[cctalk] Re: Source for NEW (unused) punch tape

That's right. Getting tape made to order might come in handy if you want odd sizes. 5 and 8 channel tape is fairly common, but there was also 6 and 7 channel tape (in widths specific to those types) which is far less common. I haven't seen 6 channel tape since the 1970s when it was still used in typesetting equipment, and I never heard of 7 channel tape until recently (it was used on some 1960s era machines). I wonder if mylar tape for punching could be found, or made. That was seen occasionally, for applications where a tape needed to be read many times. An OS binary tape might want that. I also remember seeing it on a machine in my father's lab, where it contained correction factors for a piece of precision machinery. There seem to be two types of that tape: one is just mylar, shiny, often metallized to make it reliably opaque for optical readers. The other is a paper/mylar/paper sandwich that feels like plain paper tape but is much stronger. I'm not sure where that was used. Perhaps in machines that liked oil, such as Teletype machinery. paul