GATE CS 1992 Q02-xii — Memory Management and Virtual Memory

SPOOLing (Simultaneous Peripheral Operations On-Line) is a technique used to manage slow, non-shareable I/O devices by buffering their data in a temporary storage area (such as a disk) before it is processed.

Let's analyze the options:

• Option A: A terminal used for interactive input/output requires direct, real-time communication with the executing program and is not spooled.
• Option B: Secondary memory in a virtual memory system is used for paging and swapping, which is managed by the OS memory manager rather than spooling.
• Option C: A line printer is a classic example of a spooled device. Because a printer is slow and cannot be shared simultaneously by multiple active processes, the operating system intercepts print requests and writes them to a spool file on the disk. The printer then processes these jobs sequentially from the spool queue, allowing the CPU to continue executing other tasks without waiting.

Therefore, the correct option is C.