Alan B. Pearce wrote:

>>>The code is somewhere in the historical records department
>>>at Byte Craft then all I need is to find a paper reader that
>>>has been run in the last 20 years.
>>
>>I think that that could be helped. There is a way to transfer paper tapes
>>into computers using a scanner and a black sheet of paper as backing.


> Oh, I hadn't heard of that scheme. Sounds like it could be a do-er though, 
> but would require a fair amount of operator time. I have some old tapes of 
> bits I wouldn't mind getting at, and have been considering building a little 
> reader with some surface mount leads on some strip board as receivers, and a 
> second set as emitters, with a small stepper or DC motor to pull the tape 
> through. A suitable small PIC with UART to send it out as serial stream and 
> control the motor would complete the scheme. 

Byte magazine had an article on doing exactly that, but with HAND
pulled paper tape. e.g. no motor.
It used 9 LED/opto paths, with the 9th channel being the clock
signal on the drive sproket holes.

http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/OAE80_Reader/OAE80_Index.htm

http://esaki.ee.boun.edu.tr/~talays/courses/ee443/Chap_8.pdf
refers to a Siemens BPX89 phototransistor array meant for reading tape.

Even easier is to use a bunch of spring fingers to read the
conduct/no conduction to a piece of PCB. No optical biasing issues.

Someone could probably write code to use a web cam to
track the holes as they moved past a backlight.
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