16 Jan
2015
16 Jan
'15
8:13 p.m.
I had a dream of creating a paper tape with a program I wrote on it for the
Pegasus computer at the Science Museum. If they ever turn it on again, or
another one crops up, I might not have any excuses left...
On 16 January 2015 at 20:09, tony duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
OBA! I'm crazy for creating a paper
reader/perfurator! :D This is an
old
dream of mine, although I have no specific
computers who use it, nor any
specimen of perfored tape around. But I find it to be just beautiful :)
The reader is relatively easy to make at home, at least if you are happy
with a
photoelectric one. If you trigger off the feed holes, you don't need a
sprocket
drive, a capstan and pnch roller is fine. This is the sort of thing you
can make
in a good home workshop.
The punch is a lot harder. Making the punch pins and die block, and then
correctly grinding and hardening the former is not going to be easy.
Mechanically the rest may not look too hard (the Facit 4070 used a set
of rotary solenoids and linkages, one per pin), but it is still a major
project.
-tony