$ type deck2.com
$ python /sys$input
$ deck
import sys

sys.stdout.writelines(sys.stdin.readlines()) sys.stdout.writelines(sys.stdin.readlines())
$ eod
$ deck
A
B
$ eod
$ deck
C
D
$ eod
$ exit
$ @deck2
A
B
C
D

Arne

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 6/16/2025 9:28 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Mon, 16 Jun 2025 15:15:39 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

sys.stdout.writelines(sys.stdin.readlines())
sys.stdout.writelines(sys.stdin.readlines())

Some interesting semantics going on there. How do you continue reading
after encountering EOF? How does it reset the EOF condition to let you get the second lot of data?

Normally, once an open file gets to EOF, it stays in that state until fseek(2) (or equivalent) is called.

You put 3 decks of punched cards in the card reader.

One with the python program and two with data.

When it hit EOF on the first data deck then readlines()
stop, but the next readlines() start on the next data deck.

I did not know that it would work. But I tried and
it did work.

Arne

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 6/16/2025 9:39 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

On 6/16/2025 9:28 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Mon, 16 Jun 2025 15:15:39 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

sys.stdout.writelines(sys.stdin.readlines())
sys.stdout.writelines(sys.stdin.readlines())

Some interesting semantics going on there. How do you continue reading
after encountering EOF? How does it reset the EOF condition to let you
get
the second lot of data?

Normally, once an open file gets to EOF, it stays in that state until
fseek(2) (or equivalent) is called.

You put 3 decks of punched cards in the card reader.

One with the python program and two with data.

When it hit EOF on the first data deck then readlines()
stop, but the next readlines() start on the next data deck.

I did not know that it would work. But I tried and
it did work.

It is not really Python specific. Just a fun mix of new and old.

$ type deck3.com
$ cc/obj=z sys$input
#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
char line[100];
while(gets(line)) puts(line);
while(gets(line)) puts(line);
return 0;
}
$
$ link z
$ run z
$ deck
A
B
$ eod
$ deck
C
D
$ eod
$ exit
$ @deck3
A
B
C
D

Arne

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Mon, 16 Jun 2025 15:15:39 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

sys.stdout.writelines(sys.stdin.readlines()) sys.stdout.writelines(sys.stdin.readlines())

Some interesting semantics going on there. How do you continue reading
after encountering EOF? How does it reset the EOF condition to let you get
the second lot of data?

Normally, once an open file gets to EOF, it stays in that state until
fseek(2) (or equivalent) is called.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 2025-06-16, Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:

On 6/16/2025 9:28 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Mon, 16 Jun 2025 15:15:39 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

sys.stdout.writelines(sys.stdin.readlines())
sys.stdout.writelines(sys.stdin.readlines())

Some interesting semantics going on there. How do you continue reading
after encountering EOF? How does it reset the EOF condition to let you get >> the second lot of data?

Normally, once an open file gets to EOF, it stays in that state until
fseek(2) (or equivalent) is called.

You put 3 decks of punched cards in the card reader.

The fact VMS supported punched card devices always amuses me as it
clearly shows VMS with one foot in a long-obsolete era and the other
foot in a more modern era.

Did punched card support ever make it to Alpha ?

BTW, did VMS ever have paper tape reader (and/or writer) support ?

Simon.

--
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 6/17/2025 2:07 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:

On 2025-06-16, Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:

On 6/16/2025 9:28 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Mon, 16 Jun 2025 15:15:39 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

sys.stdout.writelines(sys.stdin.readlines())
sys.stdout.writelines(sys.stdin.readlines())

Some interesting semantics going on there. How do you continue reading
after encountering EOF? How does it reset the EOF condition to let you get >>> the second lot of data?

Normally, once an open file gets to EOF, it stays in that state until
fseek(2) (or equivalent) is called.

You put 3 decks of punched cards in the card reader.

The fact VMS supported punched card devices always amuses me as it
clearly shows VMS with one foot in a long-obsolete era and the other
foot in a more modern era.

