28 feb 2020

The original contents of this page have been superceded by the history of character codes page. This now only contains the ITA :: ASCII conversion programs, updated and corrected in August, 1999.

NOTE: though commonly called "Baudot", the 5-level teleprinter code is really called ITA2; there is also a variant informally called "U.S. TTY" that has a few differences in the FIGS case; see the above history page for excruciating detail. (Just to be annoying, the chart to the left really is Baudot; it was used only in French telegraph systems.)

Some simple ASCII/ITA translation programs, written in ANSI C, with DOS executables. Assumes U.S.TTY or ITA2 code -- I forget which! You'll have to recompile if you care, or write me.

• Tape cleaner: clean file strips leading nulls, strips the upper three bits from each byte, as they come off the reader in an indeterminate state (5-bit tape on 8-bit reader).
• ASCII to ITA2: a2b file reads ASCII text file file, converts to ITA2, and outputs the resulting characters to file file.ITA.
• ITA to ASCII: b2a file reads ITA text file file, converts to ASCII, and outputs the resulting characters to file file.ASC.
• ASCII to "ITA" subset of ASCII: A2ITA-set file reads an ASCII text file, and for all characters that do not appear in the ITA set (lower case letters, ~ ! [ ] etc) substitutes the "next-closest", using page-darkness as a guide -- this is ONLY for converting ASCII art to ITA art.

All of the programs referenced above are contained in this zip file.

The translated tapes

Greenkeys teletype tape conversion

The impetus for this was a box of tapes one particular ham had saved, and wanted to not be lost to theorld. John Foust is archiving ancient ASCII art so these tape images were given to John for potential inclusion. As it turned out, these tapes weren't that interesting, but it got me to write the conversion software, which I wanted anyways.

For each tape in the box, I'm creating a disk directory. Each directory contains the contents of one 5-level tape. The names/numbers mean nothing. The files inside each directory are: desc.txt anything written on the tape I took to be a label or ID, occasionally comments; a.raw the raw tape, right off the tape reader. Note that the upper three bits of each byte are indeterminate, and there may be variable-length leader. a.ita is clean teletype code; null leader removed, 5 bit characters only. a.asc is the ASCII translation of the previous file.

NOTE: I incorrectly named all the files with extention ".bdo" instead of ".ita". Everything else is correct.

Download this tapes.zip ZIP file containing all of the tape images. Bob Roehrig's PIX.ZIP file (corrected archive, mailed out 4 Nov 1998)

I merely expanded the archive here. These are ASCII encoded pictures. There are no ITA equivs. His original message follows:

Subject: RTTY PIX's
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1998 15:57:33 -0600 (CST)
From: Bob Roehrig 

OK - I think everyone has got back to me that wanted the pictures.

Attached is the zipped file. It contains all of them, not just the
corrected ones. I also deleted some that were questionable or missing
some parts.

Also in this zipped file are:
RTTY.BAS - my RTTY program that can be used to send/rcve text & pix's.
PIXED.EXE - editor for picture files.
.DOC manual files for the above.

Any questions/problems on these, please let me know.

"Nostalgia is a thing of the past"

Bob Roehrig's PIX2.ZIP file (mailed out 25 Nov 1998)

Subject: PIXED & pictures
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 1998 11:10:50 -0600 (CST)
From: Bob Roehrig 

Well folks, Attached are 2 zipped files. One contains more RTTY
pictures which I received from morry. The other file is the latest
version of my PIXED editor program and a manual for it. I don't
remember who all I sent this to before so I am sending it to all of
you. The previous version had a LOT of goofs in it - hopefully this
time I have the bugs out.

"Nostalgia is a thing of the past"

All of the tape image (text) files referenced above are all contained in this ZIP file.