Reading Punch Cards on Today's Hardware? 15
Gone Jackal asks: "I've run into a ludicrous situation. I'm a classicist at the University of Chicago, finishing off my undergraduate career with a bachelor's thesis. As part of this, I'm working on poetry and meter in Vergil. Imagine my joy when I found in the library catalogue a 20 volume set of books on just this topic, published between 1973 and 1985. Now imagine my horror when I open up the first volume and see that the entire work is on punch cards. What the heck do I do with punch cards? The CS department has laughed at me, and mainframe computing says they're not allowed to help since I'm not an administrator. Any suggestions on where to go, what to do to read these, or even find out what's on them? (The series title, in case you wanted to know, is 'Metrische Analysen zu Vergil', by Wilhelm Ott. It's in German)." Oh man...punch cards. I can understand Gone Jackal's frustration, however I'm more surprised that such works weren't converted to better media a long time ago.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Where the hell is your advisor? (Score:1)
Scanner (Score:1)
Long live the mainframe!!!
j/k.
Peace out.
Re:Where the hell is your advisor? (Score:1)
The problem is not obtaining the books; I have the books and the cards. The problem is finding a machine to read them, or something that will translate them. So far, I've emailed the classics bibliographer here at the U. of C., the author, several archaeologists I know who did something similar on punch-cards back in the 70's, and a few contacts on the Tübingen website for their text-processing program.
And, by the by, this seemed like the sort of strange problem Ask Slashdot would be interested in; this is far from my only resource. If you don't like the question, stop whining and post elsewhere.
I've got just the solution...err... (Score:1)
Re:Thinking it through (Score:2)
Take a trip to Radio Shack!! (Score:2)
duh. (Score:2)
Do the cards have text at the top? (Score:2)
It's too bad there's no way to feed the cards automatically to a flatbed scanner. Most punch cards had a printed copy of the characters the punches represented across the top of each card. If you could feed them to a scanner in some automated way, then you could use OCR software and a simple script to strip out the text and assemble it all together fairly quickly.
Alternatively, there may be some way to either a) contact the original author (Wilhelm Ott), or b) find a copy of the work in a German library, and get an inter-library loan. When I entered the following search into Google...
"Metrische Analysen zu Vergil" "wilhelm ott"
...I was auto-forwarded to the following page on Amazon.de:
http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/external-sear ch/028-6615 460-4707748?tag=artvisitwww&keyword=Wilhelm+Ott&mo de=books [amazon.de]
From the looks of things, it may well be that some, or even all, of the volumes in this series are still in print. It looks like it would be expensive to spring for the entire series (several hundred US$), but if they're still in print, then it's likely there are copies available in a German library somewhere as well. If it's that important, you could try working with your advisor on getting an inter-library loan. As with most software tasks, it's better to find an existing solution (i.e. another copy of the books in print) than to create a new one (all that scanning work) yourself. :-)
Contact one of the old computer companies. (Score:2)
--
Punch Card Fun (Score:2)
Ya know, I love computer history. I've always thought it would be fun to have a punchcard reader connected to my notebook computer.
That way, I'll be able to read the cards and save the data to the 8" floppy drive I've already hacked on.
(Old 486SX notebook, don't worry.)
Thinking it through (Score:2)
Okay, even if you COULD get these punch cards read in, I'd expect you'd still have some language Issues:
I'm not trying to disuade you from continuing to investigate this resource, but to point out there's more here than may be apparent at first glance.
This is indicative of the general class of problems that I've often run into when trying to locate information. When I've hit a rat hole, back up and THINK! Could someone else have run into this same problem, or am I the very first person who has run into this? That simple idea has helped me to stop what I had been doing, back up, and try another approach while making use of what I've learned so far.
In short, when I hit a brick wall when searching for information, and I've got a headache from banging my head against that wall, it's a sign to me that maybe it's time to step back and try another approach. Hope this helps!
You might contact the author.. (Score:3)
ott@zdv.uni-tuebingen.de
He may have his data in a more modern format, or be able to point you to a place where you can find it.
I don't read German, but the German Amazon.com has his books listed - here is a sample link:
http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/348460031
Good luck!
Since all you have to do is read... (Score:3)
Then a custom app (of your own -- or a willing CS major's -- design) can look for the presence or absence of contrast in specific locations. Punch cards have registration marks, so exact positioning on the scanner is not terribly an issue. Then you have the data in a machine-readable format, and conversion to something you can use should be the downhill stretch.
Just an idea, sorry I can't help with an implementation... I hope this gives you some inspiration.
Where the hell is your advisor? (Score:3)
Failing that, search the web for places that have the necessary machine type and beg. Try the comp.* newsgroups. Ask the librarians --- their job is to get you your data. Move your damn ass instead of whining to Slashdot.