Old punched tape up to date

[vetran]

For all those oldsters!

Reading Paper Tapes From Scratch!

Feeling a little nostalgic? Dying to read some paper ticker tapes? You can do it manually, but that’d take forever! [NeXT] decided to make a little PCB to help him out.

Having searched for paper tape readers for years, and even getting halfway through building the mechanical portion of it in his high-school tech class, [NeXT] decided to take a serious stab at it — and by golly, it works!

The reason he finally decided to go down this route is because you just can’t buy them (well, for cheap), and even the DIY or hobby ones out there are notoriously slow — what better reason to design it from scratch?

[xoggoth]

Eh? This isn't a Zeity post?

[vetran]

Eh? This isn't a Zeity post?

I bought a Franchise.

£50,000 and I get a Uniform, company rules, laminated signs and the rights to post obscure geeky stuff on here & Mumsnet!

[alluvial]

I bought a Franchise.

£50,000 and I get a Uniform, company rules, laminated signs and the rights to post obscure geeky stuff on here & Mumsnet!

But do you get an IBM Flowcharting Template?

[malvolio]

Modern youth, eh...

Time was I could read paper tape (and 80-column punch cards) directly, and manually correct them come to that. The trick was to remember that the 4/3 coding ignored the smaller registration holes which actually split the 4 set, not separated the two sets.

[NickFitz]

Nice

The PDP8/e at school had a high-speed optical punched tape reader, where IIRC "high-speed" meant 300 characters per second, as opposed to the 10 of the Teletype

[vetran]

But do you get an IBM Flowcharting Template?

no but we have a company song entitled

'Gorn but not forgotten' !



And Fava bean stress toys.

[doodab]

Modern youth, eh...

Time was I could read paper tape (and 80-column punch cards) directly, and manually correct them come to that. The trick was to remember that the 4/3 coding ignored the smaller registration holes which actually split the 4 set, not separated the two sets.

I sometimes think that the true measure of a contractor's longevity and adaptability is not their transferable skills but the number of skills they have acquired over the years that will never get used again. Being able to work something out, use it, and then forget about it, all reasonably quickly and without expecting endless training courses is a pretty solid USP I think.

[OwlHoot]

But do you get an IBM Flowcharting Template?

Got one of those, a plastic thing with the triangles and squares etc (if that's what you mean)

and I think I even had to use it once many years ago at work

[mudskipper]

Got one of those, a plastic thing with the triangles and squares etc (if that's what you mean)

and I think I even had to use it once many years ago at work

Still got one. And a pad of the 80x24 squared paper for screen design.