making PT reader, was re:weird find: papertape "patch" puncher

From: Andy Holt <andyh_at_andyh-rayleigh.freeserve.co.uk>
Date: Sat Mar 6 04:12:49 2004

> So where does one get a punch cheap too???
> Ben.
>
was difficult enough then (~1980) - very much harder now.

A large proportion of UK mainframes of the first 3 generations had at least
one paper-tape reader ... it was the normal boot slow peripheral (mag tape
being the typical default boot fast peripheral). This is in contrast to the
situation in the USA where it appears that cards ruled supreme.
Many of these tape readers were medium speed (300cps), but 1200cps ones were
not uncommon and a Danish(?) company made a fantastic 2000cps reader that
was also fully bidirectional.
Though the second generation machines made much use of papertape, tape
punches were less important and less common on the 3rd generation machines
as now magnetic tapes and even disks were the preferred devices for output
that was to be reinput. They were also rarely high performance (200cps was
the fastest common version).

Oh, and ISTR that the Atlas used 7-track paper tape (6 bit+parity)

Andy
Received on Sat Mar 06 2004 - 04:12:49 GMT