Adventures in Paper Tape with a 9830A

[mrcity]

My plan is coming to fruition! I've got a Facit 4042 paper tape punch & reader on the way. All I know is it's a GPIB device, and that it seems to have problems reading tape but can at least punch a test pattern. I also haven't found any documentation on the 4042, but it can't be too dissimilar from other machines they've made. My guess is it's from the late 80s, since it seems quite small & light compared to others out there. Anyway, it'll be a bit of a project.

To interface it with the system, I've actually found an 11272-66520 internal card "Extended I/O ROM" and an 11444A "ASCII Bus Interface", and those are on the way as well. (My 9830 has an 11270, 11271, and 11274, but not an 11272.) By looking closer at the docs, it seems like the 59045 and/or 11144 GPIB devices don't use specific ROMs on themselves to work with a 9820 or 9830, but you need to pair them with the 11272 board on a 9830 (or a 11224A Peripheral Control II board for the 9820) for it to fully work.

In any event, 40-50 years after the fact, there's a lot to gamble on, since you could go one of 3 ways:

- HP 9863 paper tape reader or 9860 card reader, with interface (and you'd still need to find a punch and/or cards)
- A device utilizing the 11202A I/O interface (such as a Facit 4070 and/or HP 2748B)
- A device utilizing the 11144 or 59045 GPIB interface (such as a Facit 4042)

Seems a bit like playing the McDonald's Monopoly game; you might end up with a lot of pieces over time that don't match up! Anyway, lots to learn for someone who started life having 3.5" floppies readily available...