--- id: 8eff086d-ce98-4b4c-aab2-a61126370ca6 title: Commercial Operating System (COS) abstract: Commercial Operating System (COS) is a discontinued family of proprietary operating systems developed by Digital Equipment Corporation, initially released in 1972. It was designed to run on PDP-8 and PDP-11 hardware platforms and supported programming languages such as DIBOL and IBM RPG. The system served as a commercial environment for business applications on DEC minicomputers. classification: primary: '004.7' secondary: - '004.73' - '004.74' udc_main_class: '0' tags: - operating system - Digital Equipment Corporation - PDP-8 - PDP-11 - DIBOL - software history topics: - Computer Science - Software Engineering - Operating Systems author: '' created_at: '2026-06-01T00:21:15.876869' updated_at: '2026-06-01T03:29:33.062502' sources: - type: url uri: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Operating_System format: url_fetch udc_label: Software engineering version: '1' --- ## Card: Commercial Operating System (COS) Commercial Operating System (COS) is a discontinued family of proprietary operating systems developed by Digital Equipment Corporation, initially released in 1972. It was designed to run on PDP-8 and PDP-11 hardware platforms and supported programming languages such as DIBOL and IBM RPG. The system served as a commercial environment for business applications on DEC minicomputers. ## Classification Primary: 004.7 | Secondary: 004.73, 004.74 | Tags: operating system, Digital Equipment Corporation, PDP-8, PDP-11, DIBOL, software history | Topics: Computer Science, Software Engineering, Operating Systems ## Content Commercial Operating System - Wikipedia Jump to content Main menu Main menu move to sidebar hide Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Special pages Search Search Appearance Donate Create account Log in Personal tools Donate Create account Log in Contents move to sidebar hide (Top) 1 Implementations Toggle Implementations subsection 1.1 COS-310 1.2 COS-350 2 See also 3 Notes 4 References Toggle the table of contents Commercial Operating System Add languages Add links Article Talk English Read Edit View history Tools Tools move to sidebar hide Actions Read Edit View history General What links here Related changes Upload file Permanent link Page information Cite this page Get shortened URL Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikidata item Appearance move to sidebar hide From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Product by Digital Equipment Corporation Operating system Commercial Operating System (COS) Developer Digital Equipment Corporation Initial release 1972 [ 1 ] Available in English Supported platforms PDP-8 , PDP-11 , DECmate II License Proprietary Preceded by MS/8 Commercial Operating System ( COS ) is a discontinued family of operating systems from Digital Equipment Corporation . [ 2 ] They supported the use of DIBOL , a programming language combining features of BASIC , FORTRAN and COBOL . [ 3 ] COS also supported IBM RPG (Report Program Generator). [ 1 ] Implementations [ edit ] The Commercial Operating System was implemented to run on hardware from the PDP-8 [ 4 ] and PDP-11 families. COS-310 [ edit ] 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 . [ a ] [ b ] COS-350 [ edit ] COS-350 was developed to support the PDP-11 port of DIBOL, and was the focus for some vendors of turnkey software packages. [ 5 ] 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. [ 1 ] The much more powerful PDP-11/34 "added significant configuration flexibility and expansion capability." : p.69  See also [ edit ] Comparison of operating systems Timeline of operating systems Notes [ edit ] ^ the other was WPS-8 ^ There was a product named COS-300, and some DEC manuals are named with both 300 & 310. References [ edit ] ^ a b c DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION - Nineteen Fifty-Seven To The Present (PDF) . Digital Equipment Corporation. 1978. ^ Binh Nguyen. Linux Dictionary . p. 424. , citing "QUECID" . ^ "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. ^ PDP 8/e Small Computer Handbook . Digital Equipment Corporation. 1973. pp. 2-19 thru 2-20. ^ "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 Taos MICA OZIX Digital UNIX Programming languages BASIC-8 BASIC-PLUS BLISS 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 Other hardware DECserver 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 Computers template Category Commons v t e Time-sharing operating systems Time-sharing system evolution BBN Time-Sharing System Berkeley Timesharing System Burroughs MCP CDC Kronos Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) COS CP/CMS Cray Time Sharing System (CTSS) DTSS EMAS ITS LTSS MCTSS MTS Multics MUSIC/SP NLTSS NOS NOS/VE OpenVMS ORVYL and WYLBUR OS4000 Pick RAX RSTS/E TENEX TSO TSOS TOPS-10 TOPS-20 TSS TSS/8 Unix UTS VM VP/CSS VPS/VM VS/9 WAITS   Category Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commercial_Operating_System&oldid=1317735106 " Categories : DEC operating systems Time-sharing operating systems 1972 software Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description matches Wikidata Short description is different from Wikidata This page was last edited on 19 October 2025, at 18:57  (UTC) . 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