Does anyone have a paper tape punch?

[glitch]

I was wondering if anyone had the ability to punch new tapes if given a binary file. If so, would you be willing to punch a program to tape for me, and for how much?

I've got an OP-80a paper tape reader and thought it might be neat to have a few tapes to run through it.

 

[MikeS]

I was wondering if anyone had the ability to punch new tapes if given a binary file. If so, would you be willing to punch a program to tape for me, and for how much?

I've got an OP-80a paper tape reader and thought it might be neat to have a few tapes to run through it.

I've got three or four, but with proprietary interfaces and in unknown operational status; I've been meaning to look into it for years and maybe this'll finally give me an excuse, but don't hold your breath... ;-)

 

[Dwight Elvey]

I was wondering if anyone had the ability to punch new tapes if given a binary file. If so, would you be willing to punch a program to tape for me, and for how much?

I've got an OP-80a paper tape reader and thought it might be neat to have a few tapes to run through it.

Where are you located. I do have a ASR33 but I've not has it connected
to a computer yet. It'll need some work to get things going.
Dwight

 

[glitch]

@MikeS: No worries, it's more a curiosity than a necessity...what sort of punches are the?

@Dwight Elvey: I'm in the southern West Virginia/Virginia area. Do you just need a RS-232 <-> Current Loop device, or do you know if the ASR-33 even works?

 

[Dwight Elvey]

@MikeS: No worries, it's more a curiosity than a necessity...what sort of punches are the?

@Dwight Elvey: I'm in the southern West Virginia/Virginia area. Do you just need a RS-232 <-> Current Loop device, or do you know if the ASR-33 even works?

I'd need something to convert from RS323 to 20mil. I've run the printer
from the keyboard about 3 years ago, with the punch enabled. I did not
actually punch anything then.
I live in California. A little too far for quick trips.
I could put together a converter without too much issues. I wonder if
XP supports 110baud?? If not, it might require a little fiddling
on my old 386 machine ( I have direct control of the serial port
there ).
Dwight

 

[glitch]

I know Windows 2000 supports 110 baud under even HyperTerminal...I'd bet the copy of HyperTerminal in XP does.

RS-232 <-> Current Loop should be pretty easy conversion. One of the serial I/O cards in the Bursky S-100 book has a converter using IIRC just opto-isolators. If you'd like, I could build one and trade you the converter for some tapes!

 

[Chuck(G)]

Dwight, it's been a very long time since I last used an ASR33, but I seem to remember that you can duplicate tape off line--simply set the unit to "local" and turn the punch and reader on. No computer necessary. Or am I mis-remembering?

 

[Dwight Elvey]

Dwight, it's been a very long time since I last used an ASR33, but I seem to remember that you can duplicate tape off line--simply set the unit to "local" and turn the punch and reader on. No computer necessary. Or am I mis-remembering?

I think the OP was that he had binary images. I've not had time to setup the reader
anyway. It may or may not work. When I first got the machine, The stand was shipped
separate. He'd placed the power supply for the reader in that box ( don't know why? ).
Since I didn't see the power supply, I'd not fiddled with the reader or the punch.
I do believe you are correct, it should be able to make copies but it does require
printing at the same time.
Dwight

 

[MikeS]

@MikeS: No worries, it's more a curiosity than a necessity...what sort of punches are the?

Same here; I used to have a huge collection of fairly rare Burroughs utility and diagnostic paper tapes but unfortunately threw them all out before i realized that people actually collected some of these old machines. Now I don't really have any use for PPT equipment but it'd be fun to get a perf and reader hooked up to a PC and play with it. We used to make "banners" out of PPT by punching character patterns; I still have several rolls of coloured tape, might be fun to punch a "Happy Birthday <Fill in current GF name here>" on pink tape again.

I've got an NCR perforator about the size of a small microwave but even heavier, an old heavy-duty electromechanical unit from a Burroughs series E (not that that'll mean anything to you ;-) ) and the reader and perf (or maybe 2) from a Burroughs series L as in the picture; also a few assorted readers.

Oops, forgot I had a picture of the E perforator.

 

[MikeS]

While we're on the subject, does anyone have or know where I could find a program to punch readable text into paper tape? Either PC or CP/M format would do nicely. It'd be fun to write one, but if I found one already done that might inspire me to actually get a perforator interfaced and working...

Some companies (and people) used to punch a number or descriptive label at the beginning of the tape so you could read what it contained.

TIA,

mike

 

[Dwight Elvey]

While we're on the subject, does anyone have or know where I could find a program to punch readable text into paper tape? Either PC or CP/M format would do nicely. It'd be fun to write one, but if I found one already done that might inspire me to actually get a perforator interfaced and working...

Some companies (and people) used to punch a number or descriptive label at the beginning of the tape so you could read what it contained.

Hi
This shouldn't be too hard to write. It would be even easier if the particular machine that you
ran it on had a ROM for the CRT that could be read. One could scan the ROM data into a table
on the fly for each letter to print. No need to even code up the fonts.
My Canon Cat comes to mind.
Dwight

 

[MikeS]

Hi
This shouldn't be too hard to write. It would be even easier if the particular machine that you
ran it on had a ROM for the CRT that could be read. One could scan the ROM data into a table
on the fly for each letter to print. No need to even code up the fonts.
My Canon Cat comes to mind.
Dwight

True enough, Dwight; like I said it'd be fun to write and I've done some work with character generators, pixelboards and even a banner program or two so I have various binary character images and probably 75% of the program somewhere already.

