[GreenKeys] [External] Re: Teletype DRPE tuned reed mechanism

[Jones, Douglas W]

On 12/27/2020 09:26 PM, Eric Moore wrote:

> What were the primary real world uses for the BRPE?

I bought my BRPEs from a Michigan typesetting company that had piles of them.  Evidently, they were used to punch tape from a computerized composition system to be read by typesetting machines.  Both the punches I got are 6-level with offset sprocket hole.

The 1965 vintage PDP-8 computer I'm restoring has a high-speed paper-tape punch interface designed to drive an 8-level BRPE punch.  just a few years later, Digital Equipment Corp came out with their own 8-level high-speed punch, but they (and much of the rest of the computer industry) used BRPEs to start and only later came out with their own high-speed punch.

I need to combine parts from the two punches to make one 8-level punch.  That means manufacturing a new punch-block if I can't find an old one.  I've gotten far enough to figure out that the manufacture of a punch block is entirely feasible, given machine tools that I either have or can get access to.

          Doug Jones
          jones at cs.uiowa.edu