Two years ago, on June 28th, my birthday, I sat around the kitchen table at Janet and Richard Tonnesen's house.  I had given myself a gift: a trip to Dallas, Texas, to meet them and see their roll perforating operation.  I took with me a very poorly hand-punched roll for a John Smith busker organ.  After an evening viewing the Perforating equipment, I decided that I wanted one of "those".

It has taken two years, a lot of correspondence and the assistance of a large number of people, but I am pleased to announce that I now have on-line a production perforator for John Smith rolls.

If it looks like a small version of Richard Tonnesen's machine, that is because it is just that.  Over the last two years Richard has helped me more than I can ever thank him for.  He even disassembled the perforator so he could photograph parts that are not readily apparent when viewing the machine as a whole.

Dave Saul, Ron Perry of Midiator Systems, Robbie Rhodes, Wayne Stahnke, Don Teach, Richard Brandle and a host of other MMDers contributed their time, knowledge and during times of stress, a calming influence.

I am sending photos of the machine to the MMD editor to post in the MMD Pictures Archives.  The entire story was chronicled from beginning to end with 44 pictures, on six web pages, starting with:

  http://www.txdirect.net/~egaida/perfer1.html

There is minor tweaking to be done, but I don't think that Richard Tonnesen ever stops tweaking his perforator.  The PD1 controller board performs flawlessly, as does Wayne Stahnke's "Punch" software suite.

A warning to those who wish to follow.  The Octet PD1 board does not work with the parallel port on at least two laptops that I wanted to use.  It caused no end of problems because the board simply would not "talk" to the computer nor the computer to the board.  It had to do with the address of the printer port.  Ron Perry spent two hours on the telephone, on his nickel, with my tech to try and solve the problem.  The next morning I hauled the electronics up to my office and connected it to the desktop computer.  It has been running ever since.

If I have left out any names of those who helped, forgive me.  I have had little sleep in the last three days and I am headed for bed -- now!

Ed Gaida
Thu, 12 Jul 2001 16:44:00 -0500