Restoring Old Paper Tape

[Randy Dawson]

Did you guys forget the Oliver Engineering tape reader?
Heres a construction article from Herb:
http://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/s_paper.html


________________________________________
From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> on behalf of Charles Anthony <charles.unix.pro at gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, January 22, 2016 8:27 AM
To: jrr at flippers.com; General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Restoring Old Paper Tape

On Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 10:48 PM, John Robertson <jrr at flippers.com> wrote:

>
>> Would it not be simpler to make an optical reader to handle  this job?
> You need a light source and the correct number of opto transistors to read
> the light from each hole. There is an index built into the tape so that is
> easy to set.
>
> Something like this:
>
> http://hackaday.com/2014/05/02/reading-paper-tapes-from-scratch/
>
> Of course my assumption above is based on tape that is still complete. If
> it has holes or can't be pulled then, yes, photographing and visually
> reading the dot patterns may be necessary, but that sounds rather
> impractical if there are more than a couple of tapes to transcribe.


This is the approach I would use, based on my skill set. I have mad s/w
skillz, but building something more complicated than Legos is just beyond
me.  Also, given the described condition of the tapes, this is the approach
least likely (it seems to me) to make things worse. YMMV.

-- Charles