[HECnet] punched tape

[Lee Gleason]

Yah, it was 6 bit tape for text preparation, with 8 bit tape used for programming & setup of the phototypesetters. Meant a lot of messing around with the tape readers, since one width of tape expected the feed holes to align with the center of the data holes, and the other width expected the feed holes to align with the leading edge of the data holes.

Speaking of Flexowriters, we had one of those for doing commercial mass mailings that looked typewritten - I still have one of the 576 bit core memories it used. Each   memory board was about 8X11 inches. The individuals cores are really big on these boards.

Good times...when you weren't dozens of levels removed from the actual physic of computation.
--
Lee K. Gleason N5ZMR
Control-G Consultants
lee.gleason at comcast.net





-----Original Message----- From: Paul_Koning at Dell.com
Sent: Friday, April 19, 2013 1:46 PM
To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE
Subject: Re: [HECnet] punched tape


On Apr 19, 2013, at 1:48 PM, Lee Gleason wrote:


How many people on this list have ever used paper tape at a job? My first computer job we used it to control phototypesetting machines. When an 11/70 was added to the mix of gear there, we ordered it with paper tape readers and punches on it to help in   transitioning away from the paper tape only gear it was replacing.

That was probably 6 bit tape -- most typesetters I've seen that were fed with tape used 6 bit tape.

My first programs were written on paper tape -- Flexowriter editing papertape typewriter/reader/punch machines, with a character set optimized for Algol 60.   That was at the Technical University Eindhoven, then known as THE -- which is where the operating system by that name came from.   It was a batch system: paper tape in, line printer output.   Magnetic tapes available in theory but rarely used, plus a drum for paging.   Processor was a Philips (Electrologica) EL-X8, a 27 bit machine with a rather exotic I/O architecture that I never really understood.

BTW, Flexowriters are great machines.   Teletype Corporation never built anything remotely as reliable as those -- certainly not the cruft known as Model 33, and even a Model 35 isn't as good.

Semaphores (in the computer science sense) were invented there.

paul