CUCPS Membership Cards

CUCPS membership cards are made from plain white card (slightly smaller than credit card size), and are edge-punched on a Facit 4070. Membership cards have the member's name and membership number printed on them; the membership number is in octal, with a single leading 0. More recent cards (since June 1997) have the Society's name printed on them as well, at the suggestion of Ian Jackson.

The format of the punched data on a card is as follows (read from left to right; the least significant bit is at the base of the card, with three bits below the sprocket holes and five above):

• About four or five leading null (0) bytes.
• The five bytes "CUCPS" in ASCII.
• A membership type code byte - 0 for ordinary member, 1 for honorary member, 2 for associate member.
• A three byte bigendian membership number. Should we need ever have more than 16777216 members, the magic number "CUCPS" or the membership type code will be changed to indicate a different format.
• A null-terminated user identifier (not necessarily unique). For Cambridge people (including those who are no longer studying at the University), this is normally their CRSid (or Engineering ID) (lower case letters) in ASCII; for others, this is generally their initials (lower case) or some other suitable string.
• Trailing null bytes to fill up the card.

Membership cards are produced by the Junior Treasurer - nag him if you're a member and don't have one.

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