Did punched card support ever make it to Alpha ?

You would need physical connectivity and a driver.

A quick googling on VAX punched card reader points to
CR11 card reader connected to a UNIBUS card.

So I doubt it.

But DCL still got $ DECK and $ EOD. :-)

BTW, did VMS ever have paper tape reader (and/or writer) support ?

No idea.

Arne

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 6/17/25 11:07, Simon Clubley wrote:

BTW, did VMS ever have paper tape reader (and/or writer) support ?

Simon.

The 11/780 had a 20mA current loop DZ11-C multiplexer so an ASR-33
teletype could be attached and that has a paper tape reader/punch.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Wed, 18 Jun 2025 07:45:41 +0930, Mark Daniel wrote:

The fact VMS supported punched card devices always amuses me as it
clearly shows VMS with one foot in a long-obsolete era and the other
foot in a more modern era.

It shouldn't at all be a surprise!
They were still in high-end use in 2001!

How about in real life: I recall a description of the boot process for
Debian on IBM zSeries, where you have to create a file for some bootloader thingie in a format where each line emulates the layout of a punch card.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 18/6/2025 03:37, Simon Clubley wrote:

On 2025-06-16, Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:

On 6/16/2025 9:28 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Mon, 16 Jun 2025 15:15:39 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

8< snip 8<

The fact VMS supported punched card devices always amuses me as it
clearly shows VMS with one foot in a long-obsolete era and the other
foot in a more modern era.

8< snip 8<

It shouldn't at all be a surprise!
They were still in high-end use in 2001!

At ~01:10:00 in Kubrick's Odyssey, when HAL and Bowman are discussing
the impending failure of the AE35 unit, Bowman says he'd like to review
the issue with Poole. "Let me have a hard copy of it, please."

A distinctly Hollerith card pops up from the console.

--
Anyone, who using social-media, forms an opinion regarding anything
other than the relative cuteness of this or that puppy-dog, needs
seriously to examine their critical thinking.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 2025-06-17 18:07:57 +0000, Simon Clubley said:

The fact VMS supported punched card devices always amuses me as it
clearly shows VMS with one foot in a long-obsolete era and the other
foot in a more modern era.

Did punched card support ever make it to Alpha ?

BTW, did VMS ever have paper tape reader (and/or writer) support ?

Punched cards are an antecedent to RMS records, both directly, and via inheritances from RSX-11M, FORTRAN, COBOL, and ilk.

The punched card driver was not ported to OpenVMS Alpha, though a few
related artifacts do survive within OpenVMS itself.

Page 2-1: https://ia902902.us.archive.org/3/items/stx_AA-Z600C-TE_VMS_4.4_VAX_VMS_I_O_Users_Reference_Manual_Part_I_Apr86/AA-Z600C-TE_VMS_4.4_VAX_VMS_I_O_Users_Reference_Manual_Part_I_Apr86.pdf


CR11: https://www.vaxbarn.com/downloads/pub/pdf/dec/unibus/DEC-11-HCRMA-C-D_CR11_CM11_Card_Reader_System_Manual_Jan1974____copy.pdf


I'm not familiar with any formal support for paper tape readers within
VAX/VMS, but have met a few hooked to various ancient systems via
serial lines or such, and all manner of communications controllers were
once supported.

Punched cards and paper tape were fading into the 1980s, though a few
examples undoubtedly survive and there are undoubtedly examples still
in production somewhere because reasons.

https://maker.pro/pic/projects/diy-punch-card-reader-using-pic-microntroller

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM1h-vrKbRg


--
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Tue, 17 Jun 2025 19:28:11 -0400, Stephen Hoffman wrote:

I'm not familiar with any formal support for paper tape readers within VAX/VMS ...

They would just be treated the same as serial terminal lines. A lot of
paper tape units were attached to teletypes anyway.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 2025-06-17, jeffrey_dsi <jeffrey@digitalsynergyinc.com> wrote:

On 6/17/25 11:07, Simon Clubley wrote:

BTW, did VMS ever have paper tape reader (and/or writer) support ?

