Business Operating System (software)

Business Operating System
Developer	CAP Ltd
Written in	BOS/MicroCobol (based on COBOL with some similarities to Pascal)
OS family	p-code operating systems
Working state	Active
Initial release	1980;44 years ago
Latest release	GSMSP40 / 26/06/2023
Available in	English
Platforms	Intel 8080, Motorola 6800, Zilog Z80, PDP-11, VAX, IBM Series/1
Kernel type	p-code virtual machine
Default; user interface	Command-line interface

Last updated September 03, 2024

The Business Operating System, or BOS, was initially developed as an early cross-platform operating system, originally for Intel 8080 and Motorola 6800 microprocessors and then for actual businesses and business models. The technology was used in Zilog Z80-based computers and later for most microcomputers of the 1980s. The system was developed by CAP Ltd, a British company that later became one of the world's largest information technology consulting firms. BOS and BOS applications were designed to be platform-independent.

Via a management buyout (MBO) in 1981, BOS was spun off to three interlinked companies, MPSL (MicroProducts Software Ltd) which looked after the sales and marketing of BOS, MPPL (MicroProducts Programming Ltd) which looked after both the development of BOS and various horizontal software packages, and MicroProducts Training Ltd. BOS was distributed on a global basis, mainly to the United States and the British Commonwealth, by a variety of independent and MPSL-owned companies.

A popular version was implemented on the Sage/Stride 68000 family based computers, and sold well in Australia. The Sage itself was initially developed using UCSD Pascal and p-code, so it fit well with the basic BOS design.

The small BOS dealer/distributor network as well as the system's command-line interface contributed to its decline, especially as this was at a time when graphical user interfaces (GUIs) were becoming popular. In 2013, the system was provided with an integrated GUI in order to provide a "simple to use" solution, which "learned" from its user's input.

MPSL developed numerous products for BOS, generally targeting horizontal markets, leaving vertical (industry-specific) markets to independent software vendors (ISVs). Examples of MPSL developed software include BOS/Finder (database), BOS/Planner (spreadsheet), BOS/Writer (word processor) and BOS/AutoClerk (report generator). Companies sold various BOS accounting software suites in the UK and United States. In the UK, BOS accounting packages were considered to be the industry standard by some accountants.

The accounts software was split into four sections: Sales Ledger, Invoices, Purchase Ledger, Daybook and Journal Entries. Data entry and ledger reports were compatible with the Autoclerk report generator. This feature was especially favoured by accountants and tax officials as it meant that a consultant could sit down with a programmer/operator of the BOS system to plan out and ensure that accounting information was presented in exactly the right way for official acceptance. In the early adoption of business microcomputers not having accounts correctly laid out was one of the biggest complaints by tax officials.

An interesting feature of the command line input was the use of the Esc key for line entry. This freed up the ENTER key (also called RETURN, as per typewriter keyboards) to allow the input of long lines of code and long spans of data entry.

BOS had its own job control language, named BOS/JCL. This made it easy to delegate otherwise complex operator tasks to non-technical office and shop-floor staff, especially given the intricacies of working with multiple floppy disks.

BOS applications were initially compiled to a p-code and interpreted as they ran. BOS had a p-code interpreter so efficient that programs, even the BOS/Writer word processor, ran sufficiently fast to satisfy users. A technical subsystem of the system programming software was made available to programmers wanting to write their own p-code microcobol instruction extensions. Apart from a 2-kilobyte (Kb) server (computing)/host kernel, BOS is written in BOS/MicroCobol, a language based on COBOL but with system-level programming constructs added and elements of structured programming, which bore a vague similarity to Pascal. In recent computing, programming languages such as Java have re-introduced the concept of p-code "virtual machines". As the BOS system evolved, the need for programming in ASP.net developed for quicker accessibility and cloud computing. Harrell & Son took the next steps to bring BOS back into the picture on a larger scale.

BOS initially required 48 Kb of RAM and two 176 Kb 5.25" double-sided floppy disks, though it was more commonly deployed on machines equipped with 64 kilobytes of RAM and a hard drive. A computer with 128 KB RAM and a 10-megabyte (MB) hard drive could run as many as five concurrent users. When the IBM PC XT came out in 1983, BOS served over eight concurrent dumb terminals on it. At the time, this made BOS very attractive. Now, BOS runs on the same required RAM and serves up to 800,000 concurrent users as it is paired with cloud computing.

