Welcome to the technikum29 Development Projects

This is the home of the major development projects in the ​technikum29.de computer museum that concern modern computers. You may read ​the abstracts on the museum homepage to get a quick non-technical introducion what this is about.

New Projects

Ongoing projects, partially driven by junior students:

• The Univac 9400 show emulation, driven by some uC logic with sound and ~15 relais for emulating the computer acoustic feeling

We experiment with different hardware architectures:

• AVR ATMega (20Mhz RISC, very deterministic for real-time)
• Arduino, with stack-on-top boards
• Raspberry PI (for applications which require multimedia output or full-stack systems)
• ARM Cortex for Ghz range low latency data tapping

Our Projects

The technikum29 development projects on this website are outstanding projects interconnecting different worlds of computing. In contrast to all other overhauling and interconnecting projects (which are not well documented in the web - the ​website news section may be a starting point)), all source code and documentation is supposed to be published in web as Open Source.

• The Paper Tape Project (2008-2009)
  • Paper Tape processing GUI tools and visualisation
  • Linux and Windows Device drivers
  • Devices: FACIT Puncher, GHILMETTI Reader
  • Special cable wirings and hardware setup
• The Punch Card Project (2009-2011)
  • Cross plattform card manipulation framework
  • uC based connection for some punchers and readers
  • main result: Reading with the DOCUMATION M200 reader
• The Bull Anelex Project (2010-2012)
  • uC interface for BULL Gamma 10 Printer simulation
  • uC printer to computer interface for Anelex the High Speed printer
• ​School Workshops for senior classes (2012)
  • e.g. uC driven 1958 Siemens Fax to PC interconnection
• PDP 8 Serial Intercommunication (2012)
  • Emulating VT100 behaviour with RS232 computer communication for having a modern terminal and data transfer options
• Revision: Paper Tape Project Next Generation (2012-2013)
  • Target: Porting the old software to uC level for common interfaces and more portability

History of the Projects

Time ordered:

2007-2009: The Paper Tape Project and ppdev linux device drivers

• Feb 2007: FACIT 4070 Tape Punch Linux Parallel Port User Space Driver
• 2007/2008: GTK/Cairo/GTKmm bases Visualisator frontend, Perl Tools, Paper Tape Fonts
• Feb 2008: GHIELMETTI FER 201 Paper Tape Reader linux Parallel Port User Space Driver
• 2008: Windows Drivers and the paper Tape Suite

2009: The Punch Card Project and the first µC era

• Mar 2009: Nixdorf-0377.01 Puncher Driver Parallel Port Driver
• 2009: Documation M200 Punch Card Reader µC Driver
• 2009: C++/Qt based Punch Card Editor

2010-2012: Pure µC era

• Aug 2010: The Bull Analex Project as pure µC project (Windows based)

2012: Next Generation era

• Nov 2012: Review of old parallel port drivers for µC reimplementation, beginning with FACIT puncher as the Paper Tape Projects Next Generation

Currently active: The Bull Analex Project

Our latest project: Connecting an antique printer to a completely other antique computing mainframe by using some microcontrollers. As a waste product you can print from a PC to a high speed printer and use a PC to simulate the printer of a Bull Gamma 10.

Read the latest news on the Bull Analex Project page.
(started in April 2010, latest update May 2011)

(Almost) finalized projects

There are two other very comprehensive projects concerning computer input/output to several punching and scanning units to process both paper tapes and punched cards:

• The Paper Tape Project (Life span: 2008-2009)
• The Punch Card Project (Life span: 2009-2011)

Historically, these projects have already been joined together, being named Punched Paper Project. Click on the project names to get further information or brows the source code in the SVN.