| [HN Gopher] Ask HN: What is the oldest, still supported OS?
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Ask HN: What is the oldest, still supported OS?
I recently discovered that TSOS, an old Univac OS that I used (and
loved!) in the mid 1970's and first released in 1968 by RCA, is
still supported (although the name has changed) as Fujitsu's BS2000
OS. Unix was released a year after that (1969). Is there something
that beats these?
Author : abrax3141
Score : 92 points
Date : 2022-02-28 21:13 UTC (1 hours ago)
| Animats wrote:
| UNIVAC 1108 EXEC-8, now OS-2200. Still in use, 55 years later,
| with mostly the same API and commands.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_2200
| kragen wrote:
| Burroughs MCP was released in 01961 and seems to still be
| supported. The latest release was 20.0 in May. That's probably
| the oldest.
|
| z/OS was released in 01966. BOS/360 made it out the door earlier,
| in 01965, thanks to the disastrous delays in z/OS, but it's no
| longer supported; DOS/360 (z/VSE) also beat z/OS out, is still
| supported, and is arguably the continuation of BOS.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS/360_and_successors
|
| Unix wasn't released in 01969. I think it wasn't released until
| Fifth Edition in 01974, though Thompson and Ritchie described the
| Fourth Edition in CACM in 01973. Fourth Edition had "over 20"
| installations, but I think all within AT&T.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Unix
| mattl wrote:
| Long Now promoting NFTs, lost my respect.
|
| https://twitter.com/longnow/status/1436364868131586054
| alexvoda wrote:
| I find it interesting that you write years using 5 digits with
| leading zeroes. Can you tell me more about that choice?
| gumby wrote:
| 01961 is not a valid year as '9' is not a valid octal digit.
| kragen wrote:
| It is in K&R!
| matthoiland wrote:
| Probably a time traveling technology historian?
| WorldMaker wrote:
| It's often used to encourage long-term thinking. I most
| directly associate it with the Long Now Foundation [1], which
| encourages that format for dates as many of their initiatives
| strive to consider the Y10K view and beyond.
|
| [1] https://longnow.org/
| imoverclocked wrote:
| Since we are adding insignificant digits, I think there
| aren't enough zeros after the most significant digits; We
| need to focus on solving todays problems too.
|
| For an extreme version of this, 1961 might be written in
| scientific notation: 0.196100e4
|
| This is also future-proof as we will always have a built-in
| 0 at the beginning of the number implying that we never get
| to "1" and there will always be more time to solve the
| problems we can't even begin to understand that may exist
| 10k years from now.
|
| Sorry for the sarcasm, it was the easiest way to make my
| point.
| kragen wrote:
| This is a great idea! I'll try it next week if I
| remember.
| mattkrause wrote:
| Next 0.1923e-1, you mean?
| compressedgas wrote:
| https://longnow.org/ideas/02013/12/31/long-now-years-five-
| di...
| oxguy3 wrote:
| Lol, that's completely silly. Who even knows if we'll still
| be using the same calendar in 8,000 years? Y10K is not
| worth dealing with until the 100th century.
| kragen wrote:
| Yes, it is!
| _jal wrote:
| So then why not Y100K?
|
| Does preparation become pointless sometime after 8,000
| years from now, but before 92,000 have elapsed?
| kragen wrote:
| Go wild!
| mod50ack wrote:
| Even if we do, the year 900 is not written "0900".
| radford-neal wrote:
| "It's an idiosyncrasy to which we are dedicated."
|
| Sounds like a good thing to me.
|
| It quickly identifies you as someone who prioritizes
| personal idiosyncrasies over communicating whatever it is
| you want to communicate - since pretty much every reader
| will do a double-take on the date (or is it a date?) and be
| distracted from reading the content.
|
| That's helpful, since one can generally assume that anyone
| with that attitude isn't communicating anything useful.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I thought it was interesting that I've noticed someone doing
| that twice today, and never before in my life, but it turns
| out it was just another one of kragen's comments from earlier
| today on a different thread.
