A Brief History of Oki Electric Operating Systems for Office Computers

In 1966 Oki Electric announced the OKIMINITAC series, a small business computer that was the forerunner of the office computer. Later, in 1976, the company developed and announced the OKITAC System 9, a true office computer. The OKITAC System 9 was loaded with an operating system called BOS, which stood for “business oriented system.” There were two versions of BOS: BOS/D, which was based on hard disks, and BOS/F, which was based on floppy disks. BOS came with not only COBOL but also BPL, a simple programming language. Various improvements were added to the operating systems — including support for pen-touch keyboards and, later in 1980, for kanji characters — which made developing applications easier.
In 1982 BOS was replaced by CROS, which focused on interactive performance. CROS was a real-time multipurpose operating system with functionality for both operating applications and developing programs.