Multiple Console Time Sharing System

Operating system

The Multiple Console Time Sharing System (MCTS) was an operating system developed by General Motors Research Laboratories in the 1970s for the Control Data Corporation STAR-100 supercomputer. MCTS was built to support GM's computer-aided design (CAD) applications.^[1]

MCTS was designed starting in 1968. It was written in a high-level systems programming language "Malus", a dialect of PL/I. A superset of Malus called Apple became the primary application language.^[2]

MCTS was based on Multics.^[3] All access to data was thru the virtual memory system. Only the system paging support modile was concerned about the physical location of the data.^[2]

See also

• GM-NAA I/O
• SHARE Operating System
• Timeline of operating systems

References

1. Elshoff, James L.; Ward, Mitchel R. (January 1976). "The MCTS operating system". ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review. 10 (1): 18–38. doi:10.1145/775314.775317.
2. Brown, R.R; Elshoff, J.L.; Ward, M.R. (1 Oct 1975). "The GM Multiple Console Time Sharing System". ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review. 9 (4): 7–17. doi:10.1145/775310.7753 (inactive 2024-07-05). Retrieved July 1, 2024.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of July 2024 (link)
3. Krull, pg. 54

Further reading

• Krull, F.N. (Fall 1994). "The origin of computer graphics within General Motors" (PDF). IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 16 (3). IEEE: 40–56. doi:10.1109/MAHC.1994.298419.