14 Mar
2013
14 Mar
'13
2:43 p.m.
Hi all,
I need another project like I need a hole in the head. However, I am
definitely on the prowl for a way to store and retrieve information in a
more physical fashion. Something like a tape punch/reader, or a mark-sense
card reader. (I'd have to find or print some mark-sense cards...)
Back in the day I used punch cards, mark-sense cards, and paper tape.
There's a certain "coolness" to actually seeing and holding the data in a
physical format. I think it would be great for my kids to see, and/or help
me build a physical storage device, to give them a more visceral sense of
computing. You can't exactly see the bits in a flash memory chip.
All that said - I've looked for homebrew projects of this type, and haven't
come up with any great candidates. I'm not the most skilled person at
mechanical stuff, so I do seek a starting point for ideas or plans. Anyone
have any comments/suggestions?
Goal would be a method to store (could be as simple as #2 pencil), a method
to read, and a serial RS232 interface (that part I can build).
Thanks!
- Earl
15 Mar
15 Mar
5:58 a.m.
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 7:43 PM, Earl Evans <earl at retrobits.com> wrote:
[...]
I need another project like I need a hole in the head.
However, I am
definitely on the prowl for a way to store and retrieve information in a
more physical fashion. Something like a tape punch/reader, or a mark-sense
card reader. (I'd have to find or print some mark-sense cards...)
[...]
All that said - I've looked for homebrew projects
of this type, and haven't
come up with any great candidates. I'm not the most skilled person at
mechanical stuff, so I do seek a starting point for ideas or plans. Anyone
have any comments/suggestions?
Goal would be a method to store (could be as simple as #2 pencil), a method
to read, and a serial RS232 interface (that part I can build).
Thanks!
- Earl
Hi Earl,
one method that I could think of would be like some 80's magazines:
print barcodes onto letter paper. Use an old CueCat (the
proprietary-but-much-hacked not-so-free giveaway from Radio Shack) to
read the data back in.
There is no hardware other than what you are likely to already have
for the output side. If you don't have a CueCat, I'm sure a small
amount of components can be hacked together to make a barcode reader
in the "pen-drag" fashion.
Or if you have a scanner, you could effectively do giant 8.5x11 QR codes.
Joe.
--
Joachim Thiemann :: http://jthiem.bitbucket.org ::
http://signalsprocessed.blogspot.com
3:16 p.m.
one method that I could think of would be like some 80's magazines:
print barcodes onto letter paper. Use an old CueCat (the
proprietary-but-much-hacked not-so-free giveaway from Radio Shack) to
read the data back in.
Interesting thought! I do have a CueCat around here somewhere. It's a PS/2
CueCat, but with a little Propeller (uC) board, I could turn that into
serial. It would also need the CueCat decode algorithm (out there on the
Internet somewhere).
Heh, imagine CueCat scanning a bootloader into the PDP-11!
There is no hardware other than what you are likely to already have
for the output side.
True, bar code output is pretty easy; however, I wish I could do it in a
way that was retro-compatible. Punching tape or marking cards is something
I could have done in the 70s/80s, but using a JavaScript website to produce
printable bar codes seems like cheating. Wonder if I could find some old
Epson-compatible bar code printing software for CP/M, etc?
- Earl
16 Mar
16 Mar
8:09 a.m.
I wondered if one of those would ever be useful.
I think I have one of those too!
George
On Mar 15, 2013, at 12:16 PM, Earl Evans <earl at retrobits.com> wrote:
one method that I could think of would be like some 80's magazines:
print barcodes onto letter paper. Use an old CueCat (the
proprietary-but-much-hacked not-so-free giveaway from Radio Shack) to
read the data back in.
Interesting thought! I do have a CueCat around here somewhere. It's a PS/2
CueCat, but with a little Propeller (uC) board, I could turn that into
serial. It would also need the CueCat decode algorithm (out there on the
Internet somewhere).
Heh, imagine CueCat scanning a bootloader into the PDP-11!
