Japanese textile factory still uses tape cassette and punch cards

Re:Japanese textile factory still uses tape cassette and pun... by WJW on Monday July 10, 2023 @03:34AM (#36663157)

I think characterizing it just as "make-work for software engineers" is too harsh. Just from a business continuity perspective there is a real benefit to being on a well-supported platform for which it is cheap and easy to source new parts. I don't know offhand how many punch card reader manufacturers still exist, but the competition is going to be a lot less than it is in (say) USB stick manufacturing.

It's a difficult thing to quantify, but access to stable supply lines is surely worth more than zero.

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Re:Japanese textile factory still uses tape cassette and pun... by Symbiote on Monday July 10, 2023 @04:20AM (#36663470)

The punch cards will be directly controlling the loom, it looks like it is read electro-mechanically. Maintaining the card reader is presumably a minor part of maintenance for the whole loom. One person probably has the skills to maintain the weaving part and the reading part.

If you replaced the input with USB or similar, you now also need someone with IT skills if that part goes wrong.

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