It's just psychological; if I had a ready-to-go program and all I had to do was get a perf working then I'd probably be more motivated and it'd have a better chance of actually getting done than if I had to get the perf working and then also have to write the program.

But this thread has kinda reawakened my interest anyway and maybe if I have time over the weekend I'll have a look and see just what's involved in getting at least one reader & perforator pair working on a PC.

I also had some 80 column punched card equipment but foolishly threw it out way back when; still have a box of cards and although they're starting to warp a bit they're still good enough for use as edge-punched cards in the paper tape equipment (like the card in the tape reader in that L2000 picture).

 

[Ksarul]

Teletype Model 35s and Model 37s would print the text of the tape right over the feed holes as they punched (with an offset of seven characters). No additional utilities necessary.

 

[dave_m]

It's just psychological; if I had a ready-to-go program and all I had to do was get a perf working then I'd probably be more motivated and it'd have a better chance of actually getting done than if I had to get the perf working and then also have to write the program.

Mike,
Spoken like a true hardware man. Who wants to write a program when there is hardware to design and get working. Let some 'coder pig' do the rest. That was a fairly universal Aerospace term.

I wonder if any "Computer Science" people of today have ever heard that expression for a programmer? I haven't heard it used since the 70's. At Rockwell, when a programmer did good, he was just called a 'coder'. When he screwed up, he was called a 'coder puke'.
-Dave

'

 

[MikeS]

Mike,
Spoken like a true hardware man. Who wants to write a program when there is hardware to design and get working. Let some 'coder pig' do the rest. That was a fairly universal Aerospace term.

I wonder if any "Computer Science" people of today have ever heard that expression for a programmer? I haven't heard it used since the 70's. At Rockwell, when a programmer did good, he was just called a 'coder'. When he screwed up, he was called a 'coder puke'.
-Dave

'

Heh, heh... probably not very PC these days...

You were at Rockwell? That's where your BATPRO came from, wasn't it?

So, did they give you a free AIM65?

 

[cosam]

Let some 'coder pig' do the rest. That was a fairly universal Aerospace term.

I'll have to remember that one!

I wonder if any "Computer Science" people of today have ever heard that expression for a programmer?

I certainly hadn't (non that I'm a "CS person", more of a CS drop-out!) but "code monkey" seems to be pretty popular these days. It's a shame that the term "tape monkey" seems to have fallen out of fashion, though. I used that on a job last year and no-one there had heard it before. On the positive side, it's a pretty self-explanatory term, so at least it stirred up a giggle.

 

[dave_m]

Steve,
I think I know what happened at Rockwell. Up to the mid 70's, the feeling was that "any electrical engineer could to programming, but who would want to... ".

THEN microprocessors arrived and everyone wanted to do some assembly language programming but we soon realized how hard it was to do properly. So we then were much more respectful and gave our programmer buddies the title "software engineer".

Best regards, Dave

 

[dave_m]

So, did they give you a free AIM65?

Mike,
Not free, but at cost. They wanted us all to play with them. There were soon "G-Job" designs for power supplies and cases. The company bought a license from a little outfit called Microsoft for their ROM BASIC that we called "buggy basic".

But when the Commodore PET came out, most of us abandoned the AIM 65. However the AIM 65 led a long life as one of the first uP based industrial controllers.
-Dave

 

[MikeS]

Mike,
Not free, but at cost. They wanted us all to play with them. There were soon "G-Job" designs for power supplies and cases. The company bought a license from a little outfit called Microsoft for their ROM BASIC that we called "buggy basic".

But when the Commodore PET came out, most of us abandoned the AIM 65. However the AIM 65 led a long life as one of the first uP based industrial controllers.
-Dave

Yeah, I'd heard (maybe even from you ?) that they offered deals to the appropriate employees; I take it you don't have one?

In some ways they had more going for them than the PET:
-more memory possible (40K instead of 32)
-RS-232 instead of IEEE
-more I/O ports
-different languages available in ROM (BASIC, FORTH, PL/65, Assembler)
-built-in little printer.

Forget the single-line, 20 character paradigm and hook up an 80x25 terminal and you had a respectable little computer, underappreciated in my view. I used them quite a bit (and still have a few) and am always looking for fellow aficionados.

Ideal for driving a paper tape perforator, BTW (to bring this on topic ;-) )

 

[dave_m]

Yeah, I'd heard (maybe even from you ?) that they offered deals to the appropriate employees; I take it you don't have one?

No, sadly I unceremoniously dumped it and my PET 2001 about 10 years ago during a brief period where my sentimental era ended and before my nostalgic era started.

Forget the single-line, 20 character paradigm and hook up an 80x25 terminal and you had a respectable little computer, underappreciated in my view.

I remember that the AIM club guys did build a CRT controller but I never had one. Or do you mean you could hang a RS-232 terminal on the serial port? Did you have to modify the monitor firmware?