Free punched card deck machine, suitable to make reader and punch

Carl Claunch carlclaunch51 at gmail.com
Sun Jul 4 12:29:15 CDT 2021


I bought this years ago for a planned project to create a card reader and
card punch for a mainframe replica, using this machine that was designed to
reproduce decks of punched cards. It is very heavy and sturdy.

It has two input hoppers and two stackers, one for the source cards and one
for the punched copies. The punched head is cooled by ammonia gas,
indicating that it was designed to operate at a healthy rate of cards per
minute if it needed that kind of cooling. A keypunch, by comparison can
punch cards at about 20 cpm with no need for cooling, so I estimate this
could run at hundreds of CPM.

This is ideal for a hobbyist would would convert it so that it reads cards
into some kind of mini, mainframe or other computer device, with the other
side able to punch contents from the same computer onto blank cards. This
works with the standard IBM '5081' style 80 column punched cards.

I am moving in 12 days and would need to send this to the scrap yard if
someone isn't interested. I can hold it here until July 12th or 13th
latest. You will need to bring help to move it as it weighs a few hundred
pounds.

Pictures at -
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/sys/d/los-altos-free-punched-card-reader-punch/7346150919.html


More information about the cctalk mailing list