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Commercial Operating System (COS) is a discontinued family of operating systems from Digital Equipment Corporation.

They supported the use of DIBOL, a programming language combining features of BASIC, FORTRAN and COBOL. COS also supported IBM RPG (Report Program Generator).

Implementations

The Commercial Operating System was implemented to run on hardware from the PDP-8 and PDP-11 families.

COS-310

COS-310 was developed for the PDP-8 to provide an operating environment for DIBOL. A COS-310 system was purchased as a package which included a desk, VT52 VDT (Video Display Tube), and a pair of eight inch floppy drives. It could optionally be purchased with one or more 2.5 MB removable media hard drives. COS-310 was one of the operating systems available on the DECmate II.

COS-350

COS-350 was developed to support the PDP-11 port of DIBOL, and was the focus for some vendors of turnkey software packages.

Pre-COS-350, a PDP 11/05 single-user batch-oriented implementation was released; the multi-user PDP 11/10-based COS came about 4 years later. The much more powerful PDP-11/34 "added significant configuration flexibility and expansion capability."

See also

• Comparison of operating systems
• Timeline of operating systems

Notes

1. the other was WPS-8
2. There was a product named COS-300, and some DEC manuals are named with both 300 & 310.

References

1. ^ DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION - Nineteen Fifty-Seven To The Present (PDF). Digital Equipment Corporation. 1978.
2. Binh Nguyen. Linux Dictionary. p. 424., citing "QUECID".
3. "Time-Sharing Uses Emphasized For DEC Datasystem 350 Series". Computerworld. July 30, 1975. p. 19. Dibol Under COS: The series operates under the Commercial Operating System (COS) 350, which provides timesharing with a high-speed response.
4. PDP 8/e Small Computer Handbook. Digital Equipment Corporation. 1973. pp. 2-19 thru 2-20.
5. "Time-Sharing Uses Emphasized For DEC Datasystem 350 Series". Computerworld. July 30, 1975. p. 19.

v t e Digital Equipment Corporation
Key people	Ken Olsen (founder and CEO, 1957–1992) Harlan Anderson (co-founder) Gordon Bell (VP of engineering) Robert Palmer (CEO, 1992–1998)
Instruction set architectures, processors	PDP-11 LSI-11 F-11 T-11 J-11 VAX V-11 MicroVAX 78032 CVAX SOC Rigel Mariah NVAX Alpha Alpha 21064 21066 21068 Alpha 21164 (21164PC) Alpha 21264 Alpha 21364 Alpha 21464 Other MicroPRISM StrongARM
Computer terminals	VT05 (1970) GT40 (1972) VT50/VT52 (1975) VT55 VT62 VT100 (1978) VT101 VT102 VT103 VT105 VT131 VT180 VT220 (1983) VT240 VT241 VT320 (1987) VT330 VT340 VT420 (1990) VT1000 (1990) VT510 (1993) VT520 (1994) VT525
Operating systems	DECsys 4K DMS COS TOPS-10 RSX-15 TSS/8 OS/8 DOS-11 RT-11 RSTS/E RSX-11 IAS DSM-11 TOPS-20 VAX/VMS VAXELN Ultrix MICA Digital UNIX
Programming languages	BASIC-8 DIBOL FOCAL MACRO-10 MACRO-11 MUMPS VAX MACRO DIGITAL Command Language
Character sets	Code page 1100 (Multinational) Code page 1287 (Greek) Code page 1288 (Turkish) Hebrew National Replacement RADIX 50 Special Graphics Technical
Bus standards	Digital Storage Systems Interconnect Massbus Q-Bus Standard Disk Interconnect Synchronous Backplane Interconnect TURBOchannel Unibus VAXBI bus
Other hardware	DECtalk DECtape DECwriter Digital Linear Tape Dynamically Redefined Character Set Firefly Flip-Chip module Gold key LK201 LK421 Mass Storage Control Protocol PALcode RA90 RK05 RL02 Star coupler System Module TU81
Related topics	AdvFS AltaVista Compaq CPU Wars DECnet DECUS HP-Interex Digital Federal Credit Union Dynamic debugging technique FX!32 Local Area Transport Maintenance Operations Protocol On-line Debugging Tool PALcode Record Management Services ReGIS Sequence and Batch Language Sixel System Reference Manual Systems Research Center TD/SMP The Ultimate Entrepreneur VT640 WPS-8
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• DEC operating systems
• Time-sharing operating systems