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Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407949 is a reply to message #407948] Tue, 04 May 2021 13:56 Go to previous messageGo to next message
scott is currently offline  scott
Messages: 4237
Registered: February 2012
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Senior Member
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
> On 2021-05-04, Robin Vowels <robin.vowels@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 5:00:02 AM UTC+10, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 14:26:19 -0400
>>> Dan Espen <dan1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>>>>
>>>> > On Mon, 03 May 2021 08:29:22 -0400
>>>> > Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> >> Ideas range from scanning them and run some OCR software over the
>>>> >> scans, to one person (Christian C., liest Du hier mit? :-) claiming to
>>>> >> be able to read the cards just by looking at them.
>>>> >
>>>> > I used to be able to do that, more than forty years ago.
>>>>
>>>> Any main-framer has a green card (it may not actually be green)
>>>> that shows the punch codes.
>>>
>>> Oh sure anyone can look it up, I meant from memory as a result of
>>> using the hand punch rather than wait for an 029.
>>
>> OK, what's +-6-8 ?
>
> That depends. It sounds like you're using a BCD-encoded punch.
> On an EBCDIC punch that would be &-6-8.
>
> Or we could be ecumenical and call it 12-6-8.

Although most charts list in descending order, so 12-8-6
would be canonical. (12-8-6 is EBCDIC plus (+)).
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407955 is a reply to message #407933] Tue, 04 May 2021 19:53 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Robin Vowels is currently offline  Robin Vowels
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Registered: July 2012
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On Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 9:18:27 PM UTC+10, Dan Espen wrote:
> Robin Vowels <robin....@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 5:00:02 AM UTC+10, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 14:26:19 -0400
>>> Dan Espen <dan1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>>>>
>>>> > On Mon, 03 May 2021 08:29:22 -0400
>>>> > Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> >> Ideas range from scanning them and run some OCR software over the
>>>> >> scans, to one person (Christian C., liest Du hier mit? :-) claiming to
>>>> >> be able to read the cards just by looking at them.
>>>> >
>>>> > I used to be able to do that, more than forty years ago.
>>>>
>>>> Any main-framer has a green card (it may not actually be green)
>>>> that shows the punch codes.
>>> Oh sure anyone can look it up, I meant from memory as a result of
>>> using the hand punch rather than wait for an 029.
>> .
>> OK, what's +-6-8 ?
..
> Beats me. Where is the "+" row on a card?
..
It's the top row.
..
> Last time I looked the rows were numbered 12, 11, 0 - 9.
..
Alternative numberings were Y-X-0...9
and + - 0...9
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407956 is a reply to message #407949] Tue, 04 May 2021 20:00 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Robin Vowels is currently offline  Robin Vowels
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On Wednesday, May 5, 2021 at 3:56:58 AM UTC+10, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> Charlie Gibbs <cgi...@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
>> On 2021-05-04, Robin Vowels <robin....@gmail.com> wrote:

>>>> Oh sure anyone can look it up, I meant from memory as a result of
>>>> using the hand punch rather than wait for an 029.
>>>
>>> OK, what's +-6-8 ?
>>
>> That depends. It sounds like you're using a BCD-encoded punch.
>> On an EBCDIC punch that would be &-6-8.
>>
>> Or we could be ecumenical and call it 12-6-8.
> Although most charts list in descending order, so 12-8-6
> would be canonical. (12-8-6 is EBCDIC plus (+)).
..
In earlier systems, plus (+) was the Y-row (or 12-row),
and minus was the X-row (or 11-row).
These were convenient to punch with the manual keypunches,
using one finger for + - and all the digits.
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407957 is a reply to message #407955] Tue, 04 May 2021 20:35 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Dan Espen is currently offline  Dan Espen
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Robin Vowels <robin.vowels@gmail.com> writes:

> On Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 9:18:27 PM UTC+10, Dan Espen wrote:
>> Robin Vowels <robin....@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> On Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 5:00:02 AM UTC+10, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 14:26:19 -0400
>>>> Dan Espen <dan1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>>>> >
>>>> > > On Mon, 03 May 2021 08:29:22 -0400
>>>> > > Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>>> > >
>>>> > >> Ideas range from scanning them and run some OCR software over the
>>>> > >> scans, to one person (Christian C., liest Du hier mit? :-) claiming to
>>>> > >> be able to read the cards just by looking at them.
>>>> > >
>>>> > > I used to be able to do that, more than forty years ago.
>>>> >
>>>> > Any main-framer has a green card (it may not actually be green)
>>>> > that shows the punch codes.
>>>> Oh sure anyone can look it up, I meant from memory as a result of
>>>> using the hand punch rather than wait for an 029.
>>> .
>>> OK, what's +-6-8 ?
> .
>> Beats me. Where is the "+" row on a card?
> .
> It's the top row.
> .
>> Last time I looked the rows were numbered 12, 11, 0 - 9.
> .
> Alternative numberings were Y-X-0...9
> and + - 0...9

Interesting, neither rings any bells.

--
Dan Espen
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407962 is a reply to message #407905] Tue, 04 May 2021 23:45 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel is currently offline  Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel
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Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
> after two semester hr intro to fortran/computers ... got student job to
> reimplement 1401 MPIO (tape<->unit record, i.e. unit record front end
> for 709) in 360 assembler (360/30 temporary replaces 1401 on way to
> upgrading 709/1401 to 360/67). univ. shutdown datacenter from 8am sat
> until 8am mon and I could have the whole place to myself for 48hrs
> straight (360/30 as my personal computer). I got to design & implement
> my own monitor, device drivers, interrupt handlers, error recovery,
> storage management, etc.

one of the things I fairly quickly learned coming in 8am sat morning,
was to clean all the tape drives, and then take the 2540 printer/punch
apart and clean it ... clean 1403, etc.

the other issue was sometimes datacenter operations finished early
and when I came in at 8am, everything was dark and powered off. sometimes
trying to power on 360/30, it wouldn't come up. thru trial and error,
i learned to put all the control units into ce mode ... power them
on individual, power on the 360/30 and then take each controller out
of ce mode.

other drift; mit lincoln labs was 1st installation (after science
center) for installation of cp67 (univ. where i was responsible for
systems was next after lincoln labs). Lincoln labs had done their own
360 monitor with lots of functions (including unit record<->tape) as
LLMPS ... and made it available via SHARE program library
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHARE_(computing)

Most installations getting 360/67 for tss/360 just fell back to using it
as 360/65 with os/360. However both Stanford and Univ. of Michigan wrote
their own virtual memory operating systems (for 360/67). UM started off
by scaffolding MTS off the LLMPS monitor.

Some information about LLMPS
http://archive.michigan-terminal-system.org/discussions/anec dotes-comments-observations/8-1someinformationaboutllmps
Did anything of LLMPS remain as part of UMMPS?
http://archive.michigan-terminal-system.org/discussions/anec dotes-comments-observations/8didanythingofllmpsremainasparto fummps

other MTS refs:
http://archive.michigan-terminal-system.org/
http://archive.michigan-terminal-system.org/documentation
http://archive.michigan-terminal-system.org/myths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Terminal_System
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/gallery/gallery7.html
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/gallery/gallery8.html
http://mtswiki.westwood-tech.com/mtswiki-index.php

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407963 is a reply to message #407924] Tue, 04 May 2021 23:47 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Louis Krupp is currently offline  Louis Krupp
Messages: 92
Registered: August 2012
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Member
On 5/3/2021 8:56 PM, Robin Vowels wrote:
> On Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 5:00:02 AM UTC+10, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 14:26:19 -0400
>> Dan Espen <dan1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>>>
>>>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 08:29:22 -0400
>>>> Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > Ideas range from scanning them and run some OCR software over the
>>>> > scans, to one person (Christian C., liest Du hier mit? :-) claiming to
>>>> > be able to read the cards just by looking at them.
>>>> I used to be able to do that, more than forty years ago.
>>> Any main-framer has a green card (it may not actually be green)
>>> that shows the punch codes.
>> Oh sure anyone can look it up, I meant from memory as a result of
>> using the hand punch rather than wait for an 029.
> .
> OK, what's +-6-8 ?

There was a time I could have written a program to punch a deck of cards
with every EBCDIC character and another program that would read the deck
in binary (Burroughs had a way of doing that) and then print a table
with all 256 characters and their corresponding punch codes but it's too
late now.