| kragen wrote:
| I think this means I've spent _far too much time_ on HN
| today.
| Shared404 wrote:
| And there's my cue to turn on noprocrast for the day.
| [deleted]
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Y10K problem: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_10,000_p
| roblem#:~:tex....
| [deleted]
| drewzero1 wrote:
| See also, the Long Now Foundation:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Now_Foundation
| umanwizard wrote:
| Writing with four digits doesn't induce any Y10k problem.
| We write dates with as many digits as they need; for
| example, we write the year 327 with three digits.
| rbanffy wrote:
| In the best interest of future generations, we should
| specify that this count is in the Christian Era. Our
| descendants may want to reset the count (and change the
| duration of a standard year) at some point.
| sgt wrote:
| On HN you find all kinds, that's why.
| djbusby wrote:
| I'd like to see these long-now dates with a Y included - to
| clearly identify a year, like y01960 - so it's not confused
| with things like hex/octal or post-codes.
| aluminum96 wrote:
| This is slightly off topic -- it's about an old supported
| _microarchitecture_ -- but Linux still supports DEC Alpha,
| despite no chip with that architecture having been developed
| since 2004.
|
| DEC Alpha has extremely weak memory ordering. [1] In fact, it's
| the weakest ordering of any arch supported by linux, which
| includes extra fence instructions to support it. The memory model
| is crazy weak, but it apparently allows for extra speculative
| execution parallelism.
|
| [1] Awesome Raymond Chen post, totally worth a read:
| https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20170817-00/?p=96...
| Klonoar wrote:
| One question: _why?_
|
| Is this still used en masse somewhere and needs updates?
| Consider me 100% ignorant.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| OS/360 dates to 1966. I believe z/OS in theory still provides
| compatibility back to applications of that vintage, though AFAIK
| it is a separate codebase.
| retrac wrote:
| Z/OS is directly descended from OS/360. It's just a renaming.
| And yes, it continues to have almost complete binary
| compatibility back to 1966. I know for a fact that the IBM
| Fortran compiler from 1972 runs unmodified on z/OS today. Just
| pipe the 80 column EBCDIC data representing punch card images
| into the virtual punch card reader and off you go.
| chefkoch wrote:
| > into the virtual punch card reader
|
| as someone to young to have seen punch cards live this sounds
| really strange.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| You can still create (virtual) punched cards on Linux. Just
| install the bsdgames package and run bcd. I guess punched
| cards are such a novelty that the bcd program belongs in
| "games".
|
| Note that bcd, ppt, and morse are all in the same binary.
| ppt simulates punched paper tape and morse will
| encode/decode International Morse Code.
|
| I actually ran these yesterday when I was explaining some
| computer history to my 19 year old son.
| retrac wrote:
| If you think about it, it is no weirder than Linux users
| talking about TTYs when no one has connected an actual
| teletype to a Linux machine other than for a laugh. The
| basic IO device becomes an abstraction that hangs around.
| Fun fact: you also boot Linux on zSeries by feeding a
| kernel image into a virtual punch card reader!
| p_l wrote:
| There was a big rewrite around MVS, but z/OS to this day
| executes a lot of code in 24bit address mode of S/360[1], and
| well, OS/360 code should mostly just run
|
| [1] Easy to observe when running z/OS under Hercules, as one
| of the console modes shows the CPU address size mode. A lot
| of the time during bootup of basic ADCD you'll see 24, a bit
| less 31, and rarely 64
| rbanffy wrote:
| 31 bits ought to be enough for anyone.
| monocasa wrote:
| If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And if it's broke just a
| little, someone probably depends on it for compat.
| gjvc wrote:
| https://www.hyrumslaw.com/
| p_l wrote:
| Master Control Program of Burroughs Large Systems fame was first
| released in 1961 - latest release is from May 2021
| bombcar wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_MCP and there's even a
| link to the latest release notes:
| https://public.support.unisys.com/aseries/docs/ClearPath-MCP...
