Hacks

1990-11-12-01.jpg This was a program to print .EIN images on a SIXEL printer, particularly the DEC laser printer LN03. EIN was a proprietary compressed image format in use by AEG, the German firm that designed the high-speed OCR/CS (Optical Character Reader / Channel Sorter) machinery in use by the USPS. I figured out the compression method (simple, but still a challenge), then wrote the code in VAX MACRO; actually two programs, one to decompress EIN format, and a second one to convert the raw image to sixel data. A DCL command script tied it all together. It was pretty hacky, and was never awarded as a suggestion, but many offices around the country used it and loved it.

I eventually got better at VAX hacking, but never really good. I really enjoyed programming for the PDP much better, and gave that the preponderance of my time.

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