[Simh] Various

[Richard Cornwell]

Hi Mark,

> Any good simulation would have to include the semi-real I/O
> instructions RCC (Read and Chew Card) and DPD (Drop and Pie Deck).

  I considered adding these to my card simulation. I could also add
  the feature that it will once in a while overwrite the currently
  reading card with random junk.

  sim_card, basically give you translation from the various formats
  into a punched image of the card. Or it takes a punched image of a
  card and translates it to ASCII or other formats. It can also
  auto detect most common card deck format. Currently supported formats
  are ASCII, CBN, Binary, card, EBCDIC. Also if it can't translate a
  card to ASCII it will generate an ~raw card with octal values.
 
> I'm with you about never again struggling to remove a card from the
> read gate that had been converted to a mini-accordion or measuring
> the size of a progrram in boxes, not bytes.
> 
> I'm traveling for several weeks, but when back home I will assist Ken
> in getting an SDS driver for the reader/punch if he hasn't completed
> the task by then.  All needed documentation is in the 940 Reference
> Manual.

   Let me know if you have any questions or need things added. sim_card
   is currently used by all of my simulators. You might need to tweak
   the translation tables, if so let me know.

> I wonder if anyone has sound recordings of a reader/punch?  That
> would be a nice addition to a blinkenlights implementation, which is
> on my To Do list.

   I am sure we could get some clips.

Rich
 
> 
> 
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> 
> On Feb 13, 2020, 6:51 AM, at 6:51 AM, Bob Supnik <bob at supnik.org>
> wrote:
> >1. I can confirm that RT11 V5.3 INIT does not work properly with an
> >RL02 
> >in 3.10.
> >
> >My next step is to trace back changes, because I think it used to
> >work.
> >
> >2. There's no card reader for the SDS 940 because
> >
> >a) I hate card readers (from having used them way back when)
> >b) I thought there wouldn't be any demand
> >
> >Rich Cornwell's library should make it easier to implement a card
> >reader
> >these days.
> >
> >My first card reader story goes back to an RCA Spectra 70 I used in
> >1965.
> >It had a vacuum pick reader for high speed operation. The reader
> >would gradually curl the front edge of the cards, so that after two
> >or three passes, the deck was unreadable. It's failure mode was to
> >spit cards out,
> >past the receive hopper, at very high velocity and scatter them ten
> >or fifteen feet out on the floor...
> >
> >The second was a very slow mechanical reader on a PDP-7 in 1966. The
> >only other keyboard device was a Teletype, so initial entry of
> >programs was done from punched cards. It read, allegedly, 100 cards
> >per minute using mechanical fingers with little star wheels on the
> >end. DEC field service was in almost every week tuning or fixing the
> >damned thing so that it could actually handle a decent-sized deck.
> >
> >In my experience, only IBM built decent card readers. The
> >reader/punch on the 1620 (I used one in 1964) was very sturdy, and
> >the 407 (used for offline printing of punched card output) could
> >read almost anything.
> >
> >/Bob
> >
> >
> >_______________________________________________
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> 



-- 
==========================================================================
Richard Cornwell
rich at sky-visions.com
http://sky-visions.com
LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-cornwell-991076107
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