On Mon, Jan 15, 2024 at 04:45:03PM -0500, David Patte wrote: > So, i guess its passed the time to convert some my my 80 column > Hollerith cards, then.
Those should be doable, Just scan them in using a dark background so that the holes are visible and use some image-processing software to pull off the data. Way easier than trying to read the magnetic bits on the surface of a 5.25 floppy disk! Anecdote: As teens, a friend and I got a camera and Porta-Pak through the NFB "Challenge for Change" programme out of Montréal. To splice helical scan video tape without any glitches, you had to be able to "see" the timing track on the magnetic tape, so we had some magic solution (carbon tetrachoride?) that we could wipe on the tape that had super-fine magnetic particles suspended in it and when dry would show the location of the timing track pulses. That let us cut the tape in the right place and ensure that the timing tracks of the two pieces lined up properly. Alas, because it's helical scan, the usual tape splices were a one-second "wipe" that went from the scene on the first tape to the scene on the second. (It took about a second or so for the splice to migrate from one side of the spinning tape heads to the other side.) We wanted a "jump" cut that didn't have this wipe, so we would find the splice point, tension the tape against the spinning heads so that the heads would polish the tape along the helical track, and then we would cut along that helical track to make our splice. The diagonal splices were maybe six inches long or more, but they worked! -- | Ian! D. Allen, BA-Psych, MMath-CompSci idal...@idallen.ca Ottawa CANADA | Home: www.idallen.com Contact Improvisation Dance: www.contactimprov.ca | Former college professor of Free/Libre GNU+Linux @ teaching.idallen.com | Improve democracy www.fairvote.ca and defend digital freedom www.eff.org To unsubscribe send a blank message to linux+unsubscr...@linux-ottawa.org To get help send a blank message to linux+h...@linux-ottawa.org To visit the archives: https://lists.linux-ottawa.org
