There's Got To Be A Better Way to do This!

Looking at this is as a solution to a computer security problem. We need a cost-effective way to make verifiable machine-readable data stores for loading small amounts (<2 KB) of binary data to make bootstrap loaders.

That's a great little machine, but still quite difficult to make, I imagine. The card stacks are also difficult to maintain:

Paper tape readers are easier to make, ...

... but I have not seen anyone demonstrate a paper tape punch (except one Japanese machine I saw a video of in 2023 which was just writing random bit strings to paper tape: see Paper Punching Machine Looks Like Cute Piece Of Computer History Past) it was a whole thing in Japan, apparently. The mechanism is interesting: rather than punch each hole-position independently, most of these devices seem to apply the punch force to the whole row, and solenoids somehow set whether or not an individual position is punched.

See these hashtagged X posts:


See https://altairclone.com/

Here's a Hackaday story about another one made by Joshua Coleman. He used a laser cutter to make short strips and glued them together:

Subscribe to Joshua Coleman Makes.

The best idea I've had is to use acetate sheets and mark the holes with felt-tip, or just print them on laser printers. It wouldn't be too hard to make a 3D-printed A4 (or A3?) acetate sheet-reader. I suppose if you're just slightly better at optics you could make a reader that works on ordinary printed paper and acetate with a paper backing sheet.

The requirement is for a optically verifiable representation of the bits that is also fast and reliably machine-readable. See Generating Random Bits with Avalanche Noise.

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