Reading old HP-65 program cards

[rprosperi]

I've found that 95+% of the original HP-65 cards I've tried could be read. That includes both original HP-made 'clipped' cards that came with Pacs as well as user-written cards; I don't recall any specific bias to be worse for one group on the other.

Are the NASA cards the normal 'white' blank cards that HP sold, which NASA wrote programs on in the normal end-user way, or were they the special limited-run professionally made cards which HP would manufacture for large or significant corporate customers, in which case it's hard to say how well/if they are preserved, as not many of those made it out into the wild, and they may have been prepared in a special way.