DrCharles
Experienced Member
Over on Greenkeys I saw the following recently:
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Hello friends,
Does anyone know of a program (maybe one I can run on a PC) that will take
an ASCII string of characters and output a series of 8-bit bytes that when
sent to a tape punch, will create human readable characters on the tape? A
single ASCII character would typically require several bytes to form the
character. I guess it might be called a "Banner Program" or something like
that. Anyone know of something?
Thanks
73 Eugene W2HX
--------------------------
So that inspired me to write and debug today a little program in PDP-8 assembly language to print ticker-tape, just for the mental exercise. Debugging took a lot longer than it should have, but I haven't written any assembly language in quite a few years, and far longer since doing any PDP-8 assembly! Only handles 0-9 and A-Z for the moment, and that was enough tedium entering the font one character at a time! Fortunately those are available in DECUS FOCAL8-87 although crude (5x6 matrix).
Unfortunately at the moment I have no good way of getting it out of my PDP-8/A so someone else can have a copy (and hopefully improve it). I have to get back to work on Dumprest, but to do that I need to rebuild the cloned Programmer's Panel board as mentioned in another thread.
Not only that, after numerous feet of paper tape had passed through my 33's punch, it started to punch a hole here and there that it's not being commanded to do... looks like TV static "snow" Time for some more lubrication/tinkering with the punch, I guess!
AND that #$%^ power supply problem came back after running for several hours, despite replacing the old 110,000 uf filter cap for the +5 supply that I'd thought was the problem with a newer 180,000 uf Mallory that fits in the chassis. This time I thought I saw the desk lamp flicker a bit out of the corner of my eye, so maybe it's the AC line too... need to check the outlet itself, for starters.
-Charles
-------------------------
Hello friends,
Does anyone know of a program (maybe one I can run on a PC) that will take
an ASCII string of characters and output a series of 8-bit bytes that when
sent to a tape punch, will create human readable characters on the tape? A
single ASCII character would typically require several bytes to form the
character. I guess it might be called a "Banner Program" or something like
that. Anyone know of something?
Thanks
73 Eugene W2HX
--------------------------
So that inspired me to write and debug today a little program in PDP-8 assembly language to print ticker-tape, just for the mental exercise. Debugging took a lot longer than it should have, but I haven't written any assembly language in quite a few years, and far longer since doing any PDP-8 assembly! Only handles 0-9 and A-Z for the moment, and that was enough tedium entering the font one character at a time! Fortunately those are available in DECUS FOCAL8-87 although crude (5x6 matrix).
Unfortunately at the moment I have no good way of getting it out of my PDP-8/A so someone else can have a copy (and hopefully improve it). I have to get back to work on Dumprest, but to do that I need to rebuild the cloned Programmer's Panel board as mentioned in another thread.
Not only that, after numerous feet of paper tape had passed through my 33's punch, it started to punch a hole here and there that it's not being commanded to do... looks like TV static "snow" Time for some more lubrication/tinkering with the punch, I guess!
AND that #$%^ power supply problem came back after running for several hours, despite replacing the old 110,000 uf filter cap for the +5 supply that I'd thought was the problem with a newer 180,000 uf Mallory that fits in the chassis. This time I thought I saw the desk lamp flicker a bit out of the corner of my eye, so maybe it's the AC line too... need to check the outlet itself, for starters.
-Charles