| 1 | <html> |
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| 2 | <body> |
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| 3 | |
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| 4 | <h2>The Punch Card Project</h2> |
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| 5 | |
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| 6 | <p>This project is mostly under construction (updated: July 2009). There's already a |
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| 7 | <a href="driver/">driver</a> for the |
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| 8 | <a href="driver/nixdorf-0377.01">nixdorf-0377.01 card reader</a>, a |
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| 9 | pretty small device that can be easily connected to PCs via parallel |
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| 10 | port.</p> |
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| 11 | |
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| 12 | <h3>Some Notes/Planning</h3> |
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| 13 | <ul> |
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| 14 | <li>There are some major projects in the planning stages, among others |
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| 15 | the connection of a fairly big punch card reader/puncher to a |
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| 16 | computer (perhaps) via microcontroller.</li> |
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| 17 | <li>If there'll be a GUI for a punching program, it will be written with |
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| 18 | <a href="http://www.qtsoftware.com">Qt</a> :-)</li> |
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| 19 | </ul> |
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| 20 | |
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| 21 | <h3>Some notes about card processing with computers</h3> |
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| 22 | <p>Punch cards have 80 columns at 12 bit each. That's a bit unhandy for |
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| 23 | todays computers, working with 8 bit words. Since there's no standard how |
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| 24 | to encode 12 bit on 8 bit, i've started to develop a <a href="lib/">small C++ library</a> to |
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| 25 | operate with punch cards in memory and on hard disks. There's a |
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| 26 | fantastical site by <a href="http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/">Douglas W. Jones</a> |
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| 27 | about <a href="http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/cards/">Punch Cards</a>. He has |
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| 28 | proposed a <a href="http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/cards/format.html">file format |
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| 29 | for punch card emulation software</a>. I think it's a bit unhandy, but my library |
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| 30 | will support this format, among others, for I/O. Since punch card emulators won't work |
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| 31 | with milions of cards, storage efficiency is not so important, in my opinion, |
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| 32 | compared to code handiness and maintainability. Therefore the C++ source is very |
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| 33 | bad in RAM usage, but gives you (as a programmer) a very nice and intuitional interface |
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| 34 | to your punch card.</p> |
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| 35 | |
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| 36 | <ul> |
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| 37 | <li><a href="lib/card.h">card.h</a></li> |
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| 38 | <li><a href="lib/card.cc">card.cc</a></li> |
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| 39 | </ul> |
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