Multiprogramming with a Variable number of Tasks
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| Developer | IBM |
|---|---|
| OS family | OS/360 and successors |
| Latest release | 21.8 |
| Platforms | S/360, S/370 |
| Kernel type | N/A |
| License | none |
| Succeeded by | OS/VS1, OS/VS2 (SVS), OS/VS2 (MVS), MVS/SE, MVS/SP Version 1, MVS/XA, MVS/ESA, OS/390, z/OS |
OS/360, officially known as IBM System/360 Operating System, is a discontinued batch processing operating system developed by IBM for their then-new System/360 mainframe computer, announced in 1964; it was heavily influenced by the earlier IBSYS/IBJOB and Input/Output Control System (IOCS) packages. It was one of the earliest operating systems to require the computer hardware to include at least one direct access storage device.
Although OS/360 itself was discontinued, successor operating systems including the virtual storage MVS and the 64-bit z/OS are still run as of 2017[update] and maintain application-level compatibility.
IBM announced three different levels of OS/360, generated from the same tapes and sharing most of their code. IBM eventually renamed these options and made some significant design changes:
Users often coined nicknames, e.g., Big OS, OS/MFT, but none of these names had any official recognition by IBM.
The other major operating system for System/360 hardware was DOS/360.
OS/360 is in the public domain and can be downloaded freely. As well as being run on actual System/360 hardware, it can be executed on the free Hercules emulator, which runs under most UNIX and Unix-like systems including GNU/Linux, Solaris, and macOS, as well as Windows. There are OS/360 turnkey CDs that provide pregenerated OS/360 21.8 systems ready to run under Hercules.
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Wikipedia