[Info-vax] VMS-based InfoServer

[Bob Koehler]

In article <4c5b64d8$0$10422$c3e8da3 at news.astraweb.com>, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> writes:
> 
> Were punched cards in EBCDIC or did they have their own character
> encoding ? With a punched card reader generating EBCDIC or ASCII
> depending on brand/model ? (aka: an IBM reader would generate EBCDIC,
> while a DEC reader would generate ASCII from the same deck of cards) ?

   The encoding of the holes in the punch card is one of the defined
   representations of EBCDIC, having repalced BCD.  IIRC, IBM 026 punches
   punched cards in BCD and were replaced by IBM 029 punches that
   punched EBCDIC.

   IBM and XEROX systems that I worked with that used punch cards as 
   thier primary input devices were designed to, and worked with,
   EBCDIC.

   The SEL-32 system I had with a card reader would read the data in as
   EBCDIC or BCD as punched, and provided a translator to ASCII.

   The TOPS-20 system that I had with a card reader automatically
   converted from EBCDIC to ASCII, I never tried BCD.  I suspect there
   was a flag to specificy BCD input.

   I never actually had a VAX with a card reader, but from the
   DCL dictionary I got the feeling that the input symbiont did
   translation on the fly.