There is no hardware other than what you are likely to already have
for the output side.
True, bar code output is pretty easy; however, I wish I could do it in a
way that was retro-compatible. Punching tape or marking cards is something
I could have done in the 70s/80s, but using a JavaScript website to produce
printable bar codes seems like cheating. Wonder if I could find some old
Epson-compatible bar code printing software for CP/M, etc?
- Earl 
15 Mar
15 Mar
3:21 p.m.
New subject: CueCats, was Re: Homebrew mark-sense card reader or other?
On 03/15/2013 05:58 AM, Joachim Thiemann wrote:
one method that I could think of would be like some
80's magazines:
print barcodes onto letter paper. Use an old CueCat (the
proprietary-but-much-hacked not-so-free giveaway from Radio Shack) to
read the data back in.
There is no hardware other than what you are likely to already have
for the output side. If you don't have a CueCat, I'm sure a small
amount of components can be hacked together to make a barcode reader
in the "pen-drag" fashion.
I think I still have a few CueCats if anyone wants them, free for the
cost of shipping.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
16 Mar
16 Mar
12:38 a.m.
New subject: CueCats, was Re: Homebrew mark-sense card reader or other?
ooohhh, the CueCat. one of the first pieces of hardware I ever physically
hacked in my life. Used a microprocessor, that read the barcode, paired it
with the serial EPROM on the board, and used the serial number and a
proprietary formula to jumble the barcode and spit it out over the keyboard
port to the software sitting on the computer, taking you to the website,
and recording your usage at the same time. People had such an issue with
this device recording everything they look at and tracking your interests
for sale to a third party. Yet, now, we use Google (while being
"Scroogled") religiously, use QR codes, check in places, hashtag things we
are interested in, etc. etc. without a second thought.
I liked how it was a simple wire (might have been more, cant remember?) and
elementary soldering skills, and you took the scanner from spitting garbage
to a simple barcode number over the PS/2 port. I actually used it back in
the day, printed an "ID card" with just a long random barcode, and set it
as my password and used it to log-in to windows. I've wanted to get a USB
cat for a while now, but they are fairly costly for my budget. As with
anything, I would need to buy a couple, so that I could keep one intact for
historical value, and hack the other for practicality.
On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 2:21 PM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
On 03/15/2013 05:58 AM, Joachim Thiemann wrote:
one method that I could think of would be like
some 80's magazines:
print barcodes onto letter paper. Use an old CueCat (the
proprietary-but-much-hacked not-so-free giveaway from Radio Shack) to
read the data back in.
There is no hardware other than what you are likely to already have
for the output side. If you don't have a CueCat, I'm sure a small
amount of components can be hacked together to make a barcode reader
in the "pen-drag" fashion.
I think I still have a few CueCats if anyone wants them, free for the
cost of shipping.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
15 Mar
15 Mar
4 p.m.
Hi all,
I need another project like I need a hole in the head. However, I am
definitely on the prowl for a way to store and retrieve information in a
more physical fashion. Something like a tape punch/reader, or a mark-sense
card reader. (I'd have to find or print some mark-sense cards...)
Back in the day I used punch cards, mark-sense cards, and paper tape.
There's a certain "coolness" to actually seeing and holding the data in a
physical format. I think it would be great for my kids to see, and/or help
me build a physical storage device, to give them a more visceral sense of
computing. You can't exactly see the bits in a flash memory chip.
All that said - I've looked for homebrew projects of this type, and haven't
come up with any great candidates. I'm not the most skilled person at
mechanical stuff, so I do seek a starting point for ideas or plans. Anyone
have any comments/suggestions?
Goal would be a method to store (could be as simple as #2 pencil), a method
to read, and a serial RS232 interface (that part I can build).
It's probably easiest to make an opticla punched tape reader. Optical
sensing is a lot easier than any form of mechanical sensing, and if you
can't get phototranssitors small enoguh to put on 0.1" spacing for the
read head, you could always use optical fibr to route the ligth from the
read head to the phototransistors. There's some historical precident for
that -- IIRc the well-know Elliot optical take reader used glass rods to
route hte ligth from teh ead head hols to OCP71s.
