alt Hacker NewsUsed to be a staff member working on an x86 OS called CTOS. I realized if I implemented a couple of traps, we could run command-line DOS programs. So I did. And it worked. Dev tools, text processing, piped commands all worked.
It helped that the DOS executable format was the same as the CTOS format - because we had traded Bill Gates our linker (which produces executables) for his BASIC compiler.
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If you wanted to get into development mode in CTOS, the keyword was 'developement' - an e between the p and the m. Worked on this system back in early 1990 as a developer.
hello! hello! I was mainly admin and COBOL dev with them (I wish I kept the collection of the manuals and PRGs, alas when no space..), bitsavers have a quite collection (incl a virtualbox HDD) if you are interested!
This is such a neat historical parallel
if I implemented a couple of traps
What does this mean? System calls?
That's a great twist! Very few people traded Bill Gates a linker for a compiler!
Looks like this one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_Technologies_Operat...
Thanks for sharing, never heard about it before. What was kernel programming back then? Briefly checked the wikipedia and looks like CTOS was kinda big in the government space back in the 80s.