Paul, we share a common background. I learned Algol on a B6700, which succeeded the ELX8. Some of the flexowriters were still there, early 1976. The B6700 could read and punch papertape but mostly for data I think. Programming was done on cards. If you were lucky your account was upgraded for CANDE and you could use a terminal. hans It is called the TU/e for decades but my generation still says TH... Van: Paul_Koning at Dell.com Verzonden: vrijdag 19 april 2013 20:46 PM Aan: hecnet at Update.UU.SE Beantwoorden: hecnet at Update.UU.SE Onderwerp: Re: [HECnet] punched tape On Apr 19, 2013, at 1:48 PM, Lee Gleason wrote: That was probably 6 bit tape -- most typesetters I've seen that were fed with tape used 6 bit tape. My first programs were written on paper tape -- Flexowriter editing papertape typewriter/reader/punch machines, with a character set optimized for Algol 60. That was at the Technical University Eindhoven, then known as THE -- which is where the operating system by that name came from. It was a batch system: paper tape in, line printer output. Magnetic tapes available in theory but rarely used, plus a drum for paging. Processor was a Philips (Electrologica) EL-X8, a 27 bit machine with a rather exotic I/O architecture that I never really understood. BTW, Flexowriters are great machines. Teletype Corporation never built anything remotely as reliable as those -- certainly not the cruft known as Model 33, and even a Model 35 isn't as good. Semaphores (in the computer science sense) were invented there. paul