Louis
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407969 is a reply to message #407963] Wed, 05 May 2021 06:31 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Harry Vaderchi is currently offline  Harry Vaderchi
Messages: 719
Registered: July 2012
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Senior Member
On Tue, 4 May 2021 21:47:53 -0600
Louis Krupp <lkrupp@invalid.pssw.com.invalid> wrote:

> On 5/3/2021 8:56 PM, Robin Vowels wrote:
>> On Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 5:00:02 AM UTC+10, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 14:26:19 -0400
>>> Dan Espen <dan1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>>>>
>>>> > On Mon, 03 May 2021 08:29:22 -0400
>>>> > Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> >> Ideas range from scanning them and run some OCR software over the
>>>> >> scans, to one person (Christian C., liest Du hier mit? :-) claiming to
>>>> >> be able to read the cards just by looking at them.
>>>> > I used to be able to do that, more than forty years ago.
>>>> Any main-framer has a green card (it may not actually be green)
>>>> that shows the punch codes.
>>> Oh sure anyone can look it up, I meant from memory as a result of
>>> using the hand punch rather than wait for an 029.
>> .
>> OK, what's +-6-8 ?
>
> There was a time I could have written a program to punch a deck of cards
> with every EBCDIC character and another program that would read the deck
> in binary (Burroughs had a way of doing that) and then print a table
> with all 256 characters and their corresponding punch codes but it's too
> late now.
>
> Louis

WIWAL there weren't 256 characters defined!
(fails to provide a link to a pdf from Bitsavers of a yellow card)

--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407973 is a reply to message #407963] Wed, 05 May 2021 09:42 Go to previous messageGo to next message
scott is currently offline  scott
Messages: 4237
Registered: February 2012
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Louis Krupp <lkrupp@invalid.pssw.com.invalid> writes:
> On 5/3/2021 8:56 PM, Robin Vowels wrote:
>> On Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 5:00:02 AM UTC+10, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 14:26:19 -0400
>>> Dan Espen <dan1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>>>>
>>>> > On Mon, 03 May 2021 08:29:22 -0400
>>>> > Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> >> Ideas range from scanning them and run some OCR software over the
>>>> >> scans, to one person (Christian C., liest Du hier mit? :-) claiming to
>>>> >> be able to read the cards just by looking at them.
>>>> > I used to be able to do that, more than forty years ago.
>>>> Any main-framer has a green card (it may not actually be green)
>>>> that shows the punch codes.
>>> Oh sure anyone can look it up, I meant from memory as a result of
>>> using the hand punch rather than wait for an 029.
>> .
>> OK, what's +-6-8 ?
>
> There was a time I could have written a program to punch a deck of cards
> with every EBCDIC character and another program that would read the deck
> in binary (Burroughs had a way of doing that) and then print a table
> with all 256 characters and their corresponding punch codes but it's too
> late now.

My Burroughs V-series simulator supports the Card Reader DLP binary read
variant (albeit from a simh hollerith format input file...)
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407974 is a reply to message #407969] Wed, 05 May 2021 09:44 Go to previous messageGo to next message
scott is currently offline  scott
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"Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> writes:
> On Tue, 4 May 2021 21:47:53 -0600
> Louis Krupp <lkrupp@invalid.pssw.com.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 5/3/2021 8:56 PM, Robin Vowels wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 5:00:02 AM UTC+10, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 14:26:19 -0400
>>>> Dan Espen <dan1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>>>> >
>>>> >> On Mon, 03 May 2021 08:29:22 -0400
>>>> >> Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>>> >>
>>>> >>> Ideas range from scanning them and run some OCR software over the
>>>> >>> scans, to one person (Christian C., liest Du hier mit? :-) claiming to
>>>> >>> be able to read the cards just by looking at them.
>>>> >> I used to be able to do that, more than forty years ago.
>>>> > Any main-framer has a green card (it may not actually be green)
>>>> > that shows the punch codes.
>>>> Oh sure anyone can look it up, I meant from memory as a result of
>>>> using the hand punch rather than wait for an 029.
>>> .
>>> OK, what's +-6-8 ?
>>
>> There was a time I could have written a program to punch a deck of cards
>> with every EBCDIC character and another program that would read the deck
>> in binary (Burroughs had a way of doing that) and then print a table
>> with all 256 characters and their corresponding punch codes but it's too
>> late now.
>>
>> Louis
>
> WIWAL there weren't 256 characters defined!
> (fails to provide a link to a pdf from Bitsavers of a yellow card)

My Burroughs yellow card (B2000/B3000/B4000 Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code)
show a valid hollerith encoding for each of the 256 character positions.

e.g. 0x42 is 12-0-9-2
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407975 is a reply to message #407974] Wed, 05 May 2021 10:25 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Harry Vaderchi is currently offline  Harry Vaderchi
Messages: 719
Registered: July 2012
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Senior Member
On Wed, 05 May 2021 13:44:58 GMT
scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:

> "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> writes:
>> On Tue, 4 May 2021 21:47:53 -0600
>> Louis Krupp <lkrupp@invalid.pssw.com.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> On 5/3/2021 8:56 PM, Robin Vowels wrote:
>>>> On Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 5:00:02 AM UTC+10, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>>> > On Mon, 03 May 2021 14:26:19 -0400
>>>> > Dan Espen <dan1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> >> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>>>> >>
>>>> >>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 08:29:22 -0400
>>>> >>> Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>>> Ideas range from scanning them and run some OCR software over the
>>>> >>>> scans, to one person (Christian C., liest Du hier mit? :-) claiming to
>>>> >>>> be able to read the cards just by looking at them.
>>>> >>> I used to be able to do that, more than forty years ago.
>>>> >> Any main-framer has a green card (it may not actually be green)
>>>> >> that shows the punch codes.
>>>> > Oh sure anyone can look it up, I meant from memory as a result of
>>>> > using the hand punch rather than wait for an 029.
>>>> .
>>>> OK, what's +-6-8 ?
>>>
>>> There was a time I could have written a program to punch a deck of cards
>>> with every EBCDIC character and another program that would read the deck
>>> in binary (Burroughs had a way of doing that) and then print a table
>>> with all 256 characters and their corresponding punch codes but it's too
>>> late now.
>>>
>>> Louis
>>
>> WIWAL there weren't 256 characters defined!
>> (fails to provide a link to a pdf from Bitsavers of a yellow card)
>
> My Burroughs yellow card (B2000/B3000/B4000 Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code)
> show a valid hollerith encoding for each of the 256 character positions.
>
> e.g. 0x42 is 12-0-9-2

Sure, for data, but EBCDIC didn't allocate all the funny characters like MS did to 8bit ASCII.

--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407976 is a reply to message #407974] Wed, 05 May 2021 10:45 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Dan Espen is currently offline  Dan Espen
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scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:

> "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> writes:
>> On Tue, 4 May 2021 21:47:53 -0600
>> Louis Krupp <lkrupp@invalid.pssw.com.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> On 5/3/2021 8:56 PM, Robin Vowels wrote:
>>>> On Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 5:00:02 AM UTC+10, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>>> > On Mon, 03 May 2021 14:26:19 -0400
>>>> > Dan Espen <dan1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> >> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>>>> >>
>>>> >>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 08:29:22 -0400
>>>> >>> Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>>> Ideas range from scanning them and run some OCR software over
>>>> >>>> the scans, to one person (Christian C., liest Du hier mit? :-)
>>>> >>>> claiming to be able to read the cards just by looking at them.
>>>> >>> I used to be able to do that, more than forty years ago.
>>>> >> Any main-framer has a green card (it may not actually be green)
>>>> >> that shows the punch codes.
>>>> > Oh sure anyone can look it up, I meant from memory as a result of
>>>> > using the hand punch rather than wait for an 029.
>>>> . OK, what's +-6-8 ?
>>>
>>> There was a time I could have written a program to punch a deck of
>>> cards with every EBCDIC character and another program that would
>>> read the deck in binary (Burroughs had a way of doing that) and then
>>> print a table with all 256 characters and their corresponding punch
>>> codes but it's too late now.
>>>
>>> Louis
>>
>> WIWAL there weren't 256 characters defined! (fails to provide a link
>> to a pdf from Bitsavers of a yellow card)
>
> My Burroughs yellow card (B2000/B3000/B4000 Extended Binary Coded
> Decimal Interchange Code) show a valid hollerith encoding for each of
> the 256 character positions.
>
> e.g. 0x42 is 12-0-9-2

Sure, the IBM card is the same way, you can punch any of the 256 values.
But IBM didn't assign characters to all the positions. A big mistake in
my opinion. To this day, when you ftp data from a mainframe with
ebcdic-ascii translation, you're going to lose some data because IBM
didn't assign characters to all the positions and didn't have the
imagination to pick arbitrary, unique values.

--
Dan Espen
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407979 is a reply to message #407976] Wed, 05 May 2021 12:00 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Charlie Gibbs is currently offline  Charlie Gibbs
Messages: 5313
Registered: January 2012
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Senior Member
On 2021-05-05, Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:

> Sure, the IBM card is the same way, you can punch any of the 256 values.
> But IBM didn't assign characters to all the positions. A big mistake in
> my opinion. To this day, when you ftp data from a mainframe with
> ebcdic-ascii translation, you're going to lose some data because IBM
> didn't assign characters to all the positions and didn't have the
> imagination to pick arbitrary, unique values.

