System Support Program
| Introduced: | xx, 197x (S/34), xx, 198x (S/36), xx, 199x (A/36) |
|---|---|
| Discontinued: | xx, 198x (S/34), xx, 199x (S/36), xx, 200x (A/36) |
| Architecture: | System/34, System/36 |
System Support Program, commonly abbreviated to SSP, is the operating system used on the System/34 and System/36 midrange computers, and in the Advanced/36 emulation environment for OS/400. It is an evolution of the operating systems found in the System/3 and the System/32, and was designed for source code compatibility with both prior machines. Applications were typically written in RPG II, with support for BASIC, FORTRAN, and an assembler available. Scripting and batch processing was typically handled via the use of Operational Control Language.
System Support Program originated on the System/34 in 1978 and was supported until Release 9. Its only user interface was an OCL command line at the bottom of the screen.
The System/36 version of SSP added the familiar menu-driven user interface and support for lowercase characters in user applications, including the operating system itself. Later versions of SSP would also support the DisplayWrite/36 application and PC Support/36, as well as extra hardware options such as tape drives and token-ring support.
The final version of SSP was Release 7 and was exclusive to the Advanced/36 emulation environment. It was modified so that the operating system depended on certain low-level functions of the PowerPC AS processor and the emulator software and as such does not run on an actual System/36. However, the userland of SSP Release 7 is the same as Release 5, so any existing System/36 application could continue to run, unchanged. Advanced/36 and therefore SSP support ended when OS/400 V4R5 was released, which dropped all support for the Advanced/36 emulator.
IBM continues to support SSP applications on IBM i through the use of the System/36 Execution Environment, a special set of compilers that will compile System/36 RPG II source code to a present-day IBM i application. Notably, this does require that source code is available as the Execution Environment does not emulate a System/36 and cannot run SSP executables.
Notable Versions
Archived Versions
System/34
SSP R7
SSP R8
SSP R9
System/36
SSP R1M0
SSP R3M0
SSP R5M0
SSP R5M1
Advanced/36
SSP R7
