Looking for a paper tape read and a way to read PDP-12 LINCtapes.

[Mike Katz]

I have acquired a bunch of PDP-8 and PDP-12 stuff.

Included in them are a bunch of paper tapes and some Original PDP-12
OS//8 LINCtapes.

I am looking for a RS-232 or USB paper tape reader that will fork for
fan fold paper tape.  If you have one that you are looking for a good
home for, please let me know.  Of course a working PC04 with PC8E would
be amazing too🙂

Also, if you have a machine capable of reading PDP-12 format LINCtapes,
I have an original set of DEC PDP-12 OS/8 V3D, Fortran 4 and OS/8 V3D
Extension LINCtapes that I would like to get archived.

Feel free to email me at bit...@12bitsbest.com

Thanks,

          Mike

[Matthias Barthel]

You can build a papertape reader like this one : https://www.e-basteln.de/computing/papertape/overview/ an read your tapes into your Computer.

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[Clem Cole]

ttps://jmprecision.co.uk in the UK still sells the OP-80A Kit which is based on the old OP-80 for 80/Z80A Altairs of days gone by.

It works quite well and assembles in a about 30 minutes. The URL https://jmprecision.co.uk/shopping/pgm-more_information.php?id=149&=SID show out of stock when I wrote them a while back when I got mine they put together kits in batches, so write them a note and ask if you are interested

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[Steve Tockey]

I have an OP-80A that I built from the kit in 2020. Very simple assembly. A couple of comments on it, though:

1) The output of the OP-80A is parallel. I patch-wired mine into a spare Pi 2B through the GPIO pins (attached photos). I can't run that same Pi in a PiDP-8/I at the same time because the PiDP-8/I needs to use those same GPIO pins. If you want the Pi to be in the PiDP-8/I and also use the OP-80A at the same time then you have to convert the OP-80A parallel output to USB serial and come in through one of the Pi's USB ports.

2) Even if you bridge the OP-80A parallel to USB serial gap, unless you want to do some major hacking on the SIMH PC8E simulator code it's going to be very difficult to read from the paper tape directly into SIMH. I wrote a small C program on the spare Pi 2B that reads the paper tape into a PiOS data file. I then transfer that PiOS data file to another Pi inside the PiDP-8/I and attach the SIMH PTR: to that data file. Then I can read it in the POiDP-8/I as a simulated paper tape, leaving the real paper tape in storage. I'm happy to share the C code with anyone who wants it although it uses a now-deprecated library to get to the GPIO pins.

3) I wrote a first version of the paper tape to PiOS data file code in Python and it was simply too slow to be of any use. Rewriting it in C helped a lot but it is still quite easy to pull the tape too fast and lose characters. It might make a difference to use a faster Pi 4 or Pi 5 but I haven't tried it yet.

4) The OP-80A seems to be quite finicky in terms of getting the light source (incandescent only, not flourescent) to be at the right distance. Too far away and holes get dropped. Too close and not-holes get added where the paper tape is less opaque.

-- steve

[Clem Cole]

FYI, I have cheap USB to parallel board which connected to my Mac and just used "cat < /dev/foo > file.ptp"

Then I transfer the file.ptp to where I am running SimH, I've never tried to attach it directly to the simulation. I figured that without having the ability to "clock" the read, the transaction could get funky and that I wanted to keep the path as simple as possible.

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[dave avery]

https://www.e-basteln.de/computing/papertape/overview/

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