On Wed, 27 Feb 2008, Chuck Guzis wrote: The fastest reader I've seen (in a brochure) does 2000 chars/sec., and the fastest punch 150 chars/sec. (the one I have in mind is from Facit IIRC, I think I have one lying around somewhere). Christian

I've got an HP2748A greader oing on the bench soon, and I've already taken a loog inside... I think I've fianlly found soemthing where another company made a significantly better product than HP :-). Ye,s the HP reader is very solidly made, it's simple, it's going to work. But to use 10 light bulbs (1 for each track, one for a reference level) seems a little over the top. Everyody else made do with one lamp an a lens :-) I was rought up on Trend readers. These have a very nice feature (and the circuit is actually quite simple), that they automatically compenasate for the tape transparaency. Basically, there are 2 sensors on the feed hole track, 2.5 characters apart. A character at the head is defined buy the feed hole sensor in line with the data hole sensors being brighter than the one 2.5 characters away. And a weighted mean of the 2 feed hole sensorts gives the threshold for the data channels. There is a setting up rocedure, but my expeirence is that it just helps the reader read very marginal tape. It'll read normal tape no matter how the preset pots are set. Of coruse the HP doesn't ahve that feature, it has a conventional threshold trimpot. And it's a lot larger and heavier, and even a it slower than my Trend. -tony