16 Feb
2000
16 Feb
'00
7:08 a.m.
Looking at the tape, I see that the words "END OF FILE BAS65.PTP"
are punched at the end of the tape in sort of pseudo dot-matrix
characters. Does the "PTP" extension tell us anything? Looking at
the start of the tape:
"MICRO-SOFT BAS65.PTP [2601,1260] 29-JUL-77 15:27:58"
Looking through the first few feet of "real data"...
No high bits, the first few bytes are:
00111011 x3b ';' (was hoping for the start of an assembly comment)
00110010 x32 '2' (nope, looks like some sort of hex...)
00110000 x30 '0'
01000001 x41 'A'
00110000 x30 '0'
00110000 x30 '0'
00110000 x30 '0'
00110011 x33 '3'
00111001 x39 '9'
01000001 x41 'A'
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org
[mailto:owner-classiccmp@classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Tony Duell
Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2000 2:12 PM
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Source code for BASIC
I just acquired Microsoft 8K basic in ROM for OSI on paper
tape. I currently have no facility to read it, so I don't
know if it is source or object. The tape seems to be in
Read the first few characters by hand -- it's most likely to be either
binary or ascii. Put the tape so that the row of small holes is nearer
the bottom, then the top hole is the MSB. Each column of 8 (data) holes
is a character, a hole is a 1, no hole is a space.
If the top (bit 7) hole is used at all, then either it's a text tape with
parity (in which case the number of holes in a column will always be
either odd or even), or it's a binary tape
If only the bottom 7 holes are used, then it's probably a text encoding,
but this doesn't mean it's source code. It could well be (and I suspect
it is) an Intel-hex object tape. But reading a few characters
will tell you.
-tony