Question on how the AS/400 handles "spooling"

Hi Folks,

Had a strange one here yesterday. We have an HP 5si attached to the
AS/400 via MPI's "Blue Kit". The system see this printer as an IPDS
printer (type) and were are using AFP. It was printing 2,383 invoices on
a custom printed form and ran out of paper at page 1901. Some well
meaning sole placed plain paper in the printer and it took off and
finished the rest of the run on plain stock paper... The spool file goes
to save so I restarted it at page 1901 and it took FOREVER to do
anything (part of this has to do with MPI and I am working on this with
them) and while this was going on it CREAMED our other printers. A
printer would ask for form type or get alignment or end of forms
messages and take 5 or 10 minutes to do anything. There were INCREDIBLE
pauses between each spool file printed on these other printers. The
system was NEVER over 20 % CPU and that was the peak. The writer for the
5si did show towards the top of the list but with less than 4% CPU.
Interactive and batch response were GREAT.

Hope that's enough background - NOW my question...

WHAT was going on with spooling ?

HOW is this handled on the system ?

In all my years with the AS/400 I have NEVER seen anything like this. It
was like the one BIG job (and all in all this wasn't THAT big of a job)
was TOTALLY dominating QSPL or whatever, to the detriment of other
writers but yet otherwise not impacting the system AT ALL (???????
!!!!!!!!).

Thanks for any light anyone could shed on this !

Chuck

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