Conversational Programming System or CPS was an early

Time-sharing In computing, time-sharing is the sharing of a computing resource among many users at the same time by means of multiprogramming and multi-tasking.DEC Timesharing (1965), by Peter Clark, The DEC Professional, Volume 1, Number 1 Its emergence ...

system offered by IBM which ran on

System/360 The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems that was announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. It was the first family of computers designed to cover both commercial and scientific applica ...

mainframes ''circa'' 1967 through 1972 in a partition of OS/360 Release 17 MFT II or MVT or above. CPS was implemented as an interpreter, and users could select either a rudimentary form of

BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

or a reasonably complete version of

PL/I PL/I (Programming Language One, pronounced and sometimes written PL/1) is a procedural, imperative computer programming language developed and published by IBM. It is designed for scientific, engineering, business and system programming. I ...

. A third option provided remote job entry (RJE) features allowing users to submit JCL

job stream In a non-interactive computer system, particularly IBM mainframes, a job stream, jobstream, or simply job is the sequence of job control language statements (JCL) and data (called ''instream data'') that comprise a single "unit of work for an op ...

s for batch processing. A fourth option was called control mode. Normally, only the system operator would be permitted to use control mode. The available features in control mode included: *Send a message to an individual user or all users. *Clobber (today it would be called re-boot) a specific user's virtual CPS machine. *Monitor the activity of an individual user. *Terminate the entire CPS system. CPS provided a highly interactive user experience. It accomplished this by giving an immediate syntax error (when necessary) as soon as each line of a program was entered. CPS was also offered with a firmware-assisted interpreter, on the

IBM System/360 Model 50 The IBM System/360 Model 50 is a member of the IBM System/360 family of computers. The Model 50 was announced in April 1964 with the other initial models of the family, and first shipped in August 1965 to the Bank of America. Models There are f ...

, only, but few Model 50 installations elected to install this RPQ. This RPQ executed the ''EVAL'' function of CPS's programming stack using a firmware assist. The IBM-released version of CPS was designed to run on the

IBM 1050 IBM 1050 Data Communications System is a computer terminal subsystem to send data to and receive data from another 1050 subsystem or IBM computer in the IBM 1400, IBM 7000 or System/360 series. It first became available in 1963 and was used wi ...

terminal and the

IBM 2741 The IBM 2741 is a printing computer terminal that was introduced in 1965. Compared to the teletypewriter machines that were commonly used as printing terminals at the time, the 2741 offers 50% higher speed, much higher quality printing, quieter op ...

terminal with the "break feature". User groups later added support for the IBM 2260 video display terminal. CPS support for the IBM 2741 "break feature" most likely influenced the eventual user group support for the "break feature" and the IBM 1050 terminal on

IBM Administrative Terminal System The IBM Administrative Terminal System, also known as ATS/360, provided text- and data-management tools for working with documents to users of IBM System/360 systems. An earlier version ran on an IBM 1440 or IBM 1460 Data Processing System and the ...

(ATS/360), as many IBM customers which operated CPS also operated ATS/360. CPS was ultimately superseded by TSO. An IBM

program product Program, programme, programmer, or programming may refer to: Business and management * Program management, the process of managing several related projects * Time management * Program, a part of planning Arts and entertainment Audio * Programm ...

was offered which provided limited CPS functionality under TSO, intended mainly as a "bridge" between CPS and TSO.

References

External links

*
Conversational Programming System (CPS) development at computerhistory.org
{{Programming-software-stub IBM software Time-sharing