Quote:
Originally Posted by TonyDuell
I don't think I've ever seen a paper tape reader on an MK14.
It would be quite easy to interface one to one of the ports of the IND8154 chip, but as you say there's no standard software to drive it. You'd have to write your own routine, at which point the paper tape format could be just about anything you like.
I would avoid raw binary, simply because you would have to start the tape at exactly the right point. But 'skip over nulls until you find a non-zero character, ignore it, and read following characters into memory' would work. So would using 2 characters on the tape per byte, low nyble is a nybble to store, upper nybble is anything non-zero. Intel hex, while standard is probably a bit too much work.
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Many thanks for your reply.
Indeed, I'd never seen one until I saw the YouTube video I linked to.
Luckily, all the things you mention are solved for me, except the actual format of the punched paper tape – or, rather, the format of the data file I need to send to the punched paper tape provider to make the tape.
The interface to the MK14 is, as you say, via the IND8154; I already have a routine to enter into the MK14 to process the data coming in from the paper tape reader via the IND8154, which is based on the approach suggested in the original OP-80a manual (and as shown in the YouTube video). That is based on setting the start location of memory to be populated, looking for the first non-zero character, taking that and putting it into the first memory location, incrementing the memory location, loading the next character, and looping through that process. To quote the manual:
"This loader places
binary data from the OP-80a in memory beginning at the 'starting address'."
So, I know it's looking for binary data.
For example: if I take the first 10 bytes in Hex of the Moon Landing program for the MK 14 they are (loaded starting at memory location 0F14):
08
50
00
99
80
00
99
98
00
02
So, is the data file I send to the people who print out the punched paper tape reader just these values in a text file, in this format (one value per line)? I'm assuming not, as the routine processing the incoming data say it wants binary data.
So, instead, do I create a file of the binary equivalent values, like this?
1000
1010000
0
10011001
10000000
0
10011001
10011000
0
10
And, is that the right format.
I have no idea