The advantaeg of tape over cards is that you can sue the sprcket track
to genrate a strobe pusle. With cards, you would noramlly note when the
elading edge of the card went past a sensor and then read the columns
after the card had moved a given distance. This requries a much more
precise drive mechanism, and one that won't slip.
As for dring the tape, either pull it through by ahd or use a
capstan/pinch roller to feed it. For the latter, the pinch rolelr from a
VCR would eb a reasoanble startign point, you could make the capstan in a
good home workshol (I have no idea what facilites you have). It only gets
hard if you want ot be able to stop the tape on a cchracter.
The punch is goign to be a lot harder. Even a hand punch -- one
ofthoseblocks with holes and a pin you push through to make a nole is not
essy to make. You need ot drill the holes accurately (position and
diameter) and you need to make an punch pin. Again _possible_, but not
trivial.
Does it have to be a well-known format? I am wonderign if you could make
a mark-sensing card reader that required a timing park on each column of
the card. Tht would get round the accurate drive mechanism problem, you
could sense the marks optically. And of course the (manual) writing
device is a pencilIf you _insist_ on making that yourself, I am quite
shure you could make charcoal, and that would make suitable marks on the
card.
-tony
19 Mar
19 Mar
4:36 p.m.
On Fri, 15 Mar 2013 20:00:33 +0000 (GMT)
ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote:
The punch is goign to be a lot harder.
Yes.
Therefore a completely different approach: Laser Cutter.
You can get a cheap CO2 Laser Cutter from china for around 1k$ / 1kEUR.
With this you can cut the hols into the card - including the card
itself. With an appropriate roler mechanism you can cut and "punch"
punched tape.
Neat side effect: You can do all sort of other geeky stuff with a Laser
cutter like cutting and engraving PMMA...
--
\end{Jochen}
\ref{http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/}
15 Mar
15 Mar
5:17 p.m.
On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 2:43 PM, Earl Evans <earl at retrobits.com> wrote:
Hi all,
I need another project like I need a hole in the head. However, I am
definitely on the prowl for a way to store and retrieve information in a
more physical fashion. Something like a tape punch/reader, or a mark-sense
card reader. (I'd have to find or print some mark-sense cards...)
I'd love to see how to solve this problem - having recently connected
the dots about the HP 9830 I used as a kid, I see Doug Jones has a
high-res image of a blank card
(http://www.divms.uiowa.edu/~jones/cards/collection/hp9320-2051big.gif)
so in theory, one could have a print-run on suitable-weight card stock,
or with a more gentle feed/scanning mechanism, laser-print blanks.
Back in the day I used punch cards, mark-sense cards,
and paper tape.
There's a certain "coolness" to actually seeing and holding the data in a
physical format. I think it would be great for my kids to see, and/or help
me build a physical storage device, to give them a more visceral sense of
computing. You can't exactly see the bits in a flash memory chip.
Agreed.
All that said - I've looked for homebrew projects
of this type, and haven't
come up with any great candidates. I'm not the most skilled person at
mechanical stuff, so I do seek a starting point for ideas or plans. Anyone
have any comments/suggestions?
Goal would be a method to store (could be as simple as #2 pencil), a method
to read, and a serial RS232 interface (that part I can build).
The HP 9320-2051 cards have timing marks. That really helps vs an
IBM Hollerith card that uses a constant-rate feed mechanism and
timing from the front edge to locate the data. One idea is to have
a microcontroller (Arduino with nootropic design Video Experimenter
shield or a Raspberry Pi with a USB web cam, etc) positioned such
that it sees a vertical slice of the card, filtered through a red gel to
obscure the printed background, and when two timing ticks are visible
(detected via either camera image decoding or perhaps a pair of spaced
phototransistors to a "trigger" input), snap a tall, narrow frame that
represents one column and look for the dark spots in the right places
and turn that into an ASCII character and emit it out the serial port
(both the Arduino and the Raspberry Pi can do this).
