Talk:Spooling

message: "In computer science, spooling refers to putting jobs in a buffer..."
 This use of the word jobs is common computer slang, but perhaps not right for a WP article, esp in the opening sentence.  What it means here is "intermediate workflow files", but that is kind of awkward... 69.87.193.176 13:19, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  jobs 

message: It seems like spooling is a lot like stuffing data into a FIFO where each side can can read/write whenever ready.  Of course, if the FIFO gets full, data on the write side must wait or be lost.  —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 157.234.254.24 (talk) 14:35, August 21, 2007 (UTC) 
:Spooling is FIFO. Different spooling programs treated full buffers in different ways. IBM's Power program simply stopped and waited for the operator to make a decision. DataCorp's The Spooler and SDI's Grasp began printing immediately, so if their buffers filled, they simply slowed to printer speed.
:--UnicornTapestry (talk) 02:24, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spooling and FIFOs 

message: The article claims tape was used as a 'spooling' mechanism. While it's true that DOS, OS/MxT, and other operating system variants could output print lines to 'spools' of tape (which we called reels), this was never considered 'spooling' in the sense of the article.
--UnicornTapestry (talk) 02:30, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tape? Reely? 

message: A recent edit by User:Free 3rhym changed Computer science to Information science; the two are not equivalent and Computer science is the relevant term when discussing features of computer software. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:25, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Computer science]] is not [[Information science]] 

message: I don't get why a city prepares payroll cheques. I'm thinking city - large conurbation. What other cities are there?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.148.196.229 (talk) 20:35, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  "city prepares payroll checks" - huh? 

message: I distinctly remember being told that SPOOL stands for Simulated Peripheral Operations On Line. The peripheral operations are simulated.Lestrade (talk) 03:26, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Someone may have told you that, but it has been Simultaneous Peripheral Operations On Line since the 1950's, in such IBM software as SPOOL System, 7070-IO-076. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 23:14, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Makes no sense. What two operations are simultaneous? However, it makes sense to say that peripheral operations are simulated as though they were online. The person who told me was a lecturer for a company that sold EDOS.Lestrade (talk) 00:22, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it does make sense, especially if you were there, using the hardware and software. Simultaneous refers to the running of more than one batch job at a time. If you wanted to, say, run PAYROLL and GLEDGER without a spooling subsystem, you had to have a printer (peripheral) available for each. After HASP was introduced, the jobs could run at the same time, "printing" to a spool file, even if you only had one physical printer. You could then print the spooled output when convenient. The person who's telling you this installed and operated IBM operating systems ranging from MVT to MVS/ESA, and remembers the annoyance of life without Simultaneous Peripheral Operation On-Line. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 05:00, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Very clearly explained.Lestrade (talk) 10:26, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks! Glad I could help--even if I am admitting how ancient I am. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 17:09, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

text: Actually, MVT had SPOOL support without ASP or HASP. ASP and HASP automated some of the operation of the computer, avoided some of the overhead of allocating DASD datasets for SPOOL and automatically blocked records even when the user didn't provide an explicit block size. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:34, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

text: Are you sure that it is not Simultaneous Peripheral Operation Off-Line?Lestrade (talk) 18:31, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. — UncleBubba ( T @ C ) 20:22, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

text: The SPOOL software for the 7070, 7080, 7090 and related computers allowed for simultaneous card-to-tape, card-to-card, card-to-printer, tape to card and tape to printer operations on the same computer. You were still limited to one batch job at a time in parallel with the SPOOL activity. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:34, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

text: "The Guide To OS/2 Warp Device Drivers" <https://archive.org/details/SG24462700/page/n113> has "3. The spooler (Simultaneous Print Operation On Line) ..."  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chuzzwassa (talk • contribs) 02:01, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Neither the first nor the last time that the cobbler's children went barefoot. IBM manuals are frequently written by people who don't know the history, may not even know the product, and use guesses or urban legnds rather than consulting corporate archives. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 17:00, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Term

message: I recently reinstated a deleted paragraph relating to SPOOL software doing card-to-tape, tape-to-card, tape-to-printer and tape-to-tape operations. I added a citation of one SPOOL program supporting these operations; I considered adding some IOCS manuals to the references but suspected that it might be TMI. Would those references be appropriate? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 22:05, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Level of detail for references? 

message: Historically, banner pages have contained a wide variety of data and have varied both between systems and between installations of the same system. There is no datum that all banner pages included. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 22:55, 14 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Banner pages 

message: In the list of spooling systems, should the entry for ASP mention that IBM ultimately renamed it to Asymmetrical multiProcessor? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 18:18, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: That's in the ASP article. A reference would be nice.Peter Flass (talk) 20:43, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: There's already a link to ASP and a citation of , so the only thing missing is an explicit mention of the name change, which, as you noted, is present in the ASP article. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 19:28, 4 January 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mention renamng of ASP? 

message: The article now reads:
: this terminology [spool] is still found in the documentation for email and Usenet software, even though messages are often delivered immediately nowadays.
Are they?  SMTP is still what's used for Internet mail, and it's explicitly a store-and-forward protocol: a mail server receives a message for one or more recipients, and then decides what to do with it, often forwarding it to one or more other mail servers.  It may not wait until next night, but I bet most won't attempt to forward the mail until it has taken responsibility for the content. And in the time between taking and forwarding responsibility, the server may be restarted, which means the mail needs to be stored to disk. All that seems like spooling to me.
JöG (talk) 09:31, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mail 

message: "Because the unit record equipment on IBM mainframes of the early 1960s was so slow, it was common to use a small offline machine such as a 1401 instead of spooling. "
I'm unsure what "unit record equipment" means here. Also, the overall meaning is unclear.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.216.239.222 (talk) 15:06, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: On IBM mainframes unit record equipment usually means card readers, card punches and printers, although some less common devices qualify. --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 01:08, 7 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  "unit record equipment"