Need paper tape encoding format - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

28 Feb 2002

On Feb 28, 11:50, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
...

 Is there info somewhere that shows how symbols are encoded onto paper
 tape?

 Ideally it would include the actual hole positions like so:

    8 4 2 1
 A:       *
 B:     *
 C:     * *

 (Note: this is not an actual example but just an example of the format
 I'm looking for.  Of course.) 
Lots of unix (including many BSD/Linux) systems have a program called ppt
(usually in /usr/bin/games or similar) which takes an ASCII string and
outputs a facsimile of paper tape.  The dormat is just ASCII in binary
form, with columns arranged exactly as your little sample above, except
there are 8 columns, and a hole represents a '1'.  What you do with the 8th
coulmn depends; on PDP-8 systems the top bit was often set for ASCII (but
it has special significance to binary loaders), on some systems it would be
unused, on others it would be the parity bit.

Do a Google search for "ppt paper tape" and you'll find info about
"ppt".

-- 
Pete						Peter Turnbull
						Network Manager
						University of York