29 Mar
2015
29 Mar
'15
6:53 p.m.
On 03/29/2015 06:06 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:
It's a rebadged PDP-8/L from late 1969. The guy I
got it from says it
was used until the mid-2000s for creating paper tapes that drove CNC
machines. It came with an ASR-33 teletype, its only peripheral, so I
assume the ASR was used for punching the tapes.
After a few small repairs it's running fine, I still need to get the
ASR-33 working properly (still having trouble with the reader-run
control, and everything needs to be cleaned.)
Grease---wonderful :) Looks like fun when you get it all ticking over.
My last run-in with Houdaille Strippit was for Great Dane Trailers--they
had some sort of 8-bit CP/M controller interfaced to the punch via
RS-232. They wanted to move to a PC platform and use their current
software, so I rigged up an emulator with an emulation for the UART they
were using. They were happy with the result.
Old CNC iron is a lot of fun. I've supplied replacement drives for more
EDM gear than I can remember. The only problem is that I keep getting
promises for 'artwork" from these guys and they never get around do it... :(
--Chuck