GEORGE (operating system)

Infobox OS
name = GEORGE



caption =
developer = International Computers and Tabulators
source_model =
kernel_type =
supported_platforms = ICT 1900 series of computers
ui =
family =
released = 1960s
latest_release_version =
latest_release_date =
latest_test_version =
latest_test_date =
marketing_target =
programmed_in =
prog_language =
language = English
updatemodel =
package_manager =
working_state = Historic
license =
website =

GEORGE was the name given to a series of operating systems released by International Computers and Tabulators (ICT) in the 1960s, for the ICT 1900 series of computers.

History

In the early days of the ICT 1900 series of computers, the basic operating system was called the Executive (e.g. E3RM).

In order to support more advanced features (e.g. batch processing, spooling), a team under George Felton at ICL's Stevenage site developed what was originally referred to as the privileged ("trusted") control program, GEORGE. Although the name was officially an acronym for GEneral ORGanisational Environment, it was actually a tribute to George Felton.

GEORGE1 was designed for the series of smaller machines developed by the ICL Stevenage operation, consisting initially of the 1901 / 1902 / 1903 systems running E3 series executives (e.g. E3RM).

With the later developments of the 1901A / 1902A / 1903A system, new Executives, and GEORGE2, were launched.

GEORGE3 [ [http://www.icl1900.co.uk/g3/index.html GEORGE 3 Online Reference] ] was the main version of the operating system series for the 1904 and larger machines, which now had a core and a much larger set of overlays. This initially ran on the E6G3 Executive, based on the older E6BM.

The final development was GEORGE4 (with E6G4), using the then new techniques of paged hardware, although this was not widely adopted.

With the launch of ICL's "New Range", the 2900 Series, the ICT 1900 line and GEORGE became obsolescent, but the legacy of investment in software for GEORGE meant that the 2900 series had options to run existing GEORGE based workloads in an emulation mode, using the Converged Machine Environment (CME).

Development environment

The operating software was written in assembler and a slightly higher level language called GIN, roughly analogous to the commercial ICL language PLAN. The GIN compiler was known as the Ginerator (sic).

Current availability

The University of Leeds has created a software emulator [ [http://www.icl1900.co.uk/g3/preserve.html GEORGE3 Emulator] ] that runs George 3 on a PC.

References