> On Feb 27, 2024, at 1:17 AM, Dr. Erik Baigar via cctalk
> <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
>
> Hi there - recently I posted a small video on a rugged
> paper tape casette...
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2jnThYsPKc
>
> I wonder whether anyone kows if someone else had the idea
> of putting paper/mylar tape into a casette for repeated use
> e.g. to load an OS or similar.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Erik.
Interesting! The only "heavy use" approach to paper tape I have seen is the
use of mylar tape instead of paper. OS boot tapes might be punched on that.
My father had a machine in his lab (precision measurement lab) in which a tape
of correction data was used. That was punched on mylar.
I think there are two variants of mylar tape: mylar sandwiched with paper,
which looks much like plain paper tape, and simple mylar alone. The latter
often comes metallized on one side, and is glossy. The metallization I suspect
is for reliable optical reading, to avoid problems with the mylar alone being
too translucent.
Optical readers are pretty gentle in their tape handling even at high speed, at
least if they can avoid starting and stopping. At TU Eindhoven, where paper
tape was the exclusive input medium for the university mainframe computer
(Electrologica X8), they used optical readers rated at 2000 characters per
second. These could start and stop very quickly but in normal use were spooled
to drum so they were moving all the time. The input side would be a roll; on
the way out of the reader the tape would drop into a bucket from which it could
be rewound with a separate tape winder.
I don't remember if the X8 tape reader could stop between characters. I know
the X1 reader (1000 cps I think) could do so, which is quite an amazing
mechanical accomplishment.
paul
