POWER was an

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

enhancement package that provided

spooling In computing, spooling is a specialized form of multi-programming for the purpose of copying data between different devices. In contemporary systems, it is usually used for mediating between a computer application and a slow peripheral, such a ...

facilities for the

IBM System/360 The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. System/360 was the first family of computers designed to cover both commercial and scientific applicati ...

running

DOS/360 Disk Operating System/360, also DOS/360, or simply DOS, is the discontinued first member of a sequence of operating systems for IBM System/360, System/370 and later mainframes. It was announced by IBM on the last day of 1964, and it was first d ...

or retrofitted with modified DOS/360. Upgrades, POWER/VS and POWER/VSE were available for and the

IBM System/370 The IBM System/370 (S/370) is a range of IBM mainframe computers announced as the successors to the IBM System/360, System/360 family on June 30, 1970. The series mostly maintains backward compatibility with the S/360, allowing an easy migrati ...

running DOS/VS and DOS/VSE respectively. POWER is an acronym for ''Priority Output Writers, Execution processors and input Readers''.

The product

POWER was an operating system enhancement available for DOS/360, DOS/VS, and DOS/VSE, and came packaged with some third party DOS-based operating systems.

International Business Machines International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

released POWER in 1969 following a public introduction at the IBM Wall Street Data Center. It ' spooled' (queued) printer and card data, freeing programs from being dependent upon the speed of printers or punched card equipment. POWER competed with non-IBM products, namely DataCorp's The Spooler and SDI's

GRASP A grasp is an act of taking, holding or seizing firmly with (or as if with) the hand. An example of a grasp is the handshake, wherein two people grasp one of each other's like hands. In zoology Zoology ( , ) is the scientific study of an ...

. Unlike the other products, POWER required a dedicated partition. It allowed a single printer (1403/2311), punch (2520, 2540) or reader (2540, 2501) to be shared by two or more processing partitions. Input data was asynchronously loaded and directed to the proper partition by Job class. Output was directed to disk and stored there - then directed to a printer or punch by the writer type, (PRT, PUN), Job Class, Priority and form code. This was provided in PRT and PUN control cards in the input stream. Once the operator put the proper form in the printer/punch and told power to start (G PUN or G PRT on the console) the device would continue until no more output of that type was available. When a new form was encountered it would alert the operator to change forms and wait for the next go command.

Platforms

The product ran on IBM systems from the S/360 Model 30 through larger machines. Generally the smaller machines that had less than 128K or Core memory (would be called RAM today but were actually magnetic cores strung on wire matrices) did not have the ability to run POWER. POWER/VS ran well on the later S/370 series - usually on the Models 135 and 145 and later on the 4331 and 4341.

Software

The product ran under several DOS-related platforms: *

* DOS/VS * DOS/VSE *

clones, 3rd party or modified

Hardware

The hardware platforms included: *

IBM/360 The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. System/360 was the first family of computers designed to cover both commercial and scientific applicati ...

which ran POWER *

IBM/370 The IBM System/370 (S/370) is a range of IBM mainframe computers announced as the successors to the System/360 family on June 30, 1970. The series mostly maintains backward compatibility with the S/360, allowing an easy migration path for cus ...

which ran POWER/VS and clones which included: * Amdahl * Fujitsu *

Hitachi () is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1910 and headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo. The company is active in various industries, including digital systems, power and renewable ener ...

* Magnuson *

RCA RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded in 1919 as the Radio Corporation of America. It was initially a patent pool, patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Westinghou ...

Siemens Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational technology conglomerate. It is focused on industrial automation, building automation, rail transport and health technology. Siemens is the largest engineering company in Europe, and holds the positi ...

References

Power Computer printing Remote job entry {{Software engineering

The product

Platforms

Software

Hardware

See also

References