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Hi,
I have a Coscom TX-400 paper punch/reader.

I have seen it both punch tape and read tape, so I know that it works, but I don't know how to connect to it.

It has two DB25 ports, one female and one male, and it also has a 4 dip switch bank on the back.

Does anyone know:

• What the four DIP switches are for?
• How to toggle between 5/8 holes?
• How to select data standard (ASCII, ISO, ITA2 etc.)
• What pins on what port is TX/RX? Am I right to assume it acts as a DCE for the puncher and DTE for the reader?
• What speed I should use, 110 or 300, or is that also controlled by DIP switch?

Grateful for any help

/Tomas

PS. If anyone has a service manual that would be fantastic!

Hello Tomas,

first of all, where are you from (country)?
I have never heard of this version. Could you provide pictures from outside AND inside?
This could help to narrow down the basic original Siemens version.
There are manuals available but for sure not for your specific version. Almost "every" customer got his own
version. They are almost countless in case of used board versions.

Anyway, we will try to help you as much as possible.

Henning

Dieser vermutlich?
This one probably?
TX-400/LS

Und der damalige Preis erst...
And the price back then...
Coscom-Stanzer mit Siemens-Teil: Löcher auch mobil

Vielleicht die Frage auch einmal hier stellen (das Teil wird weiter unten erwähnt: SIEMENS/COSCOM Typ TX 400)?
Maybe you could post the question here (the part is mentioned further down: SIEMENS/COSCOM type TX 400)?
Datenoutput aus der Sinumerik 6T ?

Ah ok.
So, it's not a branded T1000/PT80, it's just the tape punch and reader of a T1000....

Hi,
yes it's just the punch and reader. It looks like that TX-400/LS.
I found it in Austria.

Overview of the inside of the main half of the device, with the reader top right:


This view is from the left side of the device after I removed the cover for that part, so the front is on the right and the back is on the left.

At the top it's connected to the puncher (rainbow cable), which is in a separate enclosure (they are bolted together) to the back of this view. You can barely make out the roll of black (!) paper tape of the puncher at the left edge of the image.

The black cable in the middle goes to the reader, and the white cable connected to an IC socket (just to the right of the black cable) goes to the back panel. It is also visible at the bottom. Those two cables cross in the middle so it is a bit confusing in the image.

The reader is, as far as I can tell, identical to that of a Siemens T1000. The "padding" at the bottom has deteriorated so it's a bit nasty to handle, but you can see there is a red button and also the blue and red wires to the little LED on the far right.

The puncher is difficult to open so I didn't, but I'm assuming it's identical to the T1000 one, except maybe the interface cable might be different? I don't know how it would usually be hooked up to a telex.

This is what the back looks like, with the two serial ports (male at top and female at bottom) and the DIP switches etc.:


Ignore the DIP setting it's me fiddling around, they were all set to the left when I got it. The bottom one is somehow involved in tape speed, maybe 300 Bd to left and 110 Bd to right? The other three do something but I don't know what.

This is the PCB for the back, the two serial ports clearly visible on the PCB:


It says "COSCOM" and "TX 400LS V0" at the top.

Here is a closeup of the "main" board:


And finally this is what is in the top left corner, but turned right side up for your convenience


edit: I forgot to mention that there is a handwritten label inside at the far right of the "main" PCB marked "OIL 22.2.1985", whatever that means.

I experimented a little bit! I connected to the top serial port using 300 Bd, 8N1, and sent this sequence:

00 ff 00 ff 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0a 0b 0c 0d 0e 0f 7f 80 81 82 a0 a1 a2 00 ff 00 ff 00

This was the result:


So, this is what happened. First two columns = data I sent, then the holes on the resulting tape ( = hole, = no hole), and finally the same in binary (1 = hole, 0 = no hole):

out hex	out bin	raw holes	bin holes
		•
		•
00	00000000	•	00000000
ff	11111111	•	00000001
00	00000000	•	11111111
ff	11111111	•	00000001
00	00000000	•	11111111
01	00000001	•	11111101
02	00000010	•	11111011
03	00000011	•	11111001
04	00000100	•	11110111
05	00000101	•	11110101
06	00000110	•	11110011
07	00000111	•	11110001
08	00001000	•	11101111
09	00001001	•	11101101
0a	00001010	•	11101011
0b	00001011	•	11101001
0c	00001100	•	11100111
0d	00001101	•	11100101
0e	00001110	•	11100011
0f	00001111	•	11100001
7f	01111111	•	00000001
80	10000000	•	11111111
81	10000001	•	11111101
82	10000010	•	11110110
a0	10100000	•	01111110
a1	10100010	•	01111010
a2	10100010	•	01110110
00	00000000	•	11111110
ff	11111111	•	00000001
00	00000000	•	11111111
ff	11111111	•	00000001
00	00000000	•	11111111
		•
		•

What is going on here?? The pattern in the middle is somewhat familiar, so I managed to match data to output, but is the rightmost hole the top bit somehow? And why is everything inverted?

DIP switch 1–3 did not matter, but DIP 4 had to be in the "left" position or very strange holes would result with no identifiable pattern.

Help needed