Even worse, some defined characters (e.g. vertical bar and exclamation
mark) suffered what could only be described as entropy.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | They don't understand Microsoft
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | has stolen their car and parked
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | a taxi in their driveway.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Mayayana
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407980 is a reply to message #407976] Wed, 05 May 2021 12:08 Go to previous messageGo to next message
scott is currently offline  scott
Messages: 4237
Registered: February 2012
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Senior Member
Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>
>> "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> writes:
>>> On Tue, 4 May 2021 21:47:53 -0600
>>> Louis Krupp <lkrupp@invalid.pssw.com.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 5/3/2021 8:56 PM, Robin Vowels wrote:
>>>> > On Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 5:00:02 AM UTC+10, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>>> >> On Mon, 03 May 2021 14:26:19 -0400
>>>> >> Dan Espen <dan1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> >>
>>>> >>> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 08:29:22 -0400
>>>> >>>> Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>>> >>>>
>>>> >>>>> Ideas range from scanning them and run some OCR software over
>>>> >>>>> the scans, to one person (Christian C., liest Du hier mit? :-)
>>>> >>>>> claiming to be able to read the cards just by looking at them.
>>>> >>>> I used to be able to do that, more than forty years ago.
>>>> >>> Any main-framer has a green card (it may not actually be green)
>>>> >>> that shows the punch codes.
>>>> >> Oh sure anyone can look it up, I meant from memory as a result of
>>>> >> using the hand punch rather than wait for an 029.
>>>> > . OK, what's +-6-8 ?
>>>>
>>>> There was a time I could have written a program to punch a deck of
>>>> cards with every EBCDIC character and another program that would
>>>> read the deck in binary (Burroughs had a way of doing that) and then
>>>> print a table with all 256 characters and their corresponding punch
>>>> codes but it's too late now.
>>>>
>>>> Louis
>>>
>>> WIWAL there weren't 256 characters defined! (fails to provide a link
>>> to a pdf from Bitsavers of a yellow card)
>>
>> My Burroughs yellow card (B2000/B3000/B4000 Extended Binary Coded
>> Decimal Interchange Code) show a valid hollerith encoding for each of
>> the 256 character positions.
>>
>> e.g. 0x42 is 12-0-9-2
>
> Sure, the IBM card is the same way, you can punch any of the 256 values.
> But IBM didn't assign characters to all the positions. A big mistake in
> my opinion. To this day, when you ftp data from a mainframe with
> ebcdic-ascii translation, you're going to lose some data because IBM
> didn't assign characters to all the positions and didn't have the
> imagination to pick arbitrary, unique values.

The Burroughs and IBM EBCDIC mapping had some minor differences (mostly
in the control characters, but some graphics as well (e.g. the not symbol)),
so there isn't a universal EBCDIC <-> ASCII translation.
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407982 is a reply to message #407979] Wed, 05 May 2021 13:04 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Niklas Karlsson is currently offline  Niklas Karlsson
Messages: 265
Registered: January 2012
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Senior Member
On 2021-05-05, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> On 2021-05-05, Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Sure, the IBM card is the same way, you can punch any of the 256 values.
>> But IBM didn't assign characters to all the positions. A big mistake in
>> my opinion. To this day, when you ftp data from a mainframe with
>> ebcdic-ascii translation, you're going to lose some data because IBM
>> didn't assign characters to all the positions and didn't have the
>> imagination to pick arbitrary, unique values.
>
> Even worse, some defined characters (e.g. vertical bar and exclamation
> mark) suffered what could only be described as entropy.

Explain?

Niklas
--
Kids have it easy today. All they have to listen to is stories about
how back in the '70s we had to listen to stories about how bad it was
back in the '30s. --Keith Lynch
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407983 is a reply to message #407975] Wed, 05 May 2021 13:05 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Niklas Karlsson is currently offline  Niklas Karlsson
Messages: 265
Registered: January 2012
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On 2021-05-05, Kerr-Mudd, John <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:
> On Wed, 05 May 2021 13:44:58 GMT
> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:
>>
>> e.g. 0x42 is 12-0-9-2
>
> Sure, for data, but EBCDIC didn't allocate all the funny characters like MS did to 8bit ASCII.

Wasn't 8-bit ASCII originally an IBMism, for the PC?

Niklas
--
"The best way to get something to compile on Linux is to find something
that was not developed by Linux developers." -- Graham Reed
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407984 is a reply to message #407963] Wed, 05 May 2021 13:44 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel is currently offline  Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel
Messages: 3156
Registered: January 2012
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Louis Krupp <lkrupp@invalid.pssw.com.invalid> writes:
> There was a time I could have written a program to punch a deck of
> cards with every EBCDIC character and another program that would read
> the deck in binary (Burroughs had a way of doing that) and then print
> a table with all 256 characters and their corresponding punch codes
> but it's too late now.

.... while 709 was BCD for character, the equivalent of 360 TXT (output
from assemblers & compilers) was "column binary" ... two six bit "bytes"
in each card 12 row column ... so the 360 card read/punch equipment had
"column binary" compatibility mode. Rewritting 1401 MPIO front-end for
360/30 ... I had to handle both BCD & "column binary" input & output.
Column binary would map to two 360 bytes ... or 80 column card was 160
(360) bytes.

"green card" has 2540 CCWs ... green card IOS3270 that I redid in HTML
shows (same) CCWs for 3525
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/gcard.html#23
i.e. "data mode": 0-EBCDIC, 1-Card image

I could read in EBCDIC and if I got "error" (i.e. invalid hole
combination) reread in column binary.

other trivia: biggest computer goof ever, from (IBM) father of ASCII (gone 404,
but lives on at wayback machine)
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbem er.com/P-BIT.HTM
The culprit was T. Vincent Learson. The only thing for his defense is
that he had no idea of what he had done. It was when he was an IBM Vice
President, prior to tenure as Chairman of the Board, those lofty
positions where you believe that, if you order it done, it actually will
be done. I've mentioned this fiasco elsewhere.

....

I mention this because it is a classic software mistake. IBM was going
to announce the 360 in 1964 April as an ASCII machine, but their
printers and punches were not ready to handle ASCII, and IBM just HAD to
announce. So T.V. Learson (my boss's boss) decided to do both, as IBM
had a store of spendable money. They put in the P-bit. Set one way, it
ran in EBCDIC. Set the other way, it ran in ASCII.

.... snip ...

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407985 is a reply to message #407980] Wed, 05 May 2021 13:50 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Dan Espen is currently offline  Dan Espen
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scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:

> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>>
>>> "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> writes:
>>>> On Tue, 4 May 2021 21:47:53 -0600
>>>> Louis Krupp <lkrupp@invalid.pssw.com.invalid> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > On 5/3/2021 8:56 PM, Robin Vowels wrote:
>>>> > > On Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 5:00:02 AM UTC+10, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>>> > >> On Mon, 03 May 2021 14:26:19 -0400
>>>> > >> Dan Espen <dan1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> > >>
>>>> > >>> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>>>> > >>>
>>>> > >>>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 08:29:22 -0400
>>>> > >>>> Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>>> > >>>>
>>>> > >>>>> Ideas range from scanning them and run some OCR software over
>>>> > >>>>> the scans, to one person (Christian C., liest Du hier mit? :-)
>>>> > >>>>> claiming to be able to read the cards just by looking at them.
>>>> > >>>> I used to be able to do that, more than forty years ago.
>>>> > >>> Any main-framer has a green card (it may not actually be green)
>>>> > >>> that shows the punch codes.
>>>> > >> Oh sure anyone can look it up, I meant from memory as a result of
>>>> > >> using the hand punch rather than wait for an 029.
>>>> > > . OK, what's +-6-8 ?
>>>> >
>>>> > There was a time I could have written a program to punch a deck of
>>>> > cards with every EBCDIC character and another program that would
>>>> > read the deck in binary (Burroughs had a way of doing that) and then
>>>> > print a table with all 256 characters and their corresponding punch
>>>> > codes but it's too late now.
>>>> >
>>>> > Louis
>>>>
>>>> WIWAL there weren't 256 characters defined! (fails to provide a link
>>>> to a pdf from Bitsavers of a yellow card)
>>>
>>> My Burroughs yellow card (B2000/B3000/B4000 Extended Binary Coded
>>> Decimal Interchange Code) show a valid hollerith encoding for each of
>>> the 256 character positions.
>>>
>>> e.g. 0x42 is 12-0-9-2
>>
>> Sure, the IBM card is the same way, you can punch any of the 256 values.
>> But IBM didn't assign characters to all the positions. A big mistake in
>> my opinion. To this day, when you ftp data from a mainframe with
>> ebcdic-ascii translation, you're going to lose some data because IBM
>> didn't assign characters to all the positions and didn't have the
>> imagination to pick arbitrary, unique values.
>
> The Burroughs and IBM EBCDIC mapping had some minor differences (mostly
> in the control characters, but some graphics as well (e.g. the not symbol)),
> so there isn't a universal EBCDIC <-> ASCII translation.

