OS/6 (Office System/6 or System 6) is a standalone

word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Word processor (electronic device), Early word processors were stand-alone devices ded ...

made by IBM's Office Products Division (OPD), introduced in January, 1977. OS/6 was superseded by the IBM Displaywriter in 1980.

Overview

The intended configuration is a console with a keyboard, a small, approximately 9" CRT character display and either a daisy wheel or IBM 46/40 ink jet printer, renamed the IBM 6640. Documents are stored on 8-inch floppy diskettes and

magnetic stripe card The term digital card can refer to a physical item, such as a memory card on a camera, or, increasingly since 2017, to the digital content hosted as a virtual card or cloud card, as a digital virtual representation of a physical card. They share ...

, which is exchangeable with IBM's previous generation of Mag Card Selectrics. The display is pre-

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...

, so special symbols embedded in the displayed text mark formatting information the user can edit. Navigation is pre-mouse and uses arrow keys. In an age before PCs, when typing was still done primarily only by clerical staff, the OS/6 was intended for what IBM envisioned as centralized word processing centers at large organizations. It includes features like

mail merge Mail merge consists of combining mail and letters and pre-addressed envelopes or mailing labels for mass mailings from a form letter. This feature is usually employed in a word processing document which contains fixed text (which is the same i ...

, very high print quality with many formatting options and printers that can feed envelopes or sheets from two drawers, usually referred to within IBM as letterhead and second sheet. Data from Office System/6 can be migrated to

IBM 5110 The IBM 5110 Computing System is the successor of the IBM 5100 Portable Computer. The IBM 5110 was announced in January 1978 (a little over 2 years after the introduction of the IBM 5100). Its main differences were support for more I/O devices ( ...

and 5120 with third-party applications. Internally, the OS/6 uses an IBM proprietary 16-bit single-chip microprocessor called the OPD Mini Processor. This processor is a single-chip

FET The field-effect transistor (FET) is a type of transistor that uses an electric field to control the flow of Electric current, current in a semiconductor. FETs (JFETs or MOSFETs) are devices with three terminals: ''source'', ''gate'', and ''dra ...

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...

16-bit 16-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 16-bit microprocessors. A 16-bit register can store 216 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 16 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two mos ...

little-endian In computing, endianness, also known as byte sex, is the order or sequence of bytes of a word of digital data in computer memory. Endianness is primarily expressed as big-endian (BE) or little-endian (LE). A big-endian system stores the most ...

instruction set In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA), also called computer architecture, is an abstract model of a computer. A device that executes instructions described by that ISA, such as a central processing unit (CPU), is called a ...

built on an 8-bit internal architecture. Sixteen general-purpose registers, implemented as a 32-byte

window A window is an opening in a wall, door, roof, or vehicle that allows the exchange of light and may also allow the passage of sound and sometimes air. Modern windows are usually glazed or covered in some other transparent or translucent mate ...

in memory that operated as a

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, could be used as instruction

operands In mathematics, an operand is the object of a mathematical operation, i.e., it is the object or quantity that is operated on. Example The following arithmetic expression shows an example of operators and operands: :3 + 6 = 9 In the above examp ...

or for indirect references to operands in memory.

History

Development on OS/6 was done in the "Rio" project at IBM's Austin,

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

facilities. A proposed video display upgrade for the

Selectric The IBM Selectric typewriter was a highly successful line of electric typewriters introduced by IBM on 31 July 1961. Instead of the "basket" of individual typebars that swung up to strike the ribbon and page in a typical typewriter of the peri ...

Mag Card II had been rejected. Instead, it was announced in 1977 that Mag Card II users would be able to add a communications option to link up with System 6. In a 1977 presentation the System 6 was shown with the models 6/430, 6/440, and 6/450. One year later the models 6/442 and 6/452 were shown additionally. System 6 building blocks are monitor, keyboard, magnetic card unit, inkjet, and daisy wheel printers, and a

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined ...

station. In 1978, a stand-alone CPU (without magnetic card and printing capabilities) was added to the product line, the IBM 6/420 Information Processor. In 1979, a communication-enabled laser printer and photocopier combination was introduced, the

IBM 6670 The IBM 6670 Information Distributor (6670-001) was a combination laser printer and photocopier introduced by IBM. Announced on February 14, 1979, as part of Office System/6, its feature set included two-sided printing. ''The New York Times'' d ...

Information Distributor. Also in 1979, IBM General Systems Division (GSD) introduced

IBM 5520 The IBM 5520 ''Administrative System'' was a text, electronic document‐distribution and data processing system, announced by IBM General Systems Division (GSD) in 1979. Configuration The system offered linked text-editing work stations that sha ...

systems, not related to System 6, with some overlapping functionality and performance. OS/6 was superseded by the IBM Displaywriter in 1980.

References

External links

Computer museum
A partially working example of a 6/420 on display
Computer museum
in Dutch {{IBM IBM computers 16-bit computers Word processors