Virtual Storage Personal Computing (VSPC) was a service offered by
IBM in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
[In Germany, the service was announced in October, 1979 according t]
an article in Computerwoche dated 1979-10-19
From a data terminal, users could run both
interactive
Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but mo ...
processes and
batch job
Computerized batch processing is a method of running software programs called jobs in batches automatically. While users are required to submit the jobs, no other interaction by the user is required to process the batch. Batches may automatically ...
s on remote computing hardware (located in IBM service centres) to which they were connected e.g. by telephone lines using
modem
A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by Modulation#Digital modulati ...
s. Among the
programming language
A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language.
The description of a programming ...
s offered were VSPC variants of
BASIC
BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...
,
FORTRAN,
APL and
PL/I
PL/I (Programming Language One, pronounced and sometimes written PL/1) is a procedural, imperative computer programming language developed and published by IBM. It is designed for scientific, engineering, business and system programming. I ...
. VSPC became obsolete following the invention of the
Personal Computer
A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...
as computing power became available to the individual user locally.
In a campus setting, VSPC offered users the ability to create and submit programs to an IBM (or compatible) mainframe without using punched cards, though the programs were still submitted as card images, and programs so submitted needed all the usual IBM
Job Control Language
Job Control Language (JCL) is a name for scripting languages used on IBM mainframe operating systems to instruct the system on how to run a batch job or start a subsystem.
More specifically, the purpose of JCL is to say which programs to run, us ...
(JCL) statements to access the mainframe batch submission and resource allocation processes. Output from a job submitted through VSPC could be routed to a printer, or back to the user's VSPC account, though in general the output would be too wide to be viewed easily on a VSPC terminal.
Although IBM
Selectric
The IBM Selectric typewriter was a highly successful line of electric typewriters introduced by IBM on 31 July 1961.
Instead of the "basket" of individual typebars that swung up to strike the ribbon and page in a typical typewriter of the perio ...
terminals were supported (with special typeballs for APL programming), most VSPC interaction was through half-duplex
IBM 3270
The IBM 3270 is a family of block oriented display and printer computer terminals introduced by IBM in 1971
and normally used to communicate with IBM mainframes. The 3270 was the successor to the IBM 2260 display terminal. Due to the text ...
(and compatible) terminals. Using VSPC for APL programming required a special terminal which implemented APL symbols in addition to the usual
EBCDIC
Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC; ) is an eight-bit character encoding used mainly on IBM mainframe and IBM midrange computer operating systems. It descended from the code used with punched cards and the corresponding six- ...
characters.
References
IBM services