Paper tape and 8th bit?

[Chuck Guzis]

On 8/26/2006 at 5:00 PM Dave Dunfield wrote:

>My question - Does anyone know what they are using the 8th bit
>for?  - I get nicely readable ASCII BASIC source out of it, except
>that the 8th bit seems to be somewhat randomly set on certain
>characters. If I strip the 8th bit I get what appears to be legit BASIC
>code.

If you look at the preceding character, is there any correlation to the 8th
bit of the next one?  The 8th bit just might be garbage left over and not
masked out.

Cheers,
Chuck