|
|website=[[Association for Computing Machinery|ACM]] Digital Library (dl.acm)
|url=https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1464182.1464221
|title=The IBM 2560 multi-function card machine |author=C. E. Spurrier |year=1966}}</ref> wasis a peripheral first offered on the Model 20 (MFCM). Due to its reliability problems, often involving card jams, the acronym was frequently interpreted as referring to many less favorable names.
The 2560 hadhas two hoppers into which punch cards can be placed. The cards in the second hopper couldcan contain punched cards to be read or blank cards to be punched. Two models were offered:
* Model A1: five card stackers, and an optional printing/interpretor, with two, four or six print heads.<ref name=SystemSummary.360_20>{{cite book
|title=System Summary: IBM System/360 Model 20 (A22-6810)}}</ref>
* Model A2: four card stackers.
Card flow wasis: a read station, a punch station, and on the A2 a print station allowing text to be printed on cards. Cards then flowed into one of the stackers after being processed.<ref name=FuncChar/>{{rp|41-43}} This allows it to function as a [[Punched card input/output|card reader]] and a [[Punched card input/output|card punch]]. As a program can issue a Write Card instruction to print on the card after reading card data with a Read Primary Card or Read Secondary Card instruction, it can also, under program control, function as an [[Interpreter (computing)#Punched card interpreter|interpreter]] and, as a program can issue a Primary Card Stacker Select or Secondary Card Stacker Select instruction to select the stacker into which a card should be put after reading card data, it can function as a [[IBM card sorter|card sorter]]. This allows the Model 20 to replace several separate pieces of punched-card equipment.
IBM's announcement proclaimed the 2560 as providing "a card-handling capability never before possible on a single pass through the system."<ref>{{cite web
|title=360-20}}</ref><ref>A22-6810, p. 13</ref><ref>{{cite web |website=BitSavers
|url=ftp://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/ibm/360/fe/2020/Z26-5908_360-20_FE_Manual_Of_Instruction_Aug65.pdf
|title=IBM Confidential Field Engineering Manual of Instruction}}</ref> Since all I/O wasis performed by the processor, the system wasis particularly suited to controlling timing-dependent devices such as the 2560, where a card can be read, punched into, printed on, and sent to a specified output stacker with tight timing requirements if full rated speed wasis to be maintained.
==Software==
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