At 12:28 PM 9/28/99 +1200, you wrote:
>I made a hand pulled opto paper tape reader looooooooong ago.
>Very successful.
>Clocked by extra opto on "feed" sprocket holes.
>Used small photo transistors and AFAIR background lighting arranged for the
>purpose.
>Hand fed - smoothness was a good idea but speeds as fast as you could pull
>it were successful. Lets see - say it was 1m/sec. That about 3.28*12*10*8 =
>over 3000 bits per second. Double this at 2m/second! - Wow that's fast!
>Remember that back then the alternative's were 110 baud teleprinters and
>75/1200 baud modems and maybe the new fangled 300/300 modems and ... . For
>amateur use 3000 baud was superb. My Masters thesis  project output data on
>papertape (Motoroal MC6800 powered :-)) and it was input to the university
>computer (Burroughs B110 rings a bell). This was trailing edge for them but
>was the only way that I could interface between the two. I found the
>papertape punch at the local dump and resurrected it :-)

I remember in the old days (I was WB6GNO, and my buddy WA6QQQ) loved to get
on the RTTY.  Days WELL before the AR33's.  Had four of the old press
machines.  Bob would read the incoming (usually hand typed by the sender),
and I would type in the reply to create a tape.  When our turn came, the
tape would be loaded and ready to go.  I don't think anyone ever figured
out how we could type so fast.

Ahhhh memories.

Kelly


William K. Borsum, P.E. -- OEM Dataloggers and Instrumentation Systems
<borsum@dascor.com> & <www.dascor.com>San Diego, California, USA