Data General AOS

Data General wrote operating systems for its hardware: DOS and RDOS for the 16-bit Nova line; RDOS and AOS for the 16-bit Eclipse C, M and S lines; AOS/VS and AOS/RT32^[1] (1980) and later AOS/VS II (1988) for the 32-bit Eclipse MV line.

A modified version of System V.2 Unix called MV/UX hosted under AOS/VS was also available. A modified version of System V Unix called DG/UX was made for the Eclipse MV line and later the 88K and x86 AViiON machines.

The AOS software was far more advanced than competing PDP-11 operating systems. 16-bit AOS applications ran natively under AOS/VS and AOS/VS II on the 32-bit Eclipse MV line. AOS/VS was the most commonly used DG software product, and included a command-line interpreter (CLI) allowing for complex scripting, DUMP/LOAD, and other custom components.

The 16-bit version of the CLI is famous for including an Easter egg taken directly from the Colossal Cave Adventure game. A user typing in the command "xyzzy" would get back a response from the CLI of "Nothing Happens".

When a 32-bit version of the CLI became available under AOS/VS II, the same command instead reported "Twice As Much Happens".

AOS/VS exploited the 8-ring protection architecture of the Eclipse MV hardware with ring 7 being the least privileged and ring 0 being the most privileged. The AOS/VS kernel ran in ring 0 and used ring-1 addresses for data structures related to virtual address translations. Ring 2 was unused and reserved for future use by the kernel. The Agent, which performed much of the system call validation for the AOS/VS kernel, as well as some I/O buffering and many compatibility functions, ran in ring 3 of each process. Ring 4 was used by various D.G. products such as the INFOS II DBMS. Rings 5 and 6 were reserved for use by user programs but rarely used except for large software such as the MV/UX inner-ring emulator and Oracle which used ring 5. All user programs ran in ring 7.

The AOS and AOS/VS kernels were written entirely in assembly language. Almost all of the AOS and AOS/VS utilities included in the operating system releases were written in variants of the PL/I programming language. Initially, AOS/VS utilities closely tracked AOS source development. As AOS/VS matured, many DG-supplied utilities were rewritten to take advantage of the 32-bit address space and reduce dependencies on assembly language, often resulting in substantial increases in functionality, performance and reliability compared with their AOS ancestors.

1. ^ Hoard, Bruce. "Computerworld Nov 22, 1982". Computerworld. IDG. http://books.google.com/books?id=mhoE9lO6DpMC&pg=PA8&lpg=PA8&dq=%22data+general%22+aos/rt32+manuals&source=bl&ots=AkxjQvz9FS&sig=8teVuytlEN6__g7ipqxg1ljAw_w&hl=en&ei=Nj6DTtP3O4q5tweqrv3uAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&sqi=2&ved=0CEcQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false. Retrieved 9/28/2011. 

This operating system-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.v · Categories: Operating system stubs Proprietary operating systems Data General Wikimedia Foundation. 2010. Игры ⚽ Нужно сделать НИР? Data frame Data General Corp. v. Digital Computer Controls, Inc. Look at other dictionaries: Data General AOS/VS II — AOS/VS II was an operating system for the Data General 32 bit MV/Eclipse computers.It was released in 1988 and was originally to be simply rev 8.00 of the AOS/VS operating system. However, it introduced a new file system which was not compatible… …   Wikipedia Data General AOS/VS — Data General wrote operating systems for its hardware: DOS and RDOS for the 16 bit Nova line; RDOS and AOS for the 16 bit Eclipse C, M and S lines; AOS/VS (1980) and later AOS/VS II (1988), AOS/RT32 (1988) for the 32 bit Eclipse MV line.A… …   Wikipedia Data General — Industry Computer Fate Acquired Successor EMC Corporation Founded 1968 …   Wikipedia Data General Eclipse — S/130 front panel Data General microEclipse microprocesso …   Wikipedia Data General AViiON — AViiON logo AViiON was a series of computers from Data General that were the company s main product from the late 1980s until the company s server products were discontinued in 2001. Earlier AViiON models used the Motorola 88000 CPU, but later… …   Wikipedia CEO (Data General) — CEO Office (Comprehensive Electronic Office) software from Data General was introduced in 1981. It included word processing, e mail, spreadsheets, business graphics and desktop accessories. The software was developed mostly in PL/I on and for the …   Wikipedia AOS — or AOS may refer to: * Accessory olfactory system, a sensory system often responsible for the detection of pheromones * Academy of the Sierras, boarding schools devoted to weight loss * Ace of Spades HQ, a blog * Acquisition of signal * Additive… …   Wikipedia AOS — • Algebraic Operation Systematic Operationsnotation: Operator1 Operand Operator2 = Ergebnis; Gegenteil: UPN • Academic Operating System • Alternate Operator Service Telefonie • Add One and do not Skip PDP 10 Assembler Statement • Advanced… …   Acronyms AOS/VS — •With Virtual Storage (Data General) …   Acronyms AOS — [1] Algebraic Operation Systematic Operationsnotation: Operator1 Operand Operator2 = Ergebnis; Gegenteil: UPN [2] Academic Operating System [3] Alternate Operator Service {Telefonie} [4] Add One and do not Skip PDP 10 Assembler Statement [5]… …   Acronyms von A bis Z 18+ © Academic, 2000-2024 Contact us: Technical Support, Advertising Dictionaries export, created on PHP, Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, MODx. Mark and share Search through all dictionaries Translate… Search Internet Share the article and excerpts Direct link … Do a right-click on the link above and select “Copy Link”