I know there's no universal translation but IMO there's no excuse for
FTP converting all the unknown characters to the same binary value
(nulls if I recall). It makes recovery on the receiving end impossible.

--
Dan Espen
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407986 is a reply to message #407969] Wed, 05 May 2021 14:07 Go to previous messageGo to next message
cb is currently offline  cb
Messages: 300
Registered: March 2012
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Senior Member
In article <20210505113116.334818ad8690dc1d50a211d8@127.0.0.1>,
Kerr-Mudd, John <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:

[ much snippage ]

> WIWAL there weren't 256 characters defined!
> (fails to provide a link to a pdf from Bitsavers of a yellow card)

Well, there's the ECMA-44 standard that does, in fact, describe how to
represent 256 characters on punched cards:

https://www.ecma-international.org/wp-content/uploads/ECMA-4 4_1st_edition_september_1975.pdf

// Christian
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407991 is a reply to message #407976] Wed, 05 May 2021 15:13 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel is currently offline  Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel
Messages: 3156
Registered: January 2012
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Senior Member
Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
> Sure, the IBM card is the same way, you can punch any of the 256
> values. But IBM didn't assign characters to all the positions. A big
> mistake in my opinion. To this day, when you ftp data from a
> mainframe with ebcdic-ascii translation, you're going to lose some
> data because IBM didn't assign characters to all the positions and
> didn't have the imagination to pick arbitrary, unique values.

trivia: CP67 as delivered to univ had terminal support for 1052 & 2741
.... including being able to automagically doing terminal type on each
line/port (by using terminal controller "SAD" CCW to switch terminal
type line scanner type for the line and seeing what data worked and what
didn't). Univ. had some number of TTY33s ... so I had to add ASCII TTY
support, translate tables between ASCII<->EBCDIC and also extended the
automagic terminal type identification to TTY.

I then wanted to extend automagic terminal type to dial-up ... being
able to have single dialup number for all terminals ... single "hunt
group" dial-in number
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_hunting

it almost worked ... except overlooked that IBM had taken short-cut in
the terminal controllers and while the terminal type line scanner could
be switched for every line, line speed was hard wired (tty line speed
different from 1052&2741). This was somewhat motivation for univ. to
start its own clone terminal controller project, build a channel
interface board for Interdata/3 programmed to emulate IBM terminal
controller ... with the addition it could do automagic terminal line
speed.

One of the first testing bugs was IBM channel had max. duration that
each controller could hold the channel (& memory bus). 360/67 had high
speed clock that updated storage location 80 every 13microseconds. If
clock went to update memory with timer tic and a previous timer tic
memory update was still pending, it would "red light" and the processor
stop. Channel interface board had to make sure it released the channel
interface (and memory bus) at least once every time tic interval.

The next was overlooked that IBM terminal controllers was doing
bit-reversed ascii ... leading bit went in the byte low order bit
position ... so every ascii character arriving in memory was bit
reversed pattern (and similarly on transmission) ... and IBM translate
tables had to handle the byte bit-reversed convention (note that IBM
"selectric" terminals didn't actually do EBCDIC ... they did tilt-rotate
code to select position on the selectric typeball, so had to do
EBCDIC<->tilt/rotate ... and account for the byte bit-reversed
convention).

I also had to somewhat arbritarily select mappings between EBCDIC
characters that weren't in ASCII ... especially for CMS line-editing
cent-sign. at-sign, "@" was "character-delete" , lower-case on far right
of keyboard; "line-delete" was cent-sign, upper case on the same key,
but no ascii equivalent. TTY had left&right bracket on same key at same
keyboard location ... so guess what I choose?

Interdata (later Perkin-Elmer) were selling the boxes as IBM clone
controller and four of us get written up as responsible for (some part
of) the IBM clone controller business.

When I was doing the TTY code ... I played some games with one byte
length values (even tho they were two byte fields). Later Van Vleck
https://www.multicians.org/thvv/
was supporting CP67/CMS system at the MIT Urban Systems lab (USL)
and he patched the max. ASCII line length to 1200(?), I think
for ascii plotter device done at Harvard ... which the one
byte stuff resulted in wrong length calculation which overran
the buffer and crashed CP/67 27times in single day.
https://www.multicians.org/thvv/360-67.html

trivia: IBM Science Center (& Multics/project mac) were in 545 tech sq,
USL was in tech square bldg on the opposite side of the quad ... and
Land's two story Polaroid bldg was on the street side between the two
bldgs (science center offices on the 4th flr overlooked Land's balcony
.... one day we watched Land taking pictures of a model with the
unannounced SX-70).

other trivia: IBM later would have had to have two different
EBCDIC<->ASCII translate tables ... one for terminals with bit-reversed
ASCII (terminal controller) convention and another for straight ASCII.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407992 is a reply to message #407983] Wed, 05 May 2021 15:15 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: J. Clarke

On 5 May 2021 17:05:45 GMT, Niklas Karlsson <nikke.karlsson@gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 2021-05-05, Kerr-Mudd, John <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>> On Wed, 05 May 2021 13:44:58 GMT
>> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:
>>>
>>> e.g. 0x42 is 12-0-9-2
>>
>> Sure, for data, but EBCDIC didn't allocate all the funny characters like MS did to 8bit ASCII.
>
> Wasn't 8-bit ASCII originally an IBMism, for the PC?

The significance of the upper characters was not standardized. The
original IBM PC printer was made by Epson--you could buy the same
hardware under the Epson brand for less. However people who did that
were often dismayed to find that what was on screen on the PC did not
print properly on the Epson-brand printer because of the different
upper character set.
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407993 is a reply to message #407983] Wed, 05 May 2021 15:30 Go to previous messageGo to next message
scott is currently offline  scott
Messages: 4237
Registered: February 2012
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Senior Member
Niklas Karlsson <nikke.karlsson@gmail.com> writes:
> On 2021-05-05, Kerr-Mudd, John <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>> On Wed, 05 May 2021 13:44:58 GMT
>> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:
>>>
>>> e.g. 0x42 is 12-0-9-2
>>
>> Sure, for data, but EBCDIC didn't allocate all the funny characters like MS did to 8bit ASCII.
>
> Wasn't 8-bit ASCII originally an IBMism, for the PC?

No, ANSI had an 8-bit ASCII spec in the mid 70's.
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407994 is a reply to message #407985] Wed, 05 May 2021 15:31 Go to previous messageGo to next message
scott is currently offline  scott
Messages: 4237
Registered: February 2012
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Senior Member
Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>
>> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>>> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>>>
>>>> "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> writes:
>>>> >On Tue, 4 May 2021 21:47:53 -0600
>>>> >Louis Krupp <lkrupp@invalid.pssw.com.invalid> wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> >> On 5/3/2021 8:56 PM, Robin Vowels wrote:
>>>> >> > On Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 5:00:02 AM UTC+10, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>>> >> >> On Mon, 03 May 2021 14:26:19 -0400
>>>> >> >> Dan Espen <dan1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> >> >>
>>>> >> >>> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>>>> >> >>>
>>>> >> >>>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 08:29:22 -0400
>>>> >> >>>> Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>>> >> >>>>
>>>> >> >>>>> Ideas range from scanning them and run some OCR software over
>>>> >> >>>>> the scans, to one person (Christian C., liest Du hier mit? :-)
>>>> >> >>>>> claiming to be able to read the cards just by looking at them.
>>>> >> >>>> I used to be able to do that, more than forty years ago.
>>>> >> >>> Any main-framer has a green card (it may not actually be green)
>>>> >> >>> that shows the punch codes.
>>>> >> >> Oh sure anyone can look it up, I meant from memory as a result of
>>>> >> >> using the hand punch rather than wait for an 029.
>>>> >> > . OK, what's +-6-8 ?
>>>> >>
>>>> >> There was a time I could have written a program to punch a deck of
>>>> >> cards with every EBCDIC character and another program that would
>>>> >> read the deck in binary (Burroughs had a way of doing that) and then
>>>> >> print a table with all 256 characters and their corresponding punch
>>>> >> codes but it's too late now.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Louis
>>>> >
>>>> >WIWAL there weren't 256 characters defined! (fails to provide a link
>>>> >to a pdf from Bitsavers of a yellow card)
>>>>
>>>> My Burroughs yellow card (B2000/B3000/B4000 Extended Binary Coded
>>>> Decimal Interchange Code) show a valid hollerith encoding for each of
>>>> the 256 character positions.
>>>>
>>>> e.g. 0x42 is 12-0-9-2
>>>
>>> Sure, the IBM card is the same way, you can punch any of the 256 values.
>>> But IBM didn't assign characters to all the positions. A big mistake in
>>> my opinion. To this day, when you ftp data from a mainframe with
>>> ebcdic-ascii translation, you're going to lose some data because IBM
>>> didn't assign characters to all the positions and didn't have the
>>> imagination to pick arbitrary, unique values.
>>
>> The Burroughs and IBM EBCDIC mapping had some minor differences (mostly
>> in the control characters, but some graphics as well (e.g. the not symbol)),
>> so there isn't a universal EBCDIC <-> ASCII translation.
>
> I know there's no universal translation but IMO there's no excuse for
> FTP converting all the unknown characters to the same binary value
> (nulls if I recall). It makes recovery on the receiving end impossible.

