build a disk-resident BOS system from cards.

• IBM-supplied processing programs which could be installed with BOS:
  • Language translators, an Assembler and an RPG compiler. Compilers for FORTRAN IV and COBOL were added later.
  • Autotest, a debugging aid.
  • Sort/Merge.
  • Utility programs for file-to-file copy between devices and formats.
  • Remote Job Entry allowing the BOS system to submit jobs to a remote System/360 and receive output.

• Data Management, consisting of supervisor support for Physical IOCS, and macros for Logical IOCS which could be incorporated into the user's processing programs.

References

• IBM System/360 Basic Programming Support and Basic Operating System/360 Programming Systems Summary. C24-3420-0. 1965.
• IBM System/360 Basic Operating System/360 Programmer's Guide. C24-3372-6. 1967.
• Pugh, Emerson W.; Johnson, Lyle R.; Palmer, John H. (1991). IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems, Cambridge : MIT Press. (pp. 321–345)

This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.