Olin,

On Sat, 17 Sep 2005 10:18:35 -0400, Olin Lathrop wrote:

>  michael brown wrote:
> > IIRC, you could punch up a control card that defined tab stops
> > wherever you wanted, auto skip zones and even numeric only areas.  As
> > I remember it many of the machines would often stop one space to the
> > right of the defined tab because they never got properly adjusted.
> > That service was reserved for actual keypunch professionals.  ;-)
> 
> I think you are remembering keypunch machines, not teletypes.  These did
> indeed have a drum you could put a special card on that defined tab stops
> and other stuff.  Teletypes like the ASR-33 and ASR-35 weren't that smart.
> 
> One annoyance of the model 041(?) keypunch machine is that although it had a
> duplicate card function, it wasn't actually capable of duplicating an
> arbitrary binary card. 

I only remember the 029 cardpunch - but it sounds like what you're talking about.  There was quite an art to 
using the program-card drum, and a lot of people didn't bother but did it all by hand - but it could save an 
awful lot of time once you'd cracked it.

> Certain bit combinations that couldn't result from
> keystrokes caused the machine to jam.  You could only create those cards in
> the manual "multi-punch" mode where you specified exactly which bits to
> punch out.  That was also the way to clear a jam.  Put it in multi-punch
> mode and bang on the keyboard like a monkey until all the punches got
> released and it could continue feeding the card thru.

I don't remember that problem, but I don't think I ever tried to duplicate binary cards.  I do remember the 
special hook-ended knife used for getting bits of jammed card out from under the punch-head, though!  :-)

Cheers,


Howard Winter
St.Albans, England


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