The recent discussions of serial punchers has gotten me reinterested in
an idea I had a while ago but thought was too primitive.  I would like
to build a combination scanner and punch of the one hole serial type.
It would have all parameters such as roll width, hole size, hole
spacing, and step size user definable. It would punch a (or several)
duplicate rolls while scanning and recording data. It would use an
optical scan head, such as a bar code wand, to scan the reverse side of
the roll. It would be controlled by a portable computer with a parallel
port connected IO board, which would control the scanning, hole center
determination, chaining, punch operation and data recording. It is
within my capabilities to build this thing, both the mechanics and the
electronics. I have not done any programming recently and am not
familiar with the new high level languages. I'm sure the programming
would be pretty simple for the right person. Is there anyone who would
like to colaborate on a project like this? Is there anyone who has or
knows of existing software that would be appropriate for the job? I
would like to get started on this project pretty soon as I expect a
long cold winter with plenty of tinker time. My piano is playing well
and it is time to start copying some of those rare and wonderful rolls
before they fall to dust.