IBM Remote Access Computing (RAX) is a discontinued early

time-sharing In computing, time-sharing is the Concurrency (computer science), concurrent sharing of a computing resource among many tasks or users by giving each Process (computing), task or User (computing), user a small slice of CPU time, processing time. ...

system for

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

introduced in 1966. RAX was based on an earlier system, RACS. developed jointly by

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

and

Lockheed Aircraft Lockheed (originally spelled Loughead) may refer to: Brands and enterprises * Lockheed Corporation, a former American aircraft manufacturer * Lockheed Martin, formed in 1995 by the merger of Lockheed Corporation and Martin Marietta ** Lockheed Mar ...

Marietta, Georgia Marietta is a city in and the county seat of Cobb County, Georgia, United States. At the 2020 census, the city had a population of 60,972. The 2019 estimate was 60,867, making it one of Atlanta's largest suburbs. Marietta is the fourth largest ...

in 1965. The system influenced a number of other timesharing systems including MCGILL-RAX from

McGill University McGill University (French: Université McGill) is an English-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill University, Vol. I. For the Advancement of Learning, ...

, McGill's

MUSIC Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

, and Reactive Terminal Service (RTS) from ITT Data Services. In the 1970s

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. BU was founded in 1839 by a group of Boston Methodism, Methodists with its original campus in Newbury (town), Vermont, Newbur ...

used RAX as the basis of its VPS system, which ran as a

guest operating system Hardware virtualization is the virtualization of computers as complete hardware platforms, certain logical abstractions of their componentry, or only the functionality required to run various operating systems. Virtualization emulates the hardw ...

running on

VM/370 VM (often: VM/CMS) is a family of IBM virtual machine operating systems used on IBM mainframes System/370, System/390, zSeries, System z and compatible systems, including the Hercules emulator for personal computers. Design The heart of t ...

Hardware

RAX was available from IBM as program number 360A-CX-17X, and runs on System/360 Model 30 and above.As announced, it runs on systems with as little as 64 KB of main storage, and supports a mix of up to 63

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 wid ...

typewriter terminals and

IBM 2260 The text-only Monochrome monitor, monochrome IBM 2260 cathode-ray tube (CRT) video display terminal (Display Station) plus computer keyboard, keyboard was a 1964 predecessor to the more-powerful IBM 3270 terminal line which eventually was extended ...

display terminals. The languages supported are

BASIC Basic or BASIC may refer to: Science and technology * BASIC, a computer programming language * Basic (chemistry), having the properties of a base * Basic access authentication, in HTTP Entertainment * Basic (film), ''Basic'' (film), a 2003 film ...

, FORTRAN IV, and

IBM Basic assembly language The IBM Basic assembly language and successors is a series of assembly languages and assemblers made for the IBM System/360 mainframe system and its successors through the IBM Z. The first of these, the Basic Assembly Language (BAL), is an ...

.RTS also supported COBOL. In a minimal system with 64 KB memory, user programs can be up to 32 KB, with larger programs allowed on larger systems.

Users

In 1968 RAX was used by the

United States Department of Agriculture The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is an executive department of the United States federal government that aims to meet the needs of commercial farming and livestock food production, promotes agricultural trade and producti ...

for their Washington Data Processing Center. It was used in a number of colleges, universities, and corporations, including McGill,

, St. Andrew's in Scotland, The

University of Rhode Island The University of Rhode Island (URI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Kingston, Rhode Island, United States. It is the flagship public research as well as the land-grant university of Rhode Island. The univer ...

, and Bell Aerosystems.

Notes

References

{{IBM operating systems Time-sharing operating systems Operating system technology Assembly language software IBM mainframe operating systems IBM mainframe software 1966 software