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

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <3A6F0AA3.586A9EB5@fiberia.com>,  <c64@fiberia.com> wrote:
 
> The 64'er magazine had a system that encoded hex code into
> strings that used all ascii chars plus a check sum.
 
Base-64 ???   Fortunately not ALL ASCII characters are used,
only most of the printable ones... :-)
 
> With a special program (which I had to type in the hard way first),
> you could type in these sequences without looking to the screen.
> If you made a mistake, you would hear a sound if it detected
> that the checksum didn't match.
> I typed in a complete macro assembler this way, I think it was about
> three pages of 4 columns each with the strings in a very tiny script.
> It took me days to finish it.
> And although it had the checksums, one mistake slipped through,
> and I had to run through the whole thing again to find the mistake.
> 
> Luckily the internet became popular and we can download all
> those wonderfull programs in a blink!
 
OTOH even without the Internet, there are now scanners and OCR
software which almost has made printed paper a machine-readable
format.
 
-- 
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Paul Schlyter,  Swedish Amateur Astronomer's Society (SAAF)
Grev Turegatan 40,  S-114 38 Stockholm,  SWEDEN
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