Is this a GE paper tape drive?

[Aaron Teeling]

Found on eBay while looking for something else. I leave it for someone much brighter than I;

http://cgi.ebay.com/GE-3N-REEL-TO-REEL-COMPUTER-TAPE-DATA-STORAGE-DRIVE_W0QQitemZ300169441202QQihZ020QQcategoryZ1247 QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

[Erik]

Definately paper tape. Can't tell if it punches (or how) but the connection in back seems to indicate it does, or that it hooks up to a punch.

[Druid6900]

Since it has a port to attach a punch, it might be a tape duplicator.

[chuckcmagee]

I would bet punch was another unit, like "duplicate that tape please" kind of thing. Ahhhh, do I miss paper tape?? NOPE!

I actually made good money for about 3 months programming a IBM 1130 in FORTRAN using paper tape as the sole input. I sure had to earn my money on that job. They were SO far behind in their processing that they faked the dates in case someone came by for a visit. They switched to RPG and I went back to college. To insert a source line, like " I=0 ", you had to punch the statement, count the "end of frame" holes to find where to splice in your statement, cut the source tape, splice in the new statement, and recompile. No wonder they were so far behind, what a joke! Cards are/were bad enought, paper tape only is a nightmare.

I sure wish I had "stolen" the Initial Program Load (IPL) tape!!! It was mylar, bright red on one side and silver on the other. Sexiest IPL tape you ever saw. Yes, you stuck it in the the tape reader, hit "Imm stop", "Reset" and "IPL" (in that order) and it would startup the boot process. The 1130 used those 512K words (2 bytes/word) single platter disks. Took about 30 seconds to spin down and another 30 to spin back up after changing.

[chuckcmagee]

AH once again, GMTA or great minds think alike.