The last person standing in the floppy disk business

Re:The last person standing in the floppy disk business by Animats on Tuesday September 13, 2022 @11:51AM (#32825917)

A few years ago, the last man standing in the punched paper tape business, "westnc.com", finally gave it up. There were still some numerically controlled machine tools running off paper tape. In 2019, NSA punched a crypto key into paper tape for the last time. As far as I can tell, nobody in the US still sells punched paper tape.

Although if you really need it, you could get it made. I restore old Teletype machines, including the kind that printed on 5/16" paper tape. I had a thousand rolls of such tape made up by a company in China, that being the minimum order, and I still sell some now and then to Teletype collectors.

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Re:The last person standing in the floppy disk business by fourjawchuck on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @12:02AM (#32833201)

The machine shop I work at still runs machines that use 5 hole paper tape.

In fact there is a fixture in the shop we just finished on one of those machines that is for an aerospace customer of ours.

It’s very interesting to me and something I hadn’t seen before working at this shop.

It’s amazing what is still out there running.

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Re:The last person standing in the floppy disk business by Animats on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @12:13AM (#32833255)

> The machine shop I work at still runs machines that use 5 hole paper tape.

Where do you get blank tape? I know Teletype collectors who need a supplier.

I've never seen 5-hole tape CNC gear. Most is 8-hole.

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Re:The last person standing in the floppy disk business by fourjawchuck on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @08:26AM (#32836166)

I’m actually not sure where they source it from but my guess would be they just have an abundant stock of it given the abundance of everything else in the shop.

It’s black wax 5 hole paper tape and the controllers the use it are Allen Bradley, manufactured in early 80s I believe but I’d have to check dates.

We also have a few machines that read from magnetic tape so lots of old almost historical computer equipment, but still being used amazingly and making money.

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Re:The last person standing in the floppy disk business by CliffStoll on Tuesday September 13, 2022 @12:11PM (#32826233)

I've got a couple boxes of 80-column punch cards ...

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Re:The last person standing in the floppy disk business by 83457 on Tuesday September 13, 2022 @12:17PM (#32826340)

My mom has many boxes from her long career programming for mainframes. She uses them for todo lists... for herself now, not a computer.

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Re:The last person standing in the floppy disk business by grogenaut on Tuesday September 13, 2022 @12:27PM (#32826472)

Bar I worked at in the late 90s did all their checks and orders on these. Guy who worked there par tike worked dismantling mainframes and had tons of them. Cheaper than any other paper they could find.

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Re:The last person standing in the floppy disk business by 83457 on Wednesday September 14, 2022 @08:20AM (#32836121)

Nice. Not the cheapest if bought from IBM is my understanding.

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Re:The last person standing in the floppy disk business by taftster on Tuesday September 13, 2022 @12:49PM (#32826820)

Or maybe she is the computer now.

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