What Is a Mainframe Operating System?
Just like the keyboard and mouse are the interface between the computer and the user, the operating system is the interface between the computer and the software. The operating system acts like a traffic cop pushing and pulling data to and from memory, registers, input and output devices and the processor. A mainframe operating system simply is an operating system (OS) on a mainframe computer, a powerful device used mainly by governments and businesses to process large amounts of information and support a great number of users. In the 1950s, before desktop computers and long before laptops, all computing was done on mainframe computers. These computers could take up a whole room and do less work than a modern laptop computer. As a matter of fact, early computers were designed to only do a single job or run a single program. For this reason, they didn’t need a mainframe operating system.
