On Thu, 25 Aug 2005, Gil Carrick wrote:
There have been a bunch coming out on eBay lately but
they have been asking
$300 & up. I am glad to hear that there is a reason and maybe if there is a
flood of them then the price will come down. The Four-Phase Systems IV/70
used to use these to boot a system that was being used for terminal
emulation only - had no disk or tapes. Mostly they used the smaller unit
that was about 80 cards per minute. The ones showing up on eBay are larger
300 CPM units I think, though just from a distant photo you can't easily
distinguish the 600 CPM model.
When people aren't paying stupid money for them, you can usually get one
of the better Documation readers for under $150. Recent models listed
have been 300, 600 and 1000 CPM. I have 200 and 1000 CPM models.
If you do get one, you'll still need to figure out how to interface it.
My Apple ][ interface isn't terribly practical, so Brian Knittel's USB
interface is definitely the way to go. The schematics, firmware and
software to build your own are available for download here:
http://ibm1130.org/sim/downloads/cardread.zip
Brian RAWKS!!!
M1000 units with serial converter units attached are out there and show up
on eBay a lot. However, I haven't played with mine yet and don't know how
it works.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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