Paper Tape Reader Punch Station

[steven.f...@gmail.com]

Since several years ago, I had Heathkit H10, paper tape reader punch station that served me outstanding service (with second generation punch assembly). Unfortunately, it was stolen and gone forever. I have a bulk of paper tapes from many programs during my old days. I tried to build a reader was not successful because I have to pull it by hand which speed is critical and got error messages. I guess my arm and hand was not steady due to my age.

I looked for Heathkit H10 on eBay and shocked how they want to charge me enormous money even it exceeded the retail price of the device. This same with Facit and GN Telematic (GNT)as they tend to use for CNC machines. But it has one-inch wide paper tape, therefore, it compatible with vintage S-100 system (IEEE-696).

I retired while ago and still looking for the reader and it will be nice with punch features such as Heathkit H10, Facit 4070, or GNT 4604.

The eBay's sellers want to charge very high cost and not one sold because no one wants it anymore. The CNC machinist uses flash USB or else nowadays.

I am sure one of you may have it in attic or garage and collect dust on it. It will be nice to have a good home here. Every time I acquired several S-100 system and Heathkit/Zenith system here and not one on sell and make money because I enjoy my hobby very much as they are like children to me.

I forward to hear from you soon...

Thank you,
Steven

[Mr. Emmanuel Roche, France]

Steven Feinsmith wrote:

> I forward to hear from you soon...

Is 7 hours quick enough?

BYTE published a 4-page article explaining how to build a Do-It Yourself paper tape reader:

http://www.classiccmp.org/cini/pdf/byte/manual_ptp.pdf

Yours Sincerely,
Mr. Emmanuel Roche, France

[Charles Richmond]

On 9/14/2017 3:36 AM, Mr. Emmanuel Roche, France wrote:
> Steven Feinsmith wrote:
>
>> I forward to hear from you soon...
>
> Is 7 hours quick enough?
>
> BYTE published a 4-page article explaining how to build a Do-It Yourself paper tape reader:
>
> http://www.classiccmp.org/cini/pdf/byte/manual_ptp.pdf
>

This is another unit that has the paper tape pulled by hand, French
Loser. The man said he could *not* pull thre tape by hand due to
unreliable data reads.


--
numerist at aquaporin4 dot com

[Jeremy]

Has anyone got a schematic for this one?

https://techcrunch.com/2011/10/21/forget-usb-3-0-add-a-tape-reader-to-your-pc/

He says something about a handshake and implies it can handle some speed variation, albeit still hand pulled.

Why not just build a hand crank tape puller?
https://imgur.com/7XyfaVz

[Jeremy]

Or maybe get one of these thermal printers and modify it to just push the paper?

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10438

[Mike Spencer]

steven.f...@gmail.com writes:

> Since several years ago, I had Heathkit H10, paper tape reader punch
> station that served me outstanding service (with second generation
> punch assembly). Unfortunately, it was stolen and gone forever. I have
> a bulk of paper tapes from many programs during my old days. I tried
> to build a reader was not successful because I have to pull it by hand
> which speed is critical and got error messages. I guess my arm and
> hand was not steady due to my age.

If you hunt around at yard and garage sales, you might find an old
(thus relatively easy to disassemble) movie projector from which you
could rip the Geneva (aka Maltese Cross) movement. That might allow
your home-built reader to run from a hand crank or a small gear motor,
pausing each tape datum over/under whatever does the read.

--
Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada

[Dennis Boone]

> I tried to build a reader was not successful because I have to pull
> it by hand which speed is critical and got error messages. I guess
> my arm and hand was not steady due to my age.

Pretty sure some of these low cost modern optical reader kits use
the tractor holes in the tape to sort out uneven motion, either by
watching rate, or by using the holes to determine where to read
data holes..

De

[Johnny B Good]

As long as the paper tape only moves past the optical reader head in the
forward direction, the pulses from the tractor holes can reliably strobe
each 5 or 8 bit 'word' into its buffer from almost a complete standstill
to whatever full speed can be attained short of snapping the paper tape.

