31 Dec
2005
31 Dec
'05
11:13 a.m.
On 12/31/2005 at 12:22 PM Nico de Jong wrote:
Off to the punch room, where they had some
029/129's which could read the
cards and print on the top line.
That was a big no-no at our shop--the 029 was too slow and valuable as a
keypunch to use it as an interpreter. One usually had to make do with the
557 interpreter, which would take 80 punch colums and spread them out onto
two lines of print--the top, 60 characters long and the remaining 20
characters on the second line--with most special characters not rendered
correctly. Sometimes you'd be fortunate enough to get cards that were
printed with a 60-position legend on the top, so you could match a print
position up with a punch column. For a time we had a few non-printing 024
keypunches, so the 557 could come in really handy. FWIW, the 029s at CDC
all punched BCD, not EBCDIC.
I also recall using a couple of Sperry Univac keypunches because a contract
required them. Miserable beasts very prone to failure.
Cheers,
Chuck