I'd love to write a program to "OCR" punched card images. Now, if
I only had some spare time. :-)
Scanners are cheap and ubiquitous. You could lay several cards on the
scanner at once, perhaps placing a specially-colored paper on the
normally white reflective lid, and presto - like chroma-key on video,
you can easily "see" the borders, index notch and holes. I wonder if
any of today's "paper port" auto-feeding cheapo scanners would handle
a punched card - I don't see why not.
It could save the card data in Jone's proposed file format. One advantage
of this system would be that it could handle aged cards that some physical
imperfection (like dents from rubber bands, folds, worn edges, etc.) that
might jam a card reader.
- John
Jefferson Computer Museum <
http://www.threedee.com/jcm>
Received on Mon Apr 20 1998 - 09:49:59 BST