IBM 029 Card Punch and ASCII Machines

[Paul Koning]

Correct.  And a number of DEC operating systems had card reader support.  I haven’t seen them very often on DEC machines, but for example RSTS can handle at least 026 and 029 card codes, and some vague memory says there may have been a “1401” table as well.

Not well known, but there are card codes for lower case, and in fact IBM operating systems could handle that though it wasn’t commonly seen.  And in fact there are card codes in the EBCDIC code table for all 256 possible 8-bit values; you’d find those in binary card decks.  Again, not all that common, but 360 diagnostics would sometimes show up as binary card decks (I remember DX11 diagnostics where the IBM end was delivered in that form).  And the 360 model 44 “emulator IPL” deck (for the string instructions, which were emulated in software similar to how low end VAXes did their instruction subset) was a binary deck.

> On May 10, 2015, at 8:42 AM, Simon Claessen <simski at dds.nl> wrote:
> 
> there is no such thing as a ascii 029. The code on the cards is fixed. Translation occurs on the receiving side with a lookuptable.