One could also just take a full frame image (if high enough resolution,
and this is where the Raspberry Pi w/Webcam might do better
than an Arduino with a low-res real-time NTSC decoder) then sift
through the pixels for the edges of the card and the timing tracks
and spit out the decoding of the now-aligned dark marks in the
data region.
With the printed timing track, I can imagine a hand-fed slot
that accepts commercially-printed card-stock or *perhaps*
laser-printed high-weight office paper. Hand-fed is possible
to contemplate since the data is aligned with visible clocking
and feed speeds wouldn't be required to be constant.
There's already Python code out there for decoding
full-frame imaged IBM Hollerith cards. It shouldn't be
too difficult to adapt that to a web-cam-based full-frame
HP 9320-2051 scanner. That method might be too
RAM-intensive for a small AVR processor, but any sort
of ARM-based appliance (Pogoplug, Shivaplug...) that
can talk to a USB camera can probably handle it.
So there's two approaches - build a "column-at-a-time"
scanner or build a full-frame scanner.
-ethan
5:49 p.m.
I thought I had remembered someone doing a similar punch card reader with
an arduino but it's not quite that direct
http://codeincluded.blogspot.co.nz/2012/07/punchcard-reader-movie.html
This person is using a digital camera to read the cards vs reading the dots
in a linear scanning fashion.
6:11 p.m.
On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 5:49 PM, Sam O'nella <barythrin at gmail.com> wrote:
I thought I had remembered someone doing a similar
punch card reader with
an arduino but it's not quite that direct
http://codeincluded.blogspot.co.nz/2012/07/punchcard-reader-movie.html
That's the Python approach to the card image decoding I was thinking of.
http://codeincluded.blogspot.co.nz/2012/07/punchcard-reader-software.html
-ethan
16 Mar
16 Mar
5:46 p.m.
The HP 9320-2051 cards have timing marks. That really
helps vs an
IBM Hollerith card that uses a constant-rate feed mechanism and
Indeed, those timing marks will help a lot.
timing from the front edge to locate the data. One
idea is to have
a microcontroller (Arduino with nootropic design Video Experimenter
shield or a Raspberry Pi with a USB web cam, etc) positioned such
that it sees a vertical slice of the card, filtered through a red gel to
obscure the printed background, and when two timing ticks are visible
(detected via either camera image decoding or perhaps a pair of spaced
phototransistors to a "trigger" input), snap a tall, narrow frame that
represents one column and look for the dark spots in the right places
and turn that into an ASCII character and emit it out the serial port
(both the Arduino and the Raspberry Pi can do this).
<Shakes head>
I don't have the HP mark sense reader on my 9830 (I wish I did...), but I
would guess it used a dozen or so phototrasnsitors as sensorts and a few
hundred transsitors (iniside ICs) at most to process the signals. You are
replacing this with somethign with a few million optical sensors and a
few million transsitors. And thsi is progress?
<sahkes head again>
-tony
15 Mar
15 Mar
7:09 p.m.
On 03/14/2013 11:43 AM, Earl Evans wrote:
I need another project like I need a hole in the head.
However, I am
definitely on the prowl for a way to store and retrieve information in a
more physical fashion. Something like a tape punch/reader, or a mark-sense
card reader. (I'd have to find or print some mark-sense cards...)
There shouldn't be much "back in the day" in the US at least. The last
time I voted by mail last November, the ballot was a mark-sense card.
The equipment should certainly be available, at least in the USA.
--Chuck
4143
days inactive
4148
days old
12 comments
10 participants
participants (10)
-
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
barythrin＠gmail.com -
cclist＠sydex.com -
earl＠retrobits.com -
ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
george＠rachors.com -
jkunz＠unixag-kl.fh-kl.de -
jlobocki＠gmail.com -
joachim.thiemann＠gmail.com -
mcguire＠neurotica.com