Let's not mix whales and turkeys.

TSS was IBM's attempted answer to Multics - built specifically for time-sharing, way too complex, and suffering from second-system syndrome.  It never reached product status, but there were a few icustomer nstallations. Bell Labs Indian Hill was one - so that's why TSS was the base of their UNIX port.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSS_(operating_system)

TSO was the Time-Sharing Option - by far the most common time-sharing environment for IBM, since it was an add-on to their mainstream OS family - MFT, MVT, MVS, etc.  I had the joy(?) of using TSO for my 3 summers with  the El Paso Natural Gas company.  TSO is the system that earned the 'dead whale down a beach' line from Steve Johnson; it was truly awful.  I'm sure there was some TSO somewhere in BTL as well.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Sharing_Option

The most sane time-sharing choice, and also the best for OS development, was VM/CMS.  But for most of its life, IBM was trying to kill VM in favor of the others.  AFAIK, there was no VM installation in BTL.  See Melinda Varian's wonderful history of VM. http://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda/neuvm.pdf

On Fri, May 6, 2022 at 1:08 AM Ron Natalie <ron@ronnatalie.com> wrote:
They liked kicking a dead whale down the beach. 

> On May 6, 2022, at 09:39, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
>
> Tom Lyon via TUHS <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
>
>> I was (re?)introduced to Chuck Haley recently and discovered he had a copy
>> of a Bell Labs memo from himself, London, Maranzaro, and Ritchie.  They
>> suggest that the path pursued to get UNIX running in/under TSS/370 was the
>> hard way to go.
>>
>> Enjoy:
>> http://charles.the-haleys.org/papers/Alternate_Implementation_Proposal_for_Unix370.pdf
>>
>>
>> --
>> - Tom
>
> So, why, given the letter from these folks, including DMR, did they go
> ahead and use the TSS solution anyway?
>
> Just wondering.
>
> Arnold



--
- Tom