Love it. Over the weekend I had been telling my kids (now in their
20's) about studying "computers" (FORTRAN) in college and how we would
write our programs, create the punch cards, then leave the batch at a
drop off point for the computer gods to run the program overnight. If
the program failed because of a coding error, keypunch error -- or, Lord
forbid -- from a "stacking" or missing-card error...we had to start the
process over. This was '69 or '70. Eons ago, I guess.
With that said, I did a little Googling on "punch card conversion" and
came across the following article about a vendor who may be able to
help. I know nothing about the vendor, and you may turn up someone with
searches of your own. Good luck!
Paul R. Bergeron
City Clerk
229 Main Street
Nashua, NH 03060
Telephone: 603/589-3010
Fax: 603/589-3029
http://www.gonashua.com/
VintageTech Punch Card Conversion Services
VintageTech, the VCF off-shoot that provides old computer technology and
services to business and academia, has recently gotten one of the VCF's
old punch card readers working.
The reader is a Documation M200, and even at nearly 30 years old it's
still capable of reading 200 cards per minute, its top speed. The
reader's interface, being meant to connect directly to a specific punch
card reader controller in a DEC or other mini-computer, has no "modern"
equivalent. In order to get the data from the reader to a PC, an
converter needed to be built. We used what we knew: an Apple //e.
The output of the reader can be considered to be 12-bit, since there are
12 data holes on a punch card. There are also several signal outputs
that tell the host machine if there was a problem (such as a card
getting stuck in the reader). Our Apple //e is fitted with a
custom-built parallel interface card with 20 inputs. The data and
signal inputs from the reader were wired into a special harness to fit
the parallel card. Software to control the reader and decode the punch
card data was developed on the Apple //e. As the data is read on the
//e, it is sent over a serial port to a PC, where the data can then be
saved to modern media for preservation.
Reading punch card data into a PC involves two steps: first, the data on
the card, as represented by the holes punched into it, must be decoded;
second, that data, which can be stored in any one of over a dozen
encodings, must be converted to ASCII. Punch cards evolved from the
first machines that Herman Hollerith invented to conduct the 1890 census
count for the United States. As punch card technology evolved, so did
punch card character sets. Special symbols such as punctuation were
added to the basic character set consisting of letters and numbers.
Eventually, character set standards evolved. IBM, which for the most
part pioneered punch card technology, had two common sets: "FORTRAN",
used for FORTRAN program coding, and "Commercial", used for encoding
general data. In each of these character sets, only a few minor
punctuation characters have different encodings. The letters and
numbers are encoded the same.
Decoding punch card data is a matter of interpreting the holes. First
of all, data is encoded on punch cards in columns. There are 80 columns
on a typical punch card, and each column contains one encoded character.
In fact, this 80 column width is the reason why computer terminals, and
subsequently personal computers, usually had a screen width of 80
characters: it was a throw back to the punch card!
Across the punch card there are 12 rows. The rows are numbered 1
through 9, and then 0, 11, 12. Encoding a number is simple. To encode
a '5' for example, the 5 row is punched in a column. To encode a '0',
the 0 row is punched. It's as simple as that. The rows 0, 11, and 12
are called "zones", and are used to encode letters and puncutation
symbols. So for instance, to punch an 'A' character, the 12 hole and
the 1 hole are punched. A 'B' is the 12 hole and the 2 hole, a 'C' is
the 12 hole and the 3 hole, and so on, all the way up to 12 and 9, which
is an 'I'. At that point, the alphabet continues in the next zone,
which is 11. So 11 and 1 is 'J', 11 and 2 is 'K', etc. Finally, the
alphabet ends at 0 and 9, which is 'Z'.
Some characters are encoded by punching more than one hole. The most
common special characters are encoded by punching the 3 and 8 or 4 and 8
holes and then one of the zones (0, 11 or 12). Some crazy character
sets, like IBM's EBCDIC, can have up to 5 holes being punched to
represent one character (usually a special control character).
As the punch cards are whisked through the reader, the hole punches are
sent over the interface to the Apple //e, which then interprets the data
according to a character set table in memory that is used to decode the
data from punch card codes into ASCII. That character is then flung
over the serial port to a waiting PC that then captures and stores the
data to a file. A typical 2000 card deck, representing 2000 lines of
code or data (or 160,000 bytes maximum), can be read in about 10
minutes. By comparison, the Apple //e could read an entire 143K disk in
under 10 seconds. And a typical PC today can devour that amount of data
in less than a millisecond. How times have changed...
A lot of useful programs and data are locked away on old punch cards.
If you or someone you know has such data and would like to have it
recovered, please visit VintageTech to inquire about our punch card data
conversion services. VintageTech can also read and convert just about
any old media format into a modern format.
http://www.vintagetech.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Blake Richardson
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2007 3:09 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [RM] Punch Cards
Good afternoon. Please hold the laughter to a minimum...I need to have
approximately 150 punch cards read and related reports generated. The
punch cards apparently provide detail about records we have with an
off-site storage vendor in the Denver area. I am attempting to have the
cards read in lieu of flipping lids on a significant number of boxes.
Needless to say since this information is on punch cards, there is a
good chance that the record retention periods have expired. However,
the info will have to be reviewed first. Any thoughts on vendors that
still may provide this service? I have contacted our IT department,
once the ridicule and laughter subsided; I informed them that they
should have had a migration strategy. They did suggest maybe a disaster
recovery services vendor. I would appreciate the feedback.
Thanks
Blake E. Richardson, CRM
Manager of Records
Safeway Inc.
20427 North 27th Avenue
MS-7007
Phoenix, AZ 85027
P: 623.869.3875
F: 623.869.6175
<http://home.safeway.com/index.htm>
"MMS <safeway.com>" made the following annotations.
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