That would have been an implementation choice by whoever developed
the Z/OS FTP utilities.
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407995 is a reply to message #407992] Wed, 05 May 2021 16:04 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ahem A Rivet's Shot is currently offline  Ahem A Rivet's Shot
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On Wed, 05 May 2021 15:15:40 -0400
J. Clarke <jclarke.873638@gmail.com> wrote:

> The significance of the upper characters was not standardized.

Oh it was, just in a great many ways -IBM CP-nnn, Microsoft
Win-nnnn, ISO8859-* and probably a few more.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays
C:\>WIN | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see
You lose and Bill collects. | http://www.sohara.org/
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407996 is a reply to message #407982] Wed, 05 May 2021 16:34 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Charlie Gibbs is currently offline  Charlie Gibbs
Messages: 5313
Registered: January 2012
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On 2021-05-05, Niklas Karlsson <nikke.karlsson@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 2021-05-05, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 2021-05-05, Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Sure, the IBM card is the same way, you can punch any of the 256 values.
>>> But IBM didn't assign characters to all the positions. A big mistake in
>>> my opinion. To this day, when you ftp data from a mainframe with
>>> ebcdic-ascii translation, you're going to lose some data because IBM
>>> didn't assign characters to all the positions and didn't have the
>>> imagination to pick arbitrary, unique values.
>>
>> Even worse, some defined characters (e.g. vertical bar and exclamation
>> mark) suffered what could only be described as entropy.
>
> Explain?

Hex 5A was the original exclamation mark in EBCDIC. Some of the
later Univac printers I worked with started mixing it up with the
vertical bar (hex 4F). There were probably other irregulatiries,
but that one was the worst.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | They don't understand Microsoft
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | has stolen their car and parked
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | a taxi in their driveway.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Mayayana
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407998 is a reply to message #407995] Wed, 05 May 2021 17:21 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Charlie Gibbs is currently offline  Charlie Gibbs
Messages: 5313
Registered: January 2012
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Senior Member
On 2021-05-05, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

> On Wed, 05 May 2021 15:15:40 -0400
> J. Clarke <jclarke.873638@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The significance of the upper characters was not standardized.
>
> Oh it was, just in a great many ways -IBM CP-nnn, Microsoft
> Win-nnnn, ISO8859-* and probably a few more.

"The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to
choose from." -- various

But getting back to cards, the correspondence between holes
and bits in a byte was fortunately pretty well standardized.
At least for EBCDIC gear.

The Univac 9300, although an EBCDIC machine, used its own internal
mapping between holes and bits - EBCDIC has enough irregularities
that it would have taken too much expensive electronics to do the
translation. So Univac came up with "compressed code",
which worked like this:

Row
xxxx xxxx
|||| |||`-- 12
|||| ||`--- 11
|||| |`---- 0
|||| `----- 8
|```------- 1-7
`---------- 9

Punches in rows 1 through 7 correspond to the following bits:

Row Bits
1 011
2 101
3 001
4 010
5 100
6 111
7 110

(Don't ask me why it's not straight binary - maybe someone
figured that this would give a better distribution of holes.)

If there was more than one punch in rows 1 through 7, the
resulting patterns were ORed together. (Univac left out
validity checking, again to save hardware.)

It was standard to link the supplied translation tables with
your program to convert between EBCDIC and compressed code.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | They don't understand Microsoft
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | has stolen their car and parked
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | a taxi in their driveway.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Mayayana
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #407999 is a reply to message #407996] Wed, 05 May 2021 17:23 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Charlie Gibbs is currently offline  Charlie Gibbs
Messages: 5313
Registered: January 2012
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Senior Member
On 2021-05-05, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:

> Hex 5A was the original exclamation mark in EBCDIC. Some of the
> later Univac printers I worked with started mixing it up with the
> vertical bar (hex 4F). There were probably other irregulatiries,
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> but that one was the worst.

Not to mention irregular spelling. :-)

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | They don't understand Microsoft
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | has stolen their car and parked
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | a taxi in their driveway.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Mayayana
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #408000 is a reply to message #407980] Wed, 05 May 2021 18:46 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Peter Flass is currently offline  Peter Flass
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Senior Member
Scott Lurndal <scott@slp53.sl.home> wrote:
> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>>
>>> "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> writes:
>>>> On Tue, 4 May 2021 21:47:53 -0600
>>>> Louis Krupp <lkrupp@invalid.pssw.com.invalid> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > On 5/3/2021 8:56 PM, Robin Vowels wrote:
>>>> >> On Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 5:00:02 AM UTC+10, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>>> >>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 14:26:19 -0400
>>>> >>> Dan Espen <dan1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>>> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>>>> >>>>
>>>> >>>>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 08:29:22 -0400
>>>> >>>>> Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>>> >>>>>
>>>> >>>>>> Ideas range from scanning them and run some OCR software over
>>>> >>>>>> the scans, to one person (Christian C., liest Du hier mit? :-)
>>>> >>>>>> claiming to be able to read the cards just by looking at them.
>>>> >>>>> I used to be able to do that, more than forty years ago.
>>>> >>>> Any main-framer has a green card (it may not actually be green)
>>>> >>>> that shows the punch codes.
>>>> >>> Oh sure anyone can look it up, I meant from memory as a result of
>>>> >>> using the hand punch rather than wait for an 029.
>>>> >> . OK, what's +-6-8 ?
>>>> >
>>>> > There was a time I could have written a program to punch a deck of
>>>> > cards with every EBCDIC character and another program that would
>>>> > read the deck in binary (Burroughs had a way of doing that) and then
>>>> > print a table with all 256 characters and their corresponding punch
>>>> > codes but it's too late now.
>>>> >
>>>> > Louis
>>>>
>>>> WIWAL there weren't 256 characters defined! (fails to provide a link
>>>> to a pdf from Bitsavers of a yellow card)
>>>
>>> My Burroughs yellow card (B2000/B3000/B4000 Extended Binary Coded
>>> Decimal Interchange Code) show a valid hollerith encoding for each of
>>> the 256 character positions.
>>>
>>> e.g. 0x42 is 12-0-9-2
>>
>> Sure, the IBM card is the same way, you can punch any of the 256 values.
>> But IBM didn't assign characters to all the positions. A big mistake in
>> my opinion. To this day, when you ftp data from a mainframe with
>> ebcdic-ascii translation, you're going to lose some data because IBM
>> didn't assign characters to all the positions and didn't have the
>> imagination to pick arbitrary, unique values.
>
> The Burroughs and IBM EBCDIC mapping had some minor differences (mostly
> in the control characters, but some graphics as well (e.g. the not symbol)),
> so there isn't a universal EBCDIC <-> ASCII translation.
>

Plus all the national variants of EBCDIC. when I was writing code to
transfer data I used EBCDIC codepage 1040 and ASCII 8859 IIRC), which have
a one-one mapping.

--
Pete
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #408001 is a reply to message #407991] Wed, 05 May 2021 18:46 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Peter Flass is currently offline  Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
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Senior Member
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> wrote:
> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>
> The next was overlooked that IBM terminal controllers was doing
> bit-reversed ascii ... leading bit went in the byte low order bit
> position ... so every ascii character arriving in memory was bit
> reversed pattern (and similarly on transmission) ... and IBM translate
> tables had to handle the byte bit-reversed convention (note that IBM
> "selectric" terminals didn't actually do EBCDIC ... they did tilt-rotate
> code to select position on the selectric typeball, so had to do
> EBCDIC<->tilt/rotate ... and account for the byte bit-reversed
> convention).

This brings back unpleasant memories. For some reason I was working with
TTY support in CICS and spent a lot of time trying to wrap,my mind around
what was going on. At this remove I’ve forgotten what I was trying to do,
but CICS support for TTYs was poor to nonexistent.

