whatever happened to CTOS/BTOS

[Gregg Hamrick]

I was just curious... was a CTOS admin/programmer a few years back, loved the
OS, but after I left Unisys, never heard a thing about it. Anyone out there
still using my OS of choice?

--
*******************************************************************
* Gregg Hamrick email: gham...@bigdog.fred.net *
* Senior Systems Consultant hamr...@bah.com *
* Booz, Allen & Hamilton fax: 301-620-2213 *
* voice: 301-620-7762 *
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[Vince]

Yep - Still a few of us diehards around... I concur with your comments
about the OS. Beats the hell out of many of the more 'advanced' ones. NT is
pretty but it's still got some major shortcomings. Unfortunately we're
being forced that direction!

I'd like to hear from any other users too!

Gregg Hamrick <gham...@bigdog.fred.net> wrote in article
<51cjg6$u...@news.fred.net>...

[bagh...@best.com]

On 24 Sep 1996 22:35:25 GMT, "Vince" <vin...@203.97.78.1> wrote:

>Yep - Still a few of us diehards around... I concur with your comments
>about the OS. Beats the hell out of many of the more 'advanced' ones. NT is
>pretty but it's still got some major shortcomings. Unfortunately we're
>being forced that direction!
>
>I'd like to hear from any other users too!
>

My Ex worked for Convergent Technologies, and later for Unisys before moving
on to AMD. We had an NGEN T1 at home that I used for several years as for
documentation and netrunning. In fact, she just gave me an old T3 with the
color pack because she was tired of it cluttering up her garage.

Mike

ps. Anyone know if there is a version of UNIX that will run on an old T3?
It seems that this machine's previous owner managed to completely remove
CTOS (and everything else) from the machine...

* * * * *
The Clan MacDude - Where anyone can be a Scotsman.
http://www.macdude.org
* * * * *

[Vince]

> My Ex worked for Convergent Technologies, and later for Unisys before
moving
> on to AMD. We had an NGEN T1 at home that I used for several years as
for
> documentation and netrunning. In fact, she just gave me an old T3 with
the
> color pack because she was tired of it cluttering up her garage.

Yep... that's an OLD machine. CTOS has come a LONG way since then... put a
pentium multi-processor behind what is now a very sturdy OS and it makes NT
look real slow and cumbersome.... still NT is very pretty and FEELs easy to
use.

> Mike
> ps. Anyone know if there is a version of UNIX that will run on an old
T3?
> It seems that this machine's previous owner managed to completely remove
> CTOS (and everything else) from the machine...

Not heard of Unix for them...

[Richard Delridge]

I think he was kidding. BTOS/CTOS
did multiuser/multiprocessing/multitasking
before anyone cared about it. All on an 8088.

Richard Delridge

[Will Sappington]

On 25 Sep 1996 23:30:50 GMT, "Vince" <vin...@203.97.78.1> wrote:

>> My Ex worked for Convergent Technologies, and later for Unisys before
>moving
>> on to AMD. We had an NGEN T1 at home that I used for several years as
>for
>> documentation and netrunning. In fact, she just gave me an old T3 with
>the
>> color pack because she was tired of it cluttering up her garage.
>Yep... that's an OLD machine. CTOS has come a LONG way since then... put a
>pentium multi-processor behind what is now a very sturdy OS and it makes NT
>look real slow and cumbersome.... still NT is very pretty and FEELs easy to
>use.
>
>> Mike
>> ps. Anyone know if there is a version of UNIX that will run on an old
>T3?
>> It seems that this machine's previous owner managed to completely remove
>> CTOS (and everything else) from the machine...
>Not heard of Unix for them...
>
>

And another old CTOS diehard comes out of the woodwork to join the
discussion! I'm still programming CTOS boxes for a Unisys VAR. We've
been running the SG's for a couple of years and are now working with
the CTOS/NT Integrated Server. We've been looking for a replacement
OS for our products years (better market visibility and acceptance)
but can't get off of CTOS 'cause there's nothing else out there that
does what it can do. Our box is a comm gateway for EFT and EDI
institutions that also does fully automatic (completely unattended)
routing of data files to any combination of 20 different processing
steps according to a customer-specific profile. We make heavy use of
the queues, the method by which our routing engine (called the
"Automatic File Director") communicates with the "target process"
servers. We use the queues as a disk-based, nonvolatile inter-program
communication. It's such a great concept and no other OS has an
equivalent capaility. It wasn't until NT came out that there was
another OS that had true priority-scheduled, premptive multi-tasking
that can give us some semblance of the real-time processing
capabilities of CTOS. And to think this has been around since '83?!
I've truly enjoyed programming it over the last 13 years and I think
it's really sad how Unisys totally missed the boat when it came to
marketing it. Ah well, at least I have an NGen or two lying around my
house to amuse myself with when it goes away.

