Paper Tape Punchers and Readers

[Garth Wilson]

(10-28-2016 03:14 PM)Dave Frederickson Wrote:  Hi Michael,

According to Ansgar Kückes's HP 9845 Project webpage, yes:

During a period, HP offered special ISA measurement extension boards for standard PCs holding a complete HP 9000 series 200/300 computer (Viper cards), including an HP-IB interface. Peripherals with HP-IB include printers (such as the famous Think Jet), plotters (e.g. the 7440), graphic input devices (such as the 91114A), paper tape and card puncher & reader, magnetic tape drives (e.g. the 7970E) and a large number of floppy disc and hard disk drives. Also HP's external graphics processors like the 97060A were controlled via HP-IB. See the Peripherals Section for a large number of devices which could be used by the HP 9845.

Paper tape is available here: http://www.westnc.com/paper-tape-rolls.html

It looks like about 8K per dollar, which was far cheaper than memory of any kind back in the day of paper tape.

BTW, I bought and used one of those Viper boards you're talking about above, at my job in about 1987. I used it to control DMMs, data-acquisition systems, signal generators, relay boxes, and other instrumentation for production testing. I initially did all that with my 41cx, through the HP82169A HPIL-to-HPIB interface converter. The 68000-based Viper card was expected to be much, much faster; but it wasn't, because both spent significant time waiting for filters to settle and readings to come back from the equipment. The final speed ratio was only about 2:1. I had Rocky Mountain BASIC 5.1 on it, and after having learned the BASIC on my HP-71 and gotten a lot of great LEX files from the Paris users' group, I was hugely disappointed in the Rocky Mountain BASIC.