>

--
Pete
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #408008 is a reply to message #407994] Wed, 05 May 2021 22:42 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Dan Espen is currently offline  Dan Espen
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scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:

> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>>
>>> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>>>> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>>>>
>>>> > "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> writes:
>>>> >>On Tue, 4 May 2021 21:47:53 -0600
>>>> >>Louis Krupp <lkrupp@invalid.pssw.com.invalid> wrote:
>>>> >>
>>>> >>> On 5/3/2021 8:56 PM, Robin Vowels wrote:
>>>> >>> > On Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 5:00:02 AM UTC+10, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>>> >>> >> On Mon, 03 May 2021 14:26:19 -0400
>>>> >>> >> Dan Espen <dan1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> >>> >>
>>>> >>> >>> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>>>> >>> >>>
>>>> >>> >>>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 08:29:22 -0400
>>>> >>> >>>> Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>>> >>> >>>>
>>>> >>> >>>>> Ideas range from scanning them and run some OCR software over
>>>> >>> >>>>> the scans, to one person (Christian C., liest Du hier mit? :-)
>>>> >>> >>>>> claiming to be able to read the cards just by looking at them.
>>>> >>> >>>> I used to be able to do that, more than forty years ago.
>>>> >>> >>> Any main-framer has a green card (it may not actually be green)
>>>> >>> >>> that shows the punch codes.
>>>> >>> >> Oh sure anyone can look it up, I meant from memory as a result of
>>>> >>> >> using the hand punch rather than wait for an 029.
>>>> >>> > . OK, what's +-6-8 ?
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>> There was a time I could have written a program to punch a deck of
>>>> >>> cards with every EBCDIC character and another program that would
>>>> >>> read the deck in binary (Burroughs had a way of doing that) and then
>>>> >>> print a table with all 256 characters and their corresponding punch
>>>> >>> codes but it's too late now.
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>> Louis
>>>> >>
>>>> >>WIWAL there weren't 256 characters defined! (fails to provide a link
>>>> >>to a pdf from Bitsavers of a yellow card)
>>>> >
>>>> > My Burroughs yellow card (B2000/B3000/B4000 Extended Binary Coded
>>>> > Decimal Interchange Code) show a valid hollerith encoding for each of
>>>> > the 256 character positions.
>>>> >
>>>> > e.g. 0x42 is 12-0-9-2
>>>>
>>>> Sure, the IBM card is the same way, you can punch any of the 256 values.
>>>> But IBM didn't assign characters to all the positions. A big mistake in
>>>> my opinion. To this day, when you ftp data from a mainframe with
>>>> ebcdic-ascii translation, you're going to lose some data because IBM
>>>> didn't assign characters to all the positions and didn't have the
>>>> imagination to pick arbitrary, unique values.
>>>
>>> The Burroughs and IBM EBCDIC mapping had some minor differences (mostly
>>> in the control characters, but some graphics as well (e.g. the not symbol)),
>>> so there isn't a universal EBCDIC <-> ASCII translation.
>>
>> I know there's no universal translation but IMO there's no excuse for
>> FTP converting all the unknown characters to the same binary value
>> (nulls if I recall). It makes recovery on the receiving end impossible.
>
> That would have been an implementation choice by whoever developed
> the Z/OS FTP utilities.

That's the point. They had a choice to make and they made a bad one.
They probably had a meeting. The worst decisions come out of meetings.

--
Dan Espen
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #408014 is a reply to message #407896] Thu, 06 May 2021 03:26 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Quadibloc is currently offline  Quadibloc
Messages: 4399
Registered: June 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Monday, May 3, 2021 at 8:11:47 AM UTC-6, Dan Espen wrote:

> I may not know asterisk, period, etc. from memory but numbers and
> letters are no problem.

It's true that &, -, and the digits... and / and the letters... are the
easiest.

I don't know the punctuation marks by heart either, but when you
mentioned the *period* and the *asterisk*, I realized that _those_
would be the easiest to remember of the punctuation marks, since
they're in the top row... I believe . is 12-8-3 and * is 11-8-3, with the
comma being 0-8-3.

12-8-2 would be the cent sign, and 11-8-2 the exclamation mark.

John Savard
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #408015 is a reply to message #408014] Thu, 06 May 2021 03:30 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Quadibloc is currently offline  Quadibloc
Messages: 4399
Registered: June 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Thursday, May 6, 2021 at 1:26:52 AM UTC-6, Quadibloc wrote:
> On Monday, May 3, 2021 at 8:11:47 AM UTC-6, Dan Espen wrote:
>
>> I may not know asterisk, period, etc. from memory but numbers and
>> letters are no problem.
>
> It's true that &, -, and the digits... and / and the letters... are the
> easiest.
>
> I don't know the punctuation marks by heart either, but when you
> mentioned the *period* and the *asterisk*, I realized that _those_
> would be the easiest to remember of the punctuation marks, since
> they're in the top row... I believe . is 12-8-3 and * is 11-8-3, with the
> comma being 0-8-3.
>
> 12-8-2 would be the cent sign, and 11-8-2 the exclamation mark.

I went and looked it up; my memory was good, but not perfect.

11-8-3 is actually $, with 11-8-4 being the asterisk.

Of course, in other versions of the punched card code, 12 by
itself is + instead of &, and 12-8-2 (or 12-0) is ? instead of the
cent sign.

John Savard
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #408018 is a reply to message #407993] Thu, 06 May 2021 07:40 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Niklas Karlsson is currently offline  Niklas Karlsson
Messages: 265
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 2021-05-05, Scott Lurndal <scott@slp53.sl.home> wrote:
> Niklas Karlsson <nikke.karlsson@gmail.com> writes:
>> On 2021-05-05, Kerr-Mudd, John <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>>>
>>> Sure, for data, but EBCDIC didn't allocate all the funny characters like MS did to 8bit ASCII.
>>
>> Wasn't 8-bit ASCII originally an IBMism, for the PC?
>
> No, ANSI had an 8-bit ASCII spec in the mid 70's.

Okay. Was that the same as used by the IBM PC? I remember it handling
funny letters like our åäö, well before standards like ISO 8859-1, let
alone Unicode.

Niklas
--
All isotopes of Pentium are intrinsically rather unstable: doomed
by their short half-lives to one day decay, emit two Bogons, and
revert to the vastly more-inert '286' ground-state.
-- Tanuki in asr
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #408027 is a reply to message #408008] Thu, 06 May 2021 16:43 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Peter Flass is currently offline  Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>
>> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>>> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>>>
>>>> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>>>> > scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>>>> >
>>>> >> "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> writes:
>>>> >>> On Tue, 4 May 2021 21:47:53 -0600
>>>> >>> Louis Krupp <lkrupp@invalid.pssw.com.invalid> wrote:
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>>> On 5/3/2021 8:56 PM, Robin Vowels wrote:
>>>> >>>>> On Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 5:00:02 AM UTC+10, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>>> >>>>>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 14:26:19 -0400
>>>> >>>>>> Dan Espen <dan1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> >>>>>>
>>>> >>>>>>> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>>>> >>>>>>>
>>>> >>>>>>>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 08:29:22 -0400
>>>> >>>>>>>> Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>>> >>>>>>>>
>>>> >>>>>>>>> Ideas range from scanning them and run some OCR software over
>>>> >>>>>>>>> the scans, to one person (Christian C., liest Du hier mit? :-)
>>>> >>>>>>>>> claiming to be able to read the cards just by looking at them.
>>>> >>>>>>>> I used to be able to do that, more than forty years ago.
>>>> >>>>>>> Any main-framer has a green card (it may not actually be green)
>>>> >>>>>>> that shows the punch codes.
>>>> >>>>>> Oh sure anyone can look it up, I meant from memory as a result of
>>>> >>>>>> using the hand punch rather than wait for an 029.
>>>> >>>>> . OK, what's +-6-8 ?
>>>> >>>>
>>>> >>>> There was a time I could have written a program to punch a deck of
>>>> >>>> cards with every EBCDIC character and another program that would
>>>> >>>> read the deck in binary (Burroughs had a way of doing that) and then
>>>> >>>> print a table with all 256 characters and their corresponding punch
>>>> >>>> codes but it's too late now.
>>>> >>>>
>>>> >>>> Louis
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>> WIWAL there weren't 256 characters defined! (fails to provide a link
>>>> >>> to a pdf from Bitsavers of a yellow card)
>>>> >>
>>>> >> My Burroughs yellow card (B2000/B3000/B4000 Extended Binary Coded
>>>> >> Decimal Interchange Code) show a valid hollerith encoding for each of
>>>> >> the 256 character positions.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> e.g. 0x42 is 12-0-9-2
>>>> >
>>>> > Sure, the IBM card is the same way, you can punch any of the 256 values.
>>>> > But IBM didn't assign characters to all the positions. A big mistake in
>>>> > my opinion. To this day, when you ftp data from a mainframe with
>>>> > ebcdic-ascii translation, you're going to lose some data because IBM
>>>> > didn't assign characters to all the positions and didn't have the
>>>> > imagination to pick arbitrary, unique values.
>>>>
>>>> The Burroughs and IBM EBCDIC mapping had some minor differences (mostly
>>>> in the control characters, but some graphics as well (e.g. the not symbol)),
>>>> so there isn't a universal EBCDIC <-> ASCII translation.
>>>
>>> I know there's no universal translation but IMO there's no excuse for
>>> FTP converting all the unknown characters to the same binary value
>>> (nulls if I recall). It makes recovery on the receiving end impossible.
>>
>> That would have been an implementation choice by whoever developed
>> the Z/OS FTP utilities.
>
> That's the point. They had a choice to make and they made a bad one.
> They probably had a meeting. The worst decisions come out of meetings.
>

From a brief glance at the doc, i think you nan specify the codepage used
to do the transfer.

