richg@locus.com (Rich Greenberg) (04/03/91)
To add to the SPOOL thread, here is an item I found on VMSHARE.
Because I haven't asked the author's permission to repost it,
I have deleted the last name. I have known this gentleman for
some time, and he goes way back with computers.
Append on 04/01/91 at 12:10 by Mike A............
I can confirm Ted's 7070 recollection. The card reader, punch, and printer
were terribly slow, but the system had a priority interrupt scheme (quite
advanced for its day) which allowed you to initiate a card read, for example,
resume processing, and field an interrupt on completion to buffer the card
image, etc. Child's play today, but very heady in the late 50's. There
was a huge box called the I/O Synchronizer which handled all this, I think
(all my 7070 stuff is in storage). In any event, There was a brown-and-orange
covered book called something-something SPOOL (Simultaneous Peripheral
Operations On Line) which was a very early, if not the first, usage of the
acronym. Aside: a really bright student at Rochester wrote a multipart
rendition of Row, row, row your boat using the 2 tape channels for the
melody (by varying the time between a start-tape order and a diagnostic
reset), and the unit record devices for rhythm, taking great advantage of
the priority system. Scared the H*ll out of the CE when he saw it running.
*** APPENDED 04/01/91 12:10:27 BY +MA ***
--
Disclaimer: The above writings are the ramblings of one human being
and have nothing what-so-ever to do with Locus Computing Corp.
---> Rich Greenberg, richg@locus.com TinsleTown, USA 213-337-5904
Located in Inglewood, Ca, a small city completely contained within Los Angeles