Virtual Storage Personal Computing: Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 18:36, 5 April 2025

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'''Virtual Storage Personal Computing''' (VSPC) was a service offered by [[IBM]] in the late 1970s and early 1980s.<ref>In Germany, the service was announced in October, 1979 according to [https://www.computerwoche.de/a/virtual-storage-personal-computing-vspc-mit-benutzersprache-as-neuer-dfv-service-der-ibm-rechenzentren,1194110 an article in Computerwoche dated 1979-10-19].</ref> From a data terminal, users could run both [[interactive]] processes and [[batch job]]s on remote computing hardware (located in IBM service centres, or in organisations' machine rooms) to which they were connected e.g. by telephone lines using [[modem]]s. Among the [[programming language]]s offered were VSPC variants of [[BASIC]], [[FORTRAN]], [[APL (programming language)|APL]] and [[PL/I]]. VSPC became obsolete following the invention of the [[Personal Computer]] as computing power became available to the individual user locally.

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Although IBM [[Selectric]] terminals were supported (with special typeballs for APL programming), most VSPC interaction was through half-duplex [[IBM 3270]] (and compatible) terminals. Using VSPC for APL programming required a special terminal which implemented APL symbols in addition to the usual [[EBCDIC]] characters.

By 1984, IBM stopped VSPC development and encouraged users to switch to [[Time Sharing Option]].<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Carlyle |first=R. Emmett |date=1984-10-15 |title=VSPC Users Lose Out |url=https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_datamation_44192572/page/n47/mode/2up |access-date=2025-04-05 |magazine=[[Datamation]] |pages=46–49}}</ref>

==References==