[Request] Michigan Terminal System

[geophoto3]

I know someone out there has a running version of MTS that works in Hercules. I'd love to add this system to my collection, but I believe there may be problems with private data and/or copyright issues. Anybody know anything? There is quite a bit on Wikipedia about this important mainframe OS.

[louisw3]

I thought it was related to MUSIC in some weird way.

But I don't have any mainframe abandonware .... that stuff is.. lost to us all.

[geophoto3]

that stuff is.. lost to us all.

I fear you may be right. However, this was not a complete stab in the dark. At least one person who worked on an MTS system has recovered the software and has it running in emulation. He seems to be keeping it to himself for now - possible for very good reasons. I was just taking a stab here to see if anyone else may have known anything.

I don't think MUSIC/SP is code-related to MTS, but fortunately there is a pretty cool virtual MUSIC/SP system out there for us to play with, if we wish. Anyone who has a passing interest in old mainframe operating systems, especially those used at colleges and universities in the 1980's and 1990's will find more info and a MUSIC/SP virtual system at http://www.canpub.com/teammpg/de/sim390/index.htm

It is quite easy to set up, and a hoot to play with.

[louisw3]

the sad thing with that is the author died, and there is zero hope of any of it really being released outside of the binary blobs.

so it's effectively dead.

[retroOS]

I havent found a runnable version yet, but there are a few sites which contain a lot of documents relating to MTS

http://bitsavers.org/pdf/univOfMichigan/mts/

and

http://archive.michigan-terminal-system.org/

[Jeff Ogden]

MTS distributions starting with D1.0 (1968) and ending with D6.0 (1988) are now freely available in the Software Archive at Bitsavers.org under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY 3.0). The material is available as a collection of simulated magnetic tapes in AWS format together with associated documentation. An overview of the material is also available, see: http://archive.michigan-terminal-system ... tributions

Working with the D6.0 distribution materials it would be possible to create an IPLable version of MTS, but in the future we hope to make this easier by adding an IPLable version of MTS suitable for use with a S/370 emulator such as Hercules. The IPLable version of MTS will be based upon the version of MTS that was in use at the University of Michigan in 1996 shortly before MTS was shutdown.

There is no relationship between MUSIC or MUSIC/SP and MTS other than that they were both time-sharing operating systems that ran on IBM System/360 and System/370 mainframes. MUSIC (McGill University System for Interactive Computing) was developed at McGill University in 1972 and MTS (Michigan Terminal System) was developed at the University of Michigan in 1967. MTS was extended/enhanced at 7 other sites over the years. The last MTS site (RPI) shutdown in 1999.

And while there have been some deaths among the community of programmers that developed MTS, as of December 2011 most of us are still alive and kicking.

-Jeff Ogden
former U-M Computing Center staff member