--
Pete
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #408029 is a reply to message #407993] Thu, 06 May 2021 17:20 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: lawrenabae

scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:

> Niklas Karlsson <nikke.karlsson@gmail.com> writes:
>> On 2021-05-05, Kerr-Mudd, John <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>>> On Wed, 05 May 2021 13:44:58 GMT
>>> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:
>>>>
>>>> e.g. 0x42 is 12-0-9-2
>>>
>>> Sure, for data, but EBCDIC didn't allocate all the funny characters
>>> like MS did to 8bit ASCII.
>>
>> Wasn't 8-bit ASCII originally an IBMism, for the PC?
>
> No, ANSI had an 8-bit ASCII spec in the mid 70's.

I am skeptical of an uncited reference to an 8-bit extension to ASCII.

All of the pre-IBM-PC microcomputer vendors had their own idea of "what
to do with high-bit-set characters" with literally zero comatibility.

Many national standards bodies came up with things to do with
code-points 128-255, extending ASCII to support other languages.

Some DEC terminals came with an extended character set, whose name I
suddenly can't remember, whose code-points mostly became (via a couple
of intermediate standards bodies) ISO-8859-1.

For all the bitching and moaning and foot-dragging, given that TWIAVBP,
eight-bits are simply nowhere near enough for human languages. That UTF-8
magically squeezes Unicode's 21-bit characters into an octet-stream that
for a huge volume of text is indistinguishable from ASCII is a Very
Clever and Needful Hack.

echo 'lawrenabae@abaluon.abaom' | sed s/aba/c/g
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #408030 is a reply to message #408029] Thu, 06 May 2021 17:56 Go to previous messageGo to next message
scott is currently offline  scott
Messages: 4237
Registered: February 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
lawrenabae@abaluon.abaom (Lawrence Statton (NK1G)) writes:
> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>
>> Niklas Karlsson <nikke.karlsson@gmail.com> writes:
>>> On 2021-05-05, Kerr-Mudd, John <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>>>> On Wed, 05 May 2021 13:44:58 GMT
>>>> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > e.g. 0x42 is 12-0-9-2
>>>>
>>>> Sure, for data, but EBCDIC didn't allocate all the funny characters
>>>> like MS did to 8bit ASCII.
>>>
>>> Wasn't 8-bit ASCII originally an IBMism, for the PC?
>>
>> No, ANSI had an 8-bit ASCII spec in the mid 70's.
>
> I am skeptical of an uncited reference to an 8-bit extension to ASCII.

Well, I have the paper standard out in the storage unit. I'll try to
locate it this weekend.
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #408031 is a reply to message #408027] Thu, 06 May 2021 18:07 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Dan Espen is currently offline  Dan Espen
Messages: 3867
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:

> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
>> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>>
>>> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>>>> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>>>>
>>>> > Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>>>> >> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>>>> >>
>>>> >>> "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> writes:
>>>> >>>> On Tue, 4 May 2021 21:47:53 -0600
>>>> >>>> Louis Krupp <lkrupp@invalid.pssw.com.invalid> wrote:
>>>> >>>>
>>>> >>>>> On 5/3/2021 8:56 PM, Robin Vowels wrote:
>>>> >>>>>> On Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 5:00:02 AM UTC+10, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>>> >>>>>>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 14:26:19 -0400
>>>> >>>>>>> Dan Espen <dan1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> >>>>>>>
>>>> >>>>>>>> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>>>> >>>>>>>>
>>>> >>>>>>>>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 08:29:22 -0400
>>>> >>>>>>>>> Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>>> >>>>>>>>>
>>>> >>>>>>>>>> Ideas range from scanning them and run some OCR software over
>>>> >>>>>>>>>> the scans, to one person (Christian C., liest Du hier mit? :-)
>>>> >>>>>>>>>> claiming to be able to read the cards just by looking at them.
>>>> >>>>>>>>> I used to be able to do that, more than forty years ago.
>>>> >>>>>>>> Any main-framer has a green card (it may not actually be green)
>>>> >>>>>>>> that shows the punch codes.
>>>> >>>>>>> Oh sure anyone can look it up, I meant from memory as a result of
>>>> >>>>>>> using the hand punch rather than wait for an 029.
>>>> >>>>>> . OK, what's +-6-8 ?
>>>> >>>>>
>>>> >>>>> There was a time I could have written a program to punch a deck of
>>>> >>>>> cards with every EBCDIC character and another program that would
>>>> >>>>> read the deck in binary (Burroughs had a way of doing that) and then
>>>> >>>>> print a table with all 256 characters and their corresponding punch
>>>> >>>>> codes but it's too late now.
>>>> >>>>>
>>>> >>>>> Louis
>>>> >>>>
>>>> >>>> WIWAL there weren't 256 characters defined! (fails to provide a link
>>>> >>>> to a pdf from Bitsavers of a yellow card)
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>> My Burroughs yellow card (B2000/B3000/B4000 Extended Binary Coded
>>>> >>> Decimal Interchange Code) show a valid hollerith encoding for each of
>>>> >>> the 256 character positions.
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>> e.g. 0x42 is 12-0-9-2
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Sure, the IBM card is the same way, you can punch any of the 256 values.
>>>> >> But IBM didn't assign characters to all the positions. A big mistake in
>>>> >> my opinion. To this day, when you ftp data from a mainframe with
>>>> >> ebcdic-ascii translation, you're going to lose some data because IBM
>>>> >> didn't assign characters to all the positions and didn't have the
>>>> >> imagination to pick arbitrary, unique values.
>>>> >
>>>> > The Burroughs and IBM EBCDIC mapping had some minor differences (mostly
>>>> > in the control characters, but some graphics as well (e.g. the not symbol)),
>>>> > so there isn't a universal EBCDIC <-> ASCII translation.
>>>>
>>>> I know there's no universal translation but IMO there's no excuse for
>>>> FTP converting all the unknown characters to the same binary value
>>>> (nulls if I recall). It makes recovery on the receiving end impossible.
>>>
>>> That would have been an implementation choice by whoever developed
>>> the Z/OS FTP utilities.
>>
>> That's the point. They had a choice to make and they made a bad one.
>> They probably had a meeting. The worst decisions come out of meetings.
>
> From a brief glance at the doc, i think you nan specify the codepage used
> to do the transfer.

Yes, by specifying the code page, you get different translations.
I couldn't find any code page that preserved all the
characters I cared about. What bugged me is that all the code pages
would convert characters with no corresponding character to a null.
All IBM had to go is translate all the "unknown" characters to unique
values and then a user could fix them as desired.

--
Dan Espen
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #408035 is a reply to message #408029] Thu, 06 May 2021 21:26 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: dave somename

On Thursday, May 6, 2021 at 5:20:13 PM UTC-4, Lawrence Statton (NK1G) wrote:

> Some DEC terminals came with an extended character set, whose name I
> suddenly can't remember, whose code-points mostly became (via a couple
> of intermediate standards bodies) ISO-8859-1.