| abrax3141 wrote:
| Okay, seems like that's the one to beat!
| Jerry2 wrote:
| The oldest one I know is PDP-11. It's still being used in nuclear
| power plants and many plants will continue using it until at
| least 2050 (maybe even longer if they remain working). [1] PDP-11
| was released in 1970 so your TSOS find is even older. I'm sure
| there's something even older than these two that's being used by
| various gov orgs and industrial systems. There's plenty of small
| consulting firms that support ancient systems. These contracts
| provide them with steady and stable income.
|
| [1]
| https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/19/nuke_plants_to_keep...
| ghaff wrote:
| Used != supported especially for systems that are not network-
| connected. Also the PDP-11 is a minicomputer series. There were
| a bunch of operating systems from DEC and others that ran on
| it. Certainly there are consultants who support ancient system
| but they probably have limited (if any) access to the OS source
| code--though they can probably patch to a limited degree.
| cptnapalm wrote:
| BSD 2.11 is still getting patched by Steve Schultz, last I
| saw.
| SilasX wrote:
| Sufficiently advanced long-term maintenance via patches
| _seems_ indistinguishable from providing support.
| kragen wrote:
| PDP-11 isn't an OS.
| egberts1 wrote:
| a ginormous scripting OS, PDP/11 is.
| p_l wrote:
| What's more, when it comes to computer architectures, even
| among Digital it's not the oldest nor still supported.
|
| Because you can still buy a _new_ PDP-10 (well, PDP-10
| compatible, iirc a lot of I /O is different, but it can run
| TOPS-20 V7 with patches)
|
| Of course S/360 has longer continuity of hw/sw combination.
| kragen wrote:
| You can't buy it from Digital, and TOPS-20 isn't still
| supported.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| This is a good answer to another question: what is the oldest
| computer family/architecture still in use? I'm sure there are
| other contenders out there, especially with modern descendants
| of old architectures and different interpretations of the
| question. I'd be interested in hearing about others as well.
|
| I believe my employer's PDP-11 ran RSTS/E or some variant, and
| the software was written in BASIC by my current boss. There
| were a lot of operating systems available for the PDP-11 for a
| lot of different contexts (including UNIX).
| retrac wrote:
| I seriously considered applying for that job! I'm probably 30
| years younger than anyone with real PDP-11 experience but I got
| a background in programming tiny embedded systems, with some
| robotics. And I love computer history with a particular soft
| spot for the PDP-11. (I've got an LSI-11 in the basement
| somewhere.) But then I thought about it. Tracing race
| conditions in PDP-11 code all day seems like the surest way to
| kill all love for my hobby.
|
| Anyway, the PDP-11 wasn't really an OS but an architecture
| (like ARM or x86). The robotics software in question probably
| runs bare metal. It was very, very popular and will indeed
| remain around in pockets (in emulation) probably until the 22nd
| century. Ain't broke? Don't fix.
| nix0n wrote:
| Possibly Burroughs MCP[0] from 1961, currently Unisys ClearPath
| MCP.
|
| Not to be confused with Encom MCP[1], which was defeated by Flynn
| and Tron in 1982.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_MCP
| [1]https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084827/
| rbanffy wrote:
| > Not to be confused with Encom MCP
|
| MCP is the most user hostile OS I've ever seen. It may be less
| intelligent, but shows the same contempt for users as its
| fictional counterpart.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Not surprising, considering the "guardian" process is called
| J_EDGAR_HOOVER. Rumor has it it will even drop fake emails in
| your inbox urging you to kill yourself if your username
| starts with MLK_
| pjmlp wrote:
| Safety first has a price.
| rbanffy wrote:
| You can't hack an OS you can't use.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| I worked on an HP3000 in the early 90s. It had a software
| package that changed all of the error messages to
| resemble IBM360 error messages, just to throw would be
| attackers off.
| jounker wrote:
| Wasn't Encom MCP. just a rebranded vmunix.el?
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