the 1404 printer could read a selected number of columns and print anywhere (or everywhere) on their face, with a switchable chain link with different fonts. I am pretty confident that is how you got non-dot matrix printing on a card. <pre>--Carey</pre>

Another minor detail about column alignment: There was a variant of the 029 punch (I don't remember the specific model) that could interpret/print on already punched cards. It printed 80 column aligned characters. With a drum card, it could be set to skip some and only do the desired ones. ("Regular" models of 029 printed along the top only while punching) (There was also a model of 029 for "verifying", where it read an already punched card while the operator was "punching" from the same data. If the key presses and data on thecards matched, then it would put a small notch on theend of the card. Some "service bureaus" cheated, and used it to "duplicate" blank cards, to have cards that were already "verifiaction notched" before they were even punched.) The 447? stand-alone interpreter did reasonably high speed interpret/print of decks of already punched cards. BUT, it could only do 60? columns on a pass, and they were not column aligned. It had a wire plug board to set which columns, printing positions, etc. Thus, 447 was fine for cards handed to customers/managers, etc., but for programmers who wanted aligned interpreting of specific cloumns, as being more convenient than manually deciphering the pattern of holes, the 29 variant was better, albeit slower. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com

On Mon, 9 Sep 2024, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote: I do, indeed. Thank you That was a unit-record machine that I didn't use much. For my father's work, I mostly did keypunch, verify, counting sorter, and lots of simple FORTRAN.. At Goddard, I did my own punching, and put in time on the Gerber Data Digitizer (a graphic arts style table with etch-a-sketch controlled crosshairs and a foot pedal, connected to an 026 punch). A little APL, and a lot of FORTRAN, particularly writing stuff to output to calcomp and Stromberg-Datagrphix plotters. ("plodders") -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com

On Mon, 9 Sep 2024, Bill Degnan via cctalk wrote: I don't think that I ever saw one of those. Was it IBM? When was it available? -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com

On Mon, 9 Sep 2024, Bill Degnan wrote: Thanks I got into unit record stuff in the mid to late 1960s. But, my interests were a little esoteric, and I never really learned the mainstream DP stuff. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com

I actually used the 046 non-printing version back in the day to convert PPT to 80 col. cards, although I didn't deal with the tape it produced; cool machine. https://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/ibm/punchedCard/Training/Card_Equip… On Mon, Sep 9, 2024 at 11:20 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote: