Paper tape readers for micros. (Re: I feel 31337!111!!)

[nickb@fnord.io.com (Nick Bensema)]

In article <ouja6.2741$CP4.876134@typhoon2.ba-dsg.net>,
Xcott Craver <sacraver@use.my.princeton.address> wrote:
>Nick Bensema <nickb@fnord.io.com> wrote:
>>I wonder why nobody invented paper tape readers for microcomputers,
>
>	You kept this idea to yourself, didn't you?  You had this idea
>	in the 80s but kept it to yourself while I had to "A9 02" for 
>	three hours, didn't you?  Oh, ho-ho boy, oh boy, ooOOOooooooh.

Well, nobody would have listened; in early 1980 I was 2; in late 1989
I was 12.

And, having such bad eyesight as I did, I never even TRIED typing in
those damn things.  Well, I think I tried once and got like twelve
lines in or so.

>	At the very least I'm surprised that COMPUTE! and etc didn't print
>	something a little more intelligent than hex with a simple checksum.
>	They could have used alphanumerics to give each keypress 6 bits 
>	rather than 4.  This would have cut our typing time by *one fricken 
>	third*, and take up considerably less space in their magazine.

If I'm not mistaken, the Atari magazines weren't so smart.  They had
us type in decimal, meaning three keystrokes per byte.

Besides, typing in BASIC programs was more fun, it taught me to program.
I remember my dad typed in one such program, and changed one PRINT
statement to read "STEVE'S REVENGE" instead of the original title, which
also had "REVENGE" in it.

>	They could have typeset the program listings along the margins
>	of every page, like Sergio Aragones cartoons.  Then you wouldn't
>	even need to cut out pages:  just slide each one through a reader
>	like it was a long, thin credit card.  Or, at the worst, you
>	could put the magazine issue in a paper cutter, and get all the
>	strips for one program in a single swipe.

Bah, too well-designed for second-generation micros like that.  Keep in
mind that hardware companies only built stuff that the computer was
built to handle until about 1990.  Disk drives, modems, printers, and
other things a child might read about in a book about computers.  People
weren't looking for neat and novel things to do with hardware then;
mice cost ten times as much as they do now, and if you wanted to
digitize sound or pictures, well, that was super-dee-duper SPECIALTY
equipment that was hard to find.  And as for an optical magazine-
program scanner, I'd like to see someone design such a thing such that
it would be easy to make, or mass-produce at reasonable prices, in
the 80's.  Because if it was possible, it's completely stupid that
they didn't do it.

Then again, you could print your own backups and have no need to spend
a thousand bucks on a floppy drive.

-- 
Nick Bensema <nickb@io.com>      ICQ#2135445 
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