Simon.

The 11/780 had a 20mA current loop DZ11-C multiplexer so an ASR-33
teletype could be attached and that has a paper tape reader/punch.

Ah, yes, the keyboard that was obviously designed before Health & Safety
or the concept of RSI became a thing. :-)

Mind you, 40 years ago (and I know the ASR33 is older than that), it was
still considered acceptable to use liquid mercury inside toys for children,
so a very different era...

On a more serious note: Thanks, I didn't realise there was a 20mA
current loop option for VAX systems.

Simon.

--
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 6/19/2025 8:09 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:

On a more serious note: Thanks, I didn't realise there was a 20mA
current loop option for VAX systems.

I'm pretty sure there was a 20mA option for connectivity on the VT100

--

--- Rob

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Thu, 19 Jun 2025 10:43:26 -0400, Robert A. Brooks wrote:

I'm pretty sure there was a 20mA option for connectivity on the VT100

Optional, according to a user guide I just checked.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 6/19/2025 6:14 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Thu, 19 Jun 2025 10:43:26 -0400, Robert A. Brooks wrote:

I'm pretty sure there was a 20mA option for connectivity on the VT100

Optional, according to a user guide I just checked.

Yeah, an option is typically considering optional . . .


--

--- Rob

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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I had 2 sites that I recall had current loop connections back in the
early days of 1980. Moved to RS232 eventually for the shorter runs.

Dan

--

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On 6/17/25 19:43, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

On 6/17/2025 2:07 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:

On 2025-06-16, Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> wrote:

On 6/16/2025 9:28 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Mon, 16 Jun 2025 15:15:39 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

sys.stdout.writelines(sys.stdin.readlines())
sys.stdout.writelines(sys.stdin.readlines())

Some interesting semantics going on there. How do you continue reading >>>> after encountering EOF? How does it reset the EOF condition to let
you get
the second lot of data?

Normally, once an open file gets to EOF, it stays in that state until
fseek(2) (or equivalent) is called.

You put 3 decks of punched cards in the card reader.

The fact VMS supported punched card devices always amuses me as it
clearly shows VMS with one foot in a long-obsolete era and the other
foot in a more modern era.

Did punched card support ever make it to Alpha ?

You would need physical connectivity and a driver.

A quick googling on VAX punched card reader points to
CR11 card reader connected to a UNIBUS card.

A very smart bit of work there.

If you have an old unibus backplane and power supply, you could use
a qniverter or unimap (sp?), to convert CR11 unibus to a qbus.
Years ago, unibus VAX730, no system disk, and used a qniverter to
connect to qbus backplane, and an RQDX3 to install and boot VMS
from an RD53. A bit glacial, but it did work.

Been doing quite a bit of data recovery from old machines recently.
Mainly scsi drives from various dec machines. Using the Suse Linux
11.4 disk utility. Excellent, and will read a variety of formats to
recover the files. Also use dd to image the whole drive.

Also have a load of rl02 and RA60 packs. The RA60 data is probably
a lost cause, as no longer have the drive, nor the controller
and machine to connect it to. The RL packs should be easier,
as still have an RLV12 controller, one hopefully good RL02 drive,
Just need to find the idc RL cable.

Chris

So I doubt it.

But DCL still got $ DECK and $ EOD.  :-)

BTW, did VMS ever have paper tape reader (and/or writer) support ?

No idea.

Arne

If yu have aunibus backplane,

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Am 19.06.2025 um 16:43 schrieb Robert A. Brooks:

On 6/19/2025 8:09 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:

On a more serious note: Thanks, I didn't realise there was a 20mA
current loop option for VAX systems.

I'm pretty sure there was a 20mA option for connectivity on the VT100

There definitely was a 20 mA connection on the VT220 - standard, not
optional. I personally used it in a pipe mill in the 1980s with RT-11 on
a PDP-11/73 with a DLV11-F qbus adapter. Very harsh environment, worked perfectly.

--
Norbert Schönartz

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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