Abstract: A dual gender electrical connector is made up of a "male" member, a "female" member, and a positioning means. The positioning means may be integral with either the male or female member, and/or a part of any shielding used. The male member is made up of a non-conductive support material of predetermined thickness in which electrically conductive electrical contacts are embedded in parallel. Short lengths of the electrical contacts are exposed on the rear end for connection to electrical conductors. Longer lengths of electrical contacts are exposed on the front end. The female member is made up of an electrically non-conductive support material of the basic form and often the same material as the male member, though not the same depth as the male member. Tubes having a length equal to approximately the depth of the female member support material are positioned within the support material so as to be capable of sliding over and in contact with the electrical contacts of the male member.

Abstract: Data transfers between respective buffer segments and data source-sinks, such as peripheral data storage devices, are scheduled as a series of transfers based upon most recent, next most recent, to the least recent usage of the buffer segments by a utilization device. A list of segments ordered by such usage is dynamically maintained. Replacement of segment allocations among devices proceeds from the least recently used, next least recently used, etc. to the most recently used segments. Therefore a single list controls replacement and read ahead (prefetch) of data from devices to the buffer and transfer of data from the buffer to the devices, all based on utilization of the buffer by the utilization device.

Abstract: Data transfers between a host processor and a peripheral data recorder in a peripheral data storage system, such as tape recorder peripheral data storage system, are via a random-access buffer store in the peripheral data storage system and interposed between the peripheral data recorder and the host processor. A command queue storage in the peripheral data storage system stores commands received from the host processor for the peripheral data recorder. Additionally, apparatus in the peripheral data storage system form commands for transferring data between the peripheral data recorder and the buffer store without intervention of the host processor; both read transfers (data transfer from the peripheral data recorder to the host processor) and write transfers (data transfer from the host processor to the peripheral data recorder) are enabled via the formed commands.

Abstract: Data processing workloads are balanced between a plurality of data processing units, such as control units of a peripheral system, based upon tallies of data processing delays. The workloads are arranged in work allocations, such as assignment of peripheral devices to a control unit; a separate delay tally is kept for each work allocation along with a summation of all delays in each control unit. When a tally threshold in any data processing unit is exceeded, load balance is examined. Upon a predetermined imbalance, a work allocation having a delay tally equal to a mean value of the different delay summations is transferred to a data processing unit having a lower delay summation.