DEC standard 169.
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #408050 is a reply to message #408031] Fri, 07 May 2021 13:24 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Peter Flass is currently offline  Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
> Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>>>
>>>> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>>>> > scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>>>> >
>>>> >> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>>>> >>> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>>> "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> writes:
>>>> >>>>> On Tue, 4 May 2021 21:47:53 -0600
>>>> >>>>> Louis Krupp <lkrupp@invalid.pssw.com.invalid> wrote:
>>>> >>>>>
>>>> >>>>>> On 5/3/2021 8:56 PM, Robin Vowels wrote:
>>>> >>>>>>> On Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 5:00:02 AM UTC+10, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>>> >>>>>>>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 14:26:19 -0400
>>>> >>>>>>>> Dan Espen <dan1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> >>>>>>>>
>>>> >>>>>>>>> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>>>> >>>>>>>>>
>>>> >>>>>>>>>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 08:29:22 -0400
>>>> >>>>>>>>>> Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>>> >>>>>>>>>>
>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> Ideas range from scanning them and run some OCR software over
>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> the scans, to one person (Christian C., liest Du hier mit? :-)
>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> claiming to be able to read the cards just by looking at them.
>>>> >>>>>>>>>> I used to be able to do that, more than forty years ago.
>>>> >>>>>>>>> Any main-framer has a green card (it may not actually be green)
>>>> >>>>>>>>> that shows the punch codes.
>>>> >>>>>>>> Oh sure anyone can look it up, I meant from memory as a result of
>>>> >>>>>>>> using the hand punch rather than wait for an 029.
>>>> >>>>>>> . OK, what's +-6-8 ?
>>>> >>>>>>
>>>> >>>>>> There was a time I could have written a program to punch a deck of
>>>> >>>>>> cards with every EBCDIC character and another program that would
>>>> >>>>>> read the deck in binary (Burroughs had a way of doing that) and then
>>>> >>>>>> print a table with all 256 characters and their corresponding punch
>>>> >>>>>> codes but it's too late now.
>>>> >>>>>>
>>>> >>>>>> Louis
>>>> >>>>>
>>>> >>>>> WIWAL there weren't 256 characters defined! (fails to provide a link
>>>> >>>>> to a pdf from Bitsavers of a yellow card)
>>>> >>>>
>>>> >>>> My Burroughs yellow card (B2000/B3000/B4000 Extended Binary Coded
>>>> >>>> Decimal Interchange Code) show a valid hollerith encoding for each of
>>>> >>>> the 256 character positions.
>>>> >>>>
>>>> >>>> e.g. 0x42 is 12-0-9-2
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>> Sure, the IBM card is the same way, you can punch any of the 256 values.
>>>> >>> But IBM didn't assign characters to all the positions. A big mistake in
>>>> >>> my opinion. To this day, when you ftp data from a mainframe with
>>>> >>> ebcdic-ascii translation, you're going to lose some data because IBM
>>>> >>> didn't assign characters to all the positions and didn't have the
>>>> >>> imagination to pick arbitrary, unique values.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> The Burroughs and IBM EBCDIC mapping had some minor differences (mostly
>>>> >> in the control characters, but some graphics as well (e.g. the not symbol)),
>>>> >> so there isn't a universal EBCDIC <-> ASCII translation.
>>>> >
>>>> > I know there's no universal translation but IMO there's no excuse for
>>>> > FTP converting all the unknown characters to the same binary value
>>>> > (nulls if I recall). It makes recovery on the receiving end impossible.
>>>>
>>>> That would have been an implementation choice by whoever developed
>>>> the Z/OS FTP utilities.
>>>
>>> That's the point. They had a choice to make and they made a bad one.
>>> They probably had a meeting. The worst decisions come out of meetings.
>>
>> From a brief glance at the doc, i think you nan specify the codepage used
>> to do the transfer.
>
> Yes, by specifying the code page, you get different translations.
> I couldn't find any code page that preserved all the
> characters I cared about. What bugged me is that all the code pages
> would convert characters with no corresponding character to a null.
> All IBM had to go is translate all the "unknown" characters to unique
> values and then a user could fix them as desired.
>

I couldn’t figure out whether you could use other than the IBM-supplied
code pages.

--
Pete
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #408051 is a reply to message #408050] Fri, 07 May 2021 14:11 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Dan Espen is currently offline  Dan Espen
Messages: 3867
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:

> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
>>
>>> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>>>>
>>>> > Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>>>> >> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>>>> >>
>>>> >>> Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
>>>> >>>> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>>>> >>>>
>>>> >>>>> "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> writes:
>>>> >>>>>> On Tue, 4 May 2021 21:47:53 -0600
>>>> >>>>>> Louis Krupp <lkrupp@invalid.pssw.com.invalid> wrote:
>>>> >>>>>>
>>>> >>>>>>> On 5/3/2021 8:56 PM, Robin Vowels wrote:
>>>> >>>>>>>> On Tuesday, May 4, 2021 at 5:00:02 AM UTC+10, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>>> >>>>>>>>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 14:26:19 -0400
>>>> >>>>>>>>> Dan Espen <dan1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> >>>>>>>>>
>>>> >>>>>>>>>> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <ste...@eircom.net> writes:
>>>> >>>>>>>>>>
>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> On Mon, 03 May 2021 08:29:22 -0400
>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>
>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>> Ideas range from scanning them and run some OCR software over
>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>> the scans, to one person (Christian C., liest Du hier mit? :-)
>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>> claiming to be able to read the cards just by looking at them.
>>>> >>>>>>>>>>> I used to be able to do that, more than forty years ago.
>>>> >>>>>>>>>> Any main-framer has a green card (it may not actually be green)
>>>> >>>>>>>>>> that shows the punch codes.
>>>> >>>>>>>>> Oh sure anyone can look it up, I meant from memory as a result of
>>>> >>>>>>>>> using the hand punch rather than wait for an 029.
>>>> >>>>>>>> . OK, what's +-6-8 ?
>>>> >>>>>>>
>>>> >>>>>>> There was a time I could have written a program to punch a deck of
>>>> >>>>>>> cards with every EBCDIC character and another program that would
>>>> >>>>>>> read the deck in binary (Burroughs had a way of doing that) and then
>>>> >>>>>>> print a table with all 256 characters and their corresponding punch
>>>> >>>>>>> codes but it's too late now.
>>>> >>>>>>>
>>>> >>>>>>> Louis
>>>> >>>>>>
>>>> >>>>>> WIWAL there weren't 256 characters defined! (fails to provide a link
>>>> >>>>>> to a pdf from Bitsavers of a yellow card)
>>>> >>>>>
>>>> >>>>> My Burroughs yellow card (B2000/B3000/B4000 Extended Binary Coded
>>>> >>>>> Decimal Interchange Code) show a valid hollerith encoding for each of
>>>> >>>>> the 256 character positions.
>>>> >>>>>
>>>> >>>>> e.g. 0x42 is 12-0-9-2
>>>> >>>>
>>>> >>>> Sure, the IBM card is the same way, you can punch any of the 256 values.
>>>> >>>> But IBM didn't assign characters to all the positions. A big mistake in
>>>> >>>> my opinion. To this day, when you ftp data from a mainframe with
>>>> >>>> ebcdic-ascii translation, you're going to lose some data because IBM
>>>> >>>> didn't assign characters to all the positions and didn't have the
>>>> >>>> imagination to pick arbitrary, unique values.
>>>> >>>
>>>> >>> The Burroughs and IBM EBCDIC mapping had some minor differences (mostly
>>>> >>> in the control characters, but some graphics as well (e.g. the not symbol)),
>>>> >>> so there isn't a universal EBCDIC <-> ASCII translation.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> I know there's no universal translation but IMO there's no excuse for
>>>> >> FTP converting all the unknown characters to the same binary value
>>>> >> (nulls if I recall). It makes recovery on the receiving end impossible.
>>>> >
>>>> > That would have been an implementation choice by whoever developed
>>>> > the Z/OS FTP utilities.
>>>>
>>>> That's the point. They had a choice to make and they made a bad one.
>>>> They probably had a meeting. The worst decisions come out of meetings.
>>>
>>> From a brief glance at the doc, i think you nan specify the codepage used
>>> to do the transfer.
>>
>> Yes, by specifying the code page, you get different translations.
>> I couldn't find any code page that preserved all the
>> characters I cared about. What bugged me is that all the code pages
>> would convert characters with no corresponding character to a null.
>> All IBM had to go is translate all the "unknown" characters to unique
>> values and then a user could fix them as desired.
>
> I couldn’t figure out whether you could use other than the IBM-supplied
> code pages.

I don't exactly remember how I solved the problem.
My first thought was to create my own translate table.
I don't think that was allowed.

Okay now I remember, I had a bunch of panels with binary codes in them
because I ran out of plain characters for field delimiters. So in panels
you can declare the delimiter as 01 in the type line but then you put a
hex 01 in the panel definition. I had to change all the panels to use
things that weren't destroyed by FTP.

--
Dan Espen
Re: Blank 80-column punch cards up for grabs [message #408075 is a reply to message #408018] Sat, 08 May 2021 19:00 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
Quadibloc is currently offline  Quadibloc
Messages: 4399
Registered: June 2012
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Senior Member
On Thursday, May 6, 2021 at 5:40:05 AM UTC-6, Niklas Karlsson wrote:
> On 2021-05-05, Scott Lurndal <sc...@slp53.sl.home> wrote:
>> Niklas Karlsson <nikke.k...@gmail.com> writes:

>>> Wasn't 8-bit ASCII originally an IBMism, for the PC?

>> No, ANSI had an 8-bit ASCII spec in the mid 70's.

> Okay. Was that the same as used by the IBM PC? I remember it handling
> funny letters like our åäö, well before standards like ISO 8859-1, let
> alone Unicode.

What I remember is that the Commodore Amiga, when it came out,
used a preliminary version of ISO 8859-1, where the multiplication and
division signs weren't yet defined.

This, of course, is after the 1984 Macintosh, let alone the 1981 IBM PC.
And ISO 8859-1 is the first standardized 8-bit code that can deservedly
be called "8-bit ASCII".

However, the IBM PC - and, indeed, lots of other computers - defined
extra graphics characters to turn ASCII into an 8-bit code. Also,
the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories defined an 8-bit version of
ASCII for their terminals; there was even an article about it in Datamation..

Perhaps even more relevant, there was a Japanese standard which
defined 64 additional characters for an 8-bit version of ASCII so as to
allow the use of Japanese kana characters on computer systems.
Before ISO 8859-1, that's the only 8-bit 'ASCII that I know of that could
really have been called a standard.

The IBM PC's original 8-bit extended ASCII was IBM's own invention.

John Savard
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