[Simh] Various

[Timothe Litt]

Among others, DEC OEM'd Documation card readers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se0F1bLfFKY

And old friend - the 1442 reader/punch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w62NC1R6WLs

And with the covers open

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfRxpmiScPA

I didn't find audio of the punch - which was quite noisy (and slow).

Note the dual output trays - program selectable.  Often one used for
accepted data, the other for rejects.

Operators interested in throughput (or lunch) would, contrary to
instructions, try to load and unload while the reader/punch was
running.  This could produce entertaining results.  (Jams - and avian
cards...)

So could the first time an operator encountered the "chad bin full"
error condition...


On 13-Feb-20 10:27, Richard Cornwell wrote:
> 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
>  
>>
>> ⁣Get BlueMail for Android ​
>>
>> 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
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Simh mailing list
>>> Simh at trailing-edge.com
>>> http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh  
>
>
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