In the early 1980s, a minimum hardware BOS configuration might have comprised: North Star Horizon Z80 cpu 48Kbyte ram & 2x 5.25" SA-400 single-density double-sided minifloppy drive (each side used 35/40 tracks to give 176 Kb formatted, ie. BOS used the North Star NSDOS file system), Lynx 24x80 green vdu, DEC LA120 lineprinter/typewriter. Frequent diskette swapping was required during a program run, a good programmer/operator could minimise these essential changes by detailed logical planning. Not every business could quickly afford the newly available hard drives and many company managers were just reluctant to spend more and more upon what they already thought was expensive enough in the first place. Getting an accounts system up and running often involved countless hours poring over thousands of pages of illegible and inaccurate hand-written accounts in traditional ledger books. This is where the journal entry features came in really useful in order to bypass having to enter thousands of useless historical records, it was possible to reach an agreement with the accountants as to what figures should be given an initial fudge factor in order to artificially balance the software ledgers prior to going live with the new accounts system. The software was flexible enough to allow internal adjustments to data. The genius of CAP, or CAP-CPP as it was more correctly called, was to anticipate these technical problems and the initial reservations of a suspicious middle-management, and this was essentially the success of BOS.

With user-management tools in the 1980s, and application programming interfaces in the mid-1980s, BOS was considered an alternative even to the platform-specific operating systems on machines such as the PDP-11 and the VAX. The reemergence of BOS has escalated the number of users requested to be entered into the PMM system, and may require consistent server updating.^{[ citation needed ]}

Despite, or because of, its command-line interface, BOS remains popular with medium to large organizations in the UK and US.^{[ citation needed ]}

Related Research Articles

The Jupiter Ace by Jupiter Cantab was a British home computer released in 1982. The Ace differed from other microcomputers of the time in that its programming environment used Forth instead of the more popular BASIC. This difference, along with limited available software and poor character based graphic display, limited sales and the machine was not a success.

The TRS-80 Micro Computer System is a desktop microcomputer launched in 1977 and sold by Tandy Corporation through their Radio Shack stores. The name is an abbreviation of Tandy Radio Shack, Z80 [microprocessor]. It is one of the earliest mass-produced and mass-marketed retail home computers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CP/M</span> Discontinued family of computer operating systems

CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. CP/M is a disk operating system and its purpose is to organize files on a magnetic storage medium, and to load and run programs stored on a disk. Initially confined to single-tasking on 8-bit processors and no more than 64 kilobytes of memory, later versions of CP/M added multi-user variations and were migrated to 16-bit processors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microcomputer</span> Small computer with a CPU made out of a microprocessor

A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (PCB). Microcomputers became popular in the 1970s and 1980s with the advent of increasingly powerful microprocessors. The predecessors to these computers, mainframes and minicomputers, were comparatively much larger and more expensive. Many microcomputers are also personal computers. An early use of the term "personal computer" in 1962 predates microprocessor-based designs. (See "Personal Computer: Computers at Companies" reference below). A "microcomputer" used as an embedded control system may have no human-readable input and output devices. "Personal computer" may be used generically or may denote an IBM PC compatible machine.

BBC BASIC is an interpreted version of the BASIC programming language. It was developed by Acorn Computers Ltd when they were selected by the BBC to supply the computer for their BBC Literacy Project in 1981.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Commodore 128</span> Home computer released in 1985

The Commodore 128, also known as the C128, C-128, or C= 128, is the last 8-bit home computer that was commercially released by Commodore Business Machines (CBM). Introduced in January 1985 at the CES in Las Vegas, it appeared three years after its predecessor, the Commodore 64, the bestselling computer of the 1980s. Approximately 2.5 million C128s were sold during its four year production run.

The MCM/70 is a pioneering microcomputer first built in 1973 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and released the next year. This makes it one of the first microcomputers in the world, the second to be shipped in completed form, and the first portable computer. The MCM/70 was the product of Micro Computer Machines, one of three related companies set up in Toronto in 1971 by Mers Kutt. It is considered by some historians to be the first usable personal microcomputer system.

