24 May
2012
24 May
'12
11:25 a.m.
Am I completely wrong if I think I remember that the
sprocket holes have
a fixed relationship to the data holes? If so, it ought to be possible
I cna;'t tell if you remember it, but I am certain that is correct.
to build an optical decoder, illuminate it with a
simple light bulb,
connect it to an input-capable parallel port on a computer with suitable
software, and simply pull the tape through by hand? The sprocket holes
would function as a clock for the data.
Yes. iIt's been done many times. There were hand-fed paper tape readers
back in the S100 days that did exactly that. One even used a set of 9
'special' ICs as schmitt triggers for the pghotodiodes that are clearly
selected 555s...
Agreed it is rather primitive, but for a one-off job
of not too much
tape it could be less work than messing around with a scanner.
Rigging up somethig nto feed the tape autometically is not that hard,
unless yoy want a known data rate, want to be able to stop on a
character, etc. If you jsut want to archive a tape, it's simple
-tony