Modernize your punch card review with Review Board

While an industry standard, we believe commenting on punch cards using sticky notes is dated. For one thing, it's notoriously difficult to attach them to a 7⅜″ × 3¼″ card.

Review Board replaces Post-it-based review with digital column-accurate inline comments that let your team discuss each punched line of code right in the browser!

Comment on the sequence fields in columns 1–6, the code area in columns 7–72, or the identification fields in columns 73–80. Comments are preserved across revisions and automatically resolved when the offending columns are re-keyed.

Drop accidents are the leading cause of delayed projects, and we all go through it. One moment you're carrying a freshly keyed COBOL program to the card reader. The next, 400 cards are scattered across the computer room floor. Without sequence numbers, you're spending the rest of the afternoon sorting by hand.

Review Board's Drop Detection Engine (DDE) reads the sequence numbers in columns 73–80 and automatically flags any cards that are out of order. A single click applies the suggested sort order, and your review request is back on track before your manager or the cleaning crew notices.

Decks without sequence numbers are handled gracefully via our industry-leading "Good Luck!" fallback mode.

Review Board's advanced text processing supports the latest in mainframe standards. A dedicated Punch Card Viewer decodes Hollerith-encoded cards in real time, displaying the decoded characters above each column so reviewers never need to reach for their encoding reference chart again.

We offer full support for 12-row Hollerith encoding as used by the IBM 026 and IBM 029 keypunch machines, plus BCD variants and automatic EBCDIC-to-Unicode transcoding throughout the interface. ASCII support is also available for those few environments that understand it.

Review Board parses and highlights your punch card source automatically. Column-sensitive rules enforce fixed-format conventions automatically, since nothing ruins a FORTRAN review like accidentally starting a statement in column 6 instead of column 7.

Built-in support is available for:

• FORTRAN II and FORTRAN IV
• COBOL 68 and COBOL 74
• RPG II
• BAL (IBM Basic Assembler Language)
• JCL (Job Control Language)
• PL/I

APL support is planned. However, we're still working out how to render APL's special character set on terminals manufactured after 1983, so please subscribe to be notified about future updates.

Whether you're running a modern emulator or maintaining genuine legacy iron, Review Board integrates seamlessly into your environment (provided you have a modern environment). Use the new rbt post --cards command to post an entire deck as a review request in a single batch job.

Don't see your system? Contact us. We aim to support anything with a card reader, a card punch, and a willingness to wait 45 minutes for a compile job.

Simply:

1. Install RBTools Mainframe Edition
2. Plug in any USB-to-punch-card adapter (sold separately; please check your local mainframe distributor)
3. Run rbt post --cards to scan, OCR, and post your entire deck as a review request automatically.

Compatible with the IBM 2540 Card Reader/Punch , IBM 029 Keypunch, and most UNIVAC card readers manufactured after 1962 (when using suitable adapters). Does not work with Hollerith tabulating equipment manufactured before 1928, as USB was not yet available.

Detecting card reader...  IBM 2540 (USB)

Feed deck face-down and press Enter.

Scanning card 1 / 42... OK

Scanning card 2 / 42... OK

Scanning card 3 / 42... WARNING: Coffee stain detected (col 14-19)

Scanning card 4 / 42... OK

...

Scanning card 42 / 42... OK

Validating deck...

Uploading deck...

Review request #4218 posted.