MVS in the classroom

Abstract

The design principles of operating systems have been isolated and comprehensively expounded in texts that have appeared in the last decade which are suitable for either an advanced undergraduate or low-level graduate course. The topics covered are those listed in the course outline for CS10, Operating Systems and Computer Architecture II in Curriculum '78 (1). Generally one of two approaches is taken. The first is that the computer architecture already decides many of the fundamental policies of the operating system which it is to support. The second is that an operating system must solve certain allocation and scheduling problems in order to provide a user with a variety of services and to manage its own resources efficiently, and that once identified, solutions to the problems must be implemented on some computer architecture. In either case the text usually culminates with a limited project in which students design and implement some type of multiprogramming operating system.This report outlines the approach taken to present IBM's Multiple Virtual Storage Operating System (MVS) in this setting.