Pertec Computer Corporation (PCC), formerly Peripheral Equipment Corporation (PEC), was a computer company based in Chatsworth, California which originally designed and manufactured peripherals such as floppy drives, tape drives, instrumentation control and other hardware for computers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beta BASIC</span> BASIC interpreter for the Sinclair Research ZX Spectrum microcomputer

Beta BASIC is a BASIC interpreter for the Sinclair Research ZX Spectrum microcomputer, written by Dr Andrew Wright in 1983 and sold by his one-man software house BetaSoft. BetaSoft also produced a regular newsletter/magazine, BetaNews.

The Memotech MTX500 and MTX512 are a range of 8-bit Zilog Z80A based home computers released by the British company Memotech in 1983 and sold mainly in the UK, France, Germany and Scandinavia. Originally a manufacturer of memory add-ons for Sinclair machines, Memotech developed their own competing computer when it was perceived the expansion pack business would no longer be viable.

A BBC Micro expansion unit, for the BBC Micro is one of a number of peripherals in a box with the same profile and styling as the main computer.

In the BBC Microcomputer System, the Tube is the expansion interface and architecture which allows the BBC Micro to communicate with a second processor, or coprocessor.

Torch Computers Ltd was a computer hardware company with origins in a 1982 joint venture between Acorn Computers and Climar Group that led to the development of the Communicator or C-series computer, a system based on the BBC Micro with a Z80 second processor and integral modem, intended as a viewdata terminal.

The BBC Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers designed and built by Acorn Computers Limited in the 1980s for the Computer Literacy Project of the BBC. The machine was the focus of a number of educational BBC TV programmes on computer literacy, starting with The Computer Programme in 1982, followed by Making the Most of the Micro, Computers in Control in 1983, and finally Micro Live in 1985.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TRS-80 Model II</span> Tandy Radio Shack small-business computer launched in 1979

The TRS-80 Model II is a computer system launched by Tandy in October 1979, and targeted at the small-business market. It is not an upgrade of the original TRS-80 Model I, but a new system.

The MRB Z 1013 was an East German single-board computer produced by VEB Robotron Riesa, which was primarily intended for private use and educational institutions. It was powered by a U880 processor and sold together with a membrane keyboard. Initially, the kit was equipped with 16 kilobytes of DRAM, which was later replaced by a 64 KB version.

Each time Intel launched a new microprocessor, they simultaneously provided a system development kit (SDK) allowing engineers, university students, and others to familiarise themselves with the new processor's concepts and features. The SDK single-board computers allowed the user to enter object code from a keyboard or upload it through a communication port, and then test run the code. The SDK boards provided a system monitor ROM to operate the keyboard and other interfaces. Kits varied in their specific features but generally offered optional memory and interface configurations, a serial terminal link, audio cassette storage, and EPROM program memory. Intel's Intellec development system could download code to the SDK boards.

Onyx Systems, Inc. was a computer hardware and software company founded in Cupertino, California in 1979 by Bob Marsh and Kip Myers, former managers in Zilog's systems group. It was one of the earliest vendors of microprocessor-based Unix systems.

ISIS, short for Intel System Implementation Supervisor, is an operating system for early Intel microprocessors like the 8080. It was originally developed by Ken Burgett and Jim Stein under the management of Steve Hanna and Terry Opdendyk for the Intel Microprocessor Development System with two 8" floppy drives, starting in 1975, and later adopted as ISIS-II as the operating system for the PL/M compiler, assembler, link editor, and In-Circuit Emulator. The ISIS operating system was developed on an early prototype of the MDS 800 computer, the same type of hardware that Gary Kildall used to develop CP/M.

The Micro Expander Model 1 is an S-100-based microcomputer introduced by Micro-Expander, Inc., in 1981. The computer was the brainchild of Lee Felsenstein, designer of the Sol-20, the first home computer. After his primary client and marketers of the Sol-20, Processor Technology, went out of business in 1979, Felsenstein founded a new company, Micro-Expander, Inc., in 1980. He gained the capital to sell his prototype of a successor to the Sol-20 as the Micro Expander Model 1 with help from some Swedish investors, primarily Mats Ingemanson, who was hired to market the computer.

References

External links

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.