REMEX Paper Tape Drive Teardown - The Electronics Inside 

I'm always looking for suggestions for interesting and strange equipment to tear down. Don't forget to let me know what you think would be good www.element14.com/theelectronicsinside

Remex also made combination reader/punch. I was installing a brand new reader/punch, which was quite expensive. I slipped on some spilled water on the computer room floor while carrying it. I went down with it (in retrospect I should have dropped it). One of the side panels cut tendons in my RH middle finger. I had to have surgery and months of rehabilitation. The paper tapes were used to build advanced computers. The backplane of the computer consisted of connectors with long gold plated pins run through a circuit board which provided a ground plane. The 31 boards in the computer were plugged into the connectors, which were wire-wound to each other. The paper tape had X and Y coordinates to guide the people who built the backplanes. The machine would position a tool guide over the correct pin on the backplane. A code was displayed to indicate the wire color. The wire color indicated the wire length. The worker would grab the indicated wire, put one end in the wire-wrap gun, position the gun onto the indicated pin, and press the trigger which wound the wire onto the pin. The worker pressed a foot pedal to advance the paper tape and the X Y pin guide. The worker put the other end of the wire into the wire wrap gun, positioned the gun over the second pin, and pulled the trigger to wrap the wire onto the pin. There were thousands of wires on a backplane. In the days before glitter, paper tape chaff was sometimes used in pranks.

When I worked for the A.P. we had a lot of punch tape machines mainly used at the time for stock quotes. Plus many teletype machines. I worked on a lot of model 15 and 20's. And wire photo. Boy does that bring back memories

I have one of these which I have restored and I also have a complete user manual. The card you are missing is a second power supply card for the main spindle motor if I remember. This model was made in the early 70s around 1971/2. The output is 8 bit parallel ascii and the output is just +5v for a hole and 0 for no hole. It is a fast reader as it reads tape at 150 characters per second.

Sealed optical unit would be 9 phototransistors in a line, with the paper sprocket hole pulse used externally to drive an octal latch that, because it was shorter in duration, plus came after the main holes had settled, would give a reliable pulse to latch data, and also signal to the controller that the data was there. Open collector outputs, possibly with a pull up resistor in the block, but likely this was in the actual machinery. There would also be a retriggerable monostable on the sprocket pulse line that, when the paper tape ran out, timed out, giving the controller an indication of end of tape. Cards likely are all different ages, the power supply likely still is original card wise, but the controller cards have 1980 date stamps on some of the IC's, so either they were an upgrade or reworked at some point to replace failed IC's, though in almost all of the cards you see semiconductor manufacturers that no longer exist, or who no longer are in that product area.

Such a beauty

Great video thanks. I have the same machine but mine is branded microtecnica, it is currently for sale. Comes with around 20 punch tape data reels in box

Good video. A company I worked for in 1982 were still using paper tape for payroll. A replacement payroll system was being developed. I remember the tape operators (yes it was a job) would have issues maintaining the correct tension, any change in tension would trip a relay and the whole unit would stop. I remember one operator would speed up the reading by shining a torch at a light detector and adding rubber bands in key places, sometimes they got away with it, other times it would result in the tape going every where. A broken tape was rare, the paper they used was well up to the job.

I like old vintage things fascinating

There were also 5 level tapes on older TTY machines. The best part of it is if you are really good at it, read the info directly and use scissors and glue to edit the tape. There are also reperf machines which can copy the tapes. Placed in a safe place, it manages to keep the info without the problems of magnetic media. Some places used movie canisters to save the paper tapes.

That's soo cool!

That patent was issued in 1971, submitted to the patent office in 1967. "4. The combination as set forth in claim 3 in which each of said amplifiers includes a pair of transistor and resistor chip means; a plurality of common contact layers coated on said substrate and extending parallel to said aligned cells for providing power connections for said amplifiers; and leads interconnecting the cells, chips and layers." They have the schematic of each light cell in the patent if you look at the images. It has both resistors and transistors though, so I can't tell which one the light sensing element is. It has a built in amplifier though.

Yep I used these in the late 80’s on CNC machines.

What about using two 35MM film spools or two 16MM film spools, I think that it would be better put back together and see if it can be used with a SINCLAIR Spectrum to save programs and load them back.

MOSFET's? Nope! - That's old darlington transistors :D

The name Yasakawa Electric might be linked to YE-DATA, who used to make floppy drives. Yasakawa is known for beeing the first company to have built industrial robots for the car industry. The unit looks very late 60's by it's design and styling.

First like

Great video. But please lose the bacground music. It's not needed, and is just irritating!