Indeed, by using DSP on the optically generated pulse waveforms,
especially including the tractor feed holes, a tape can be reliably read
in from a standstill to right up to whatever happens to be the upper
limiting speed of the transport system employed (whether hand cranked or
motor driven). The DSP needs however, can be significantly simplified by
adding a motorised transport to our optical reader which could be knocked
up in any reasonably equipped hacker or worker space workshop in less
than a day using readily available components.

Incidentally, I feel obliged to point out that optical tape reading
technology is far from 'new' since it was pioneered even before the
advent of ASCII for use with the 5 level teleprinter tapes over 70 years
ago at the Bletchley Park code breaking research facility in the early
1940s. They were ultimately able to read these tapes at five thousand
characters per second (linear tape speed of 1.33m/s or 48km/h!), well in
excess of two orders of magnitude faster than the normal teleprinter
speed of 10 characters per second.

If there was an, as yet inexplicable, need to create or duplicate
punched paper tapes, this optical process could literally be turned on
its head with the use of high power laser punches to burn the data bits
into the paper which would have to pass between copper or aluminium
cooling blocks to quench any tendency to self immolation.

Unlike the case of CD burners which have to match the laser power to the
writing speed of the optical medium, you can use the same energy per
nanosecond pulse required to burn each hole into the paper tape. The
limit being set by the maximum average power handling ability of the
laser emitters used (there'll be an upper limit on writing speed which
depends on the power rating of the laser emitters which may or may not
exceed the upper physical transport speed of the paper tape itself).
However, as I intimated above, I can see no reason for the construction
of such an 'Optical Paper Tape Punch' other than as a 'Proof of Concept
Exercise' to satisfy prurient curiosity.

--
Johnny B Good

[BobH]

On 09/16/2017 08:10 AM, Jim H wrote:
> That's exactly what the reader and program found at the link posted by
> Mr Roche does.
>

That article also shows a mechanical offset on the sprocket hole
detector to shift it's active edge to be solidly in the middle of the
sensed data from the data bits. It seems like a nice job on this.
BobH

[Johnny B Good]

On Sat, 16 Sep 2017 15:10:40 +0000, Jim H wrote:

> On Fri, 15 Sep 2017 22:12:06 -0500, in
> <0KGdnT87mMUbCyHE...@giganews.com>, d...@ihatespam.msu.edu

> That's exactly what the reader and program found at the link posted by
> Mr Roche does.
>

> Actually not the reader as much as the program that receives data from
> it. The reader has 9 optical sensors, eight for data and one for a
> strobe. The program reads a byte every time it receives a strobe pulse
> and you should be able to pull the tape at a fairly wide range of
> speeds. One thing to note is that the program as written assumes all
> tapes contain only low ASCII data; i.e., only bytes x00 - x7F. So it
> reads text files, but not binaries containing high ASCII (bytes x80 -
> xFF). And tho the schematic doesn't show it (text describes it), data
> bit 8 isn't really data bit 8 from the tape; it's the strobe pulse. The
> strobe (or lack of) is detected by shifting the data left one bit and
> checking for carry. Carry means strobe and no carry means no strobe. The
> text mentions the ability to read 8-bit data if the strobe is moved to a
> second input port. That will also require modifying the program.

The 8 level one inch paper tape normally used the eighth bit (D7) as a
parity check bit. The ASCII specification was for a 7 level code with
parity check bit (odd or even - I forget which one was used by the ASR33).

Obviously, D7 *could* be re-purposed as a data bit when dedicated
punches and readers were used with computer systems that employed octet
based word sizes such as the early personal computers based on
microprocessor technology in the mid to late 70s. However, I suspect the
use of a cheap telephone modem chip configured in echo back mode along
with a cheap cassette recorder as a higher performance alternative
storage system for the hobbyist user would have rendered such use rather
moot.

--
Johnny B Good