[GreenKeys] High Speed tape gear??

[Bob Camp]

Hi

That's brings back some memories (as in here comes a story ...).

I had one of the readers on a PDP-11 back many years ago. One thing I 
can say from direct experience: Do not have your girl friend hold the 
ohm meter probe on the contact block on the reader head while you probe 
the back of the unit. If she slips and mashes the head they are tough 
to find a replacement for. Of course I did marry her despite being 
incompatible with eight level gear.

The pin out on the unit is pretty simple as I recall. The motor servo's 
from the tension levers so there's nothing much to work out there. 
There is a clutch drive but I never used it. The whole mess came out to 
a fairly standard connector. The speed of the reader was quite a bit 
beyond an ASR-33. The only bad thing about it on a DEC machine was that 
it wanted coiled tapes. The DEC paper tapes were all fan fold.

I'll see if I still have a manual. If so I'll let you know.

		Take Care!

			Bob Camp
			KB8TQ


On Feb 17, 2005, at 4:45 PM, wa2hwj at att.net wrote:

> Does anyone have need for some high speed tape gear?
> This stuff is not Teletype Corp.
> One is a high-speed reader made by Tally. It is on a
> rack panel and has two spindles for tape and the parallel 8-unit
> reader is in the middle. It has a large motor and gear arrangment and
> a multi-pin connector on the back. That's all I know. It will take some
> poking around to get to the right pinouts, etc. Looks pretty good, just
> a little dusty.
> The other is a tape reperf...8-unit code, each pin having it's own
> magnet. Has a huge cannon-type plug/connector and a powered takeup
> reel. No markings except for "HP" on the casting. Has a drive motor,
> a couple of toggle switches and a pilot lamp.
> Both units use the standard one-inch ASCII 8 level tape.
> Of course, these things could be used to punch/read 5-6-7 or 8 level 
> tape
> with a little fiddling of the mechanical feed path.
> If interested let me know...price is cheap, shipping will be a little 
> more....
> 73,
> Jack WA2HWJ
>
> NNNN
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