-will

[Duncan McNiven]

Will Sappington wrote:

>And another old CTOS diehard comes out of the woodwork to join the

>discussion! .........

>I've truly enjoyed programming it over the last 13 years and I think
>it's really sad how Unisys totally missed the boat when it came to
>marketing it. Ah well, at least I have an NGen or two lying around my
>house to amuse myself with when it goes away.

Well here's another one, but let me take an opposing view. May as
well stir up a bit of controversy !

I programmed BTOS/CTOS from 1985 to 1995. I have been offered CTOS
work as recently as 3 months ago. So it is still being actively used,
albeit by a shrinking user base, but it is becoming less and less
attractive. The lack of modern tools is a real turn-off. For
example, I do most of my work these days on PCs using Delphi. Sure,
the OS (even NT) is not a patch on CTOS, but Delphi is SO much better
than CTOS Pascal. I can get a lot more done in a day, and enjoy doing
it. The thought of going back to the CTOS debugger fills me with
horror.

It used to be that programmers using minority platforms such as CTOS
always had a good technical reason for doing so, whilst those using
PCs had good marketting reasons for doing so. Nowadays, whilst CTOS
may remain in advance in some areas as an OS, it is let down badly by
lack of tools (for developers and end-users), so the technical
arguements start to look thin. The marketting arguements have got
stronger meantime, and the 'feel good' factor has swung in favour of
PCs.

I too have some NGens sitting around at home, but they rarely get
turned on these days. I too enjoyed programming them for many years,
but now I have stopped and I don't miss them. Well, not much.

Regards,
--
Duncan
LECS Ltd

[Laura Hart]

Bill,

CTOS was around before '83, it ran on 8086 based IWS's and 8088 based
AWS's.

Long time no hear? Glad to see one of the old 'Momentites' is still
breathing!

-- Bob

[Dale 'Cat' Robinson]

"Vince" <vin...@203.97.78.1> (and others) wrote:

>> ps. Anyone know if there is a version of UNIX that will run on an old
>T3?
>> It seems that this machine's previous owner managed to completely remove
>> CTOS (and everything else) from the machine...
>Not heard of Unix for them...
>

In the early days of CTOS, I believe there was a Unix-type product
called Distrix (sp?) available. Don't think it was that popular....

Cheers,

Dale.

[Vince]

As I understand it Distrix was a fully networked "distributed unix" clone
with a lot of the CTOS concepts integrated... but it wasn't "Open Unix"...
yet again another great system dies under the marketing axe before it
reaches infancy... SUNOS sound familiar - I think SUN marketed their
product unlike Covergent and Unisys!

Thanks for reminder on that one Dale.

Dale 'Cat' Robinson <c...@taunet.net.au> wrote in article

> >> ps. Anyone know if there is a version of UNIX that will run on an old
> >T3?

[lbuc...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, September 12, 1996 11:00:00 PM UTC-8, Gregg Hamrick wrote:
> I was just curious... was a CTOS admin/programmer a few years back, loved the
> OS, but after I left Unisys, never heard a thing about it. Anyone out there
> still using my OS of choice?
>
>

> --
> *******************************************************************
> * Gregg Hamrick email: gham...@bigdog.fred.net *
> * Senior Systems Consultant hamr...@bah.com *
> * Booz, Allen & Hamilton fax: 301-620-2213 *
> * voice: 301-620-7762 *
> *******************************************************************

Now there's something I haven't thought of in a while. I used to program BTOS C & Pascal in the early 90's while still part of the Coast Guard. I loved their editor and custom keyboard. They had a lot of things that were ahead of the times. Plug a mouse into a keyboard - sounds a lot like USB to me. I remember when NT came out and thinking "boy they could learn a lot from CTOS". I agree, it was not marketed very well and if CTOS/BTOS had a decent graphical interface it could have been a contender in the desktop market.

[Al Kossow]

On 12/31/14 11:44 AM, lbuc...@gmail.com wrote:
> if CTOS/BTOS had a decent graphical interface it could have been a contender in the desktop market.
>

When Unisys bought Convergent, they announced something called "CTOS Open". A few books were published
which are on bitsavers which was purported to run Microsoft Presentation Manager. If you look at the APIs
you'll see Presentation Manager library references. I don't think this had much traction in the marketplace.