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1401 Card to Disk Progress Report


from Dan McInnis
March 21, 2005

  1. Card to Disk.
    Bill Selmeier and Ed Thelen started the conversion of cards to disk. So far approx 54 card decks have been converted.

    There are two modes of conversion - Binary and ASCII.

    • Binary: Each card column is converted to two bytes with bits representing hole punches. These two byte sequences are written to a file as a single record. This is great as an archive but useless from a simulation or restoration standpoint.

    • ASCII: Each card column is converted to an ASCII character. The problem here is since some 1401 characters do not have ASCII representations, the conversion program arbitrarily chooses characters. These do not agree with what SIMH or B1401 simulators use.

    The ASCII files with disparate characters can be changed with an an editor to permit usage in SIMH or B1401.

  2. SIMH:
    I wrote a JAVA program to convert the binary fines to ASCII card images. After quite a bit of testing the program now produces programs that run on SIMH.

    Many of the programs are diagnostic routines that use sense switches. To date I have not found a way set the switches.

  3. B1401 simulator
    This simulator had problems with the SIMH ASCII file so I modified the conversion program. This simulator has several good points, you can set sense switches interactively, watch memory, the card reader, printer and also produce a disassembly. It has problems with tape since it produces an error on several tape commands.

  4. Availibility:
    Currently Bill and I have the archive. A decision needs to be made as to where the official Museum archive should reside, what it should contain and who will maintain it.

  5. Status:
    - The Documation card reader is not working.
    - Bill Selmeier is the point person.