Conversation about paper tape reading methods

[felipesanches]

Hi, @tingox! After you opened issue #1, I got curious to learn more about the methods you're using to read paper tapes. And also which projects are you interested in / working on that use paper tapes.

I've got access to some interesting tapes, but could not yet really figure out an efficient way of reading them all. I would be happy to learn more about your efforts.

[tingox]

For projects, I have two drawers of old paper tapes to read, that is all. The contents are most likely programs for NORD-10 machines.

The method: I have started building a scanner using a Raspberry Pi, a Pi camera , a stepper motor driver and a stepper motor. The plan is to move the tape, take a picture, have OpenCV decode it, and repeat until done.

If this will be a reliable and efficient way to read tapes remains to be seen. :-)

[felipesanches]

nice! Be sure to let us know! And feel free to contribute code to this repo perhaps.

[jonesthechip]

New github member here. Is it possible to download an executable for Windows of the PunchedTapeReader programme? I'm an early adopter of microprocessors (starting in University 1974) and possibly a bit too old (72!) to work out how all this PC stuff operates. (Embedded systems programming for 45 years in my own company). Restoring an intel intellec 4/40 (4040 processor) and I need to reproduce a missing native assembler programme for this microcomputer. I have access to images of a very similar programme tape for the intellec 8/80 (8080 processor) and the aim is to reverse engineer the hex and see how it worked. However, 360+ images are a bit of a slog to hand translate from punched holes to ASCII HEX.

Regards Sid Jones/jonesthechip

[tingox]

New github member here. Is it possible to download an executable for Windows of the PunchedTapeReader programme?

Unfortunately, there are no releases in this repository.

Furthermore, this is a "generic" (for want of a better term) C++ program, so how to compile it and make it work on Windows is an exercise left for the interested reader.

However, OpenCV also works on embedded systems, modern microcontrollers like the Raspberry Pi series and so on.