[GreenKeys] paper tapes and rubber bands = bummer

[Chris Elmquist]

On Monday (07/28/2008 at 09:35AM -0400), Paul A. Pennington wrote:
>    Chris;
>
>    What is your objective with this project:  reading the data or 
> preserving the tapes?

Both really...  with preserving the tapes a higher priority.

>    For the data, I would first check around and see if it's already 
> available.  Contact me off-list and I can put you in touch with a number of 
> 6800 sources.  As you probably know, it is possible to read punched tapes 
> by examining them visually and retyping the data.  The data is arranged in 
> "S1" records that have a checksum at the end of each line, which will help 
> in catching mistakes.

Yes. Thank you.  I have an extensive collection of 6800 stuff and am quite
familiar with the loader format, etc.  In this case, many of the tapes have
BASIC programs or other data on them which of course don't have S-records
or any checksum.

The editor/assembler package I mentioned is of course a binary in Motorola
S-record format.  Those tapes are not in bad shape other than to have this
gooy rubber band remnants all over them.  I obviously do not want to feed
that stuff through my tty33 tape reader :-)

>    For the old tapes themselves, I would recommend a product derived from 
> orange peels called De-Solv-it.  It's readily available at Walmart and many 
> other sources.  See www.orange-sol.com for the fascinating background of 
> this company.

OK. Thanks for the tip.  I'll check it out.

Chris

-- 
Chris Elmquist
mailto:chrise at pobox.com