On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 6:23 PM, Sean Caron <scaron at umich.edu> wrote: For Cauzin? I don't think so.

Was the Cauzin format ever docuemtned anywhere (officially or otherwise)? -tony

Or there might be deliberate changes made ot the version i nthe patent (sill leavign the patentable features unchanged) so that it can't be used as a reference for creating yyour own softstrips... Not like the well-known 'Creating your own HP41 Barcode' book then :-(. A book whihc virtually admitted to synthetic programmign o nthe hP41 by telling you not to do certain things... OK second question. Has aoyone (outside Cauzin) ever created a readable softstrip? -tony

Interesting, from the Wikipedia page I was reading this http://www.oldskool.org/shrines/carny which has some interesting history. But what I find more amazing is that in the Scelbi Byte Primer there are re-prints of BYTE articles, on page 2-83 there is a copy of "A Proposed Standard for Publishing Binary Data in Machine Readable Form" (the Scelbi/BYTE primer book is copyright 1977!) this article goes on to describe what Carl (and BYTE Magazine) would call "Paperbytes" in later articles. A later one was written by Walter Banks (also in the Primer on page 3-157) titles "Samples of Machine Readable Printed Software." (this is where the term PAPERBYTES is first mentioned). About the only thing I think the Cauzin folks could have reasonably gotten away with would have been patenting the 2D bar code format. The patent that Eric mentions is more about writing these strips rather than reading them (here are the claims: 1. Apparatus for transforming data stored in a digital memory of a computer system into printed data strips, said printed data strips having a data portion formed of a plurality of data lines made up of linear printed integral nibbles and in which said previously-stored data has been encoded and a header containing coded instructions for reading said data portions, said apparatus including receiving means for receiving (a) information as to the desired dimensional parameter for said data strip, (b) said previously-stored data, and (c) the minimum operable width of bits to be imprinted upon said data strip, a computer associated with said receiving means and programmed to establish data strip format by determining the maximum number of nibbles for each data line and the number of data lines required in said data portion, and to adjust the dimension of said bits so that said data strip will fit said parameter, and to prepare a header containing said coded instructions relating to said format for use by a reader, and a printer operatively associated with the output of said computer to print a data strip having a header and a data portion in the form determined by said computer program. 2. Apparatus as set forth in claim 1 in which said printer prints said data strip larger than said format and including photographic means for reducing said printed data strip to make its format conform to said format. 3. Apparatus as set forth in claim 1 in which said integral multiple-bit units are nibbles. 4. Apparatus for transforming data as set forth in claim 1 including means for receiving an ink spread index and means for adjusting the size of said bits to adjust therefor. 5. Apparatus for transforming data as set forth in claim 1 including means for formatting a start line and alignment guides and printing them as part of said data strip. Surprised they actually got the patent frankly, but it was the 80's I guess. --Chuck On Sun, Sep 7, 2014 at 1:57 PM, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:

On Sun, Sep 7, 2014 at 3:14 PM, Chuck McManis <chuck.mcmanis at gmail.com> wrote: See also US 4,782,221 "Printed data strip including bit-encoded information and scanner control"

Does anyone have high-resolution scans of actual Cauzin stripes they could share? are some differences between the final format used by the actual shipped product, and the formats described in the patents, but the format seems to be simple enough that it's probably not too much work to reverse-engineer the changes. Eric

On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 5:43 PM, Chris Osborn <fozztexx at fozztexx.com> wrote: Thanks Chris! If I can find some time, I'll work on a decoder, and if I can get that going, an encoder. I can't promise to have anything soon, though. That might turn into a project for the January RetroChallenge.

On Sep 9, 2014, at 5:25 PM, Eric Smith <spacewar at gmail.com> wrote: It was the highest my scanner would do. I wasn't able to print it out and read it on the Softstrip reader. All the dots appear to be there in the right places, and it starts to read, but it doesn't like it. But since it's a 1 bit scan and not pixel perfect, I wasn't surprised. I didn't try reading printouts of the lower density ones. -- Follow me on twitter: @FozzTexx Check out my blog: http://insentricity.com

In article <628C4890-BF0F-4F4E-8117-57E0CF4F688D at fozztexx.com>, Chris Osborn <fozztexx at fozztexx.com> writes: What I find most interesting about these things is that there is no attempt to apply compression to the input before encoding it in to these barcode representations. In some of the strips you can see obvious blocks of repeated data. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book <http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline> The Computer Graphics Museum <http://ComputerGraphicsMuseum.org> The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals.classiccmp.org> Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://LegalizeAdulthood.wordpress.com>