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Old 01-19-2008, 10:57 PM
Grant Stockly Grant Stockly is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2005
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Forbin376 View Post
I have been inspired by Grant’s work here to start a preservation project of my own as an owner of both an Altair 8800A and an Altair 8800B. To that end I have the following manuals. I can scan these in as images with a decent resolution (300 to 9600 DPI). I am looking for community response to help me decide the scanning resolution desired and which manuals would be of greatest interest to be done first. My Altair 8800A manual does not include the assembly instructions. Grant’s information here is much better than mine. The other manuals are complete as far as I can tell.

I scan all manuals at 600dpi B/W and color. This is easy for me because I have access to a duplexing sheet feed scanner. Drop in 750 pages and wait 2 hours.

I don't see anything over 600dpi being worth it.

When I recreate a manual I do the following steps: (I use a Photo Shop macro for a lot of the brainless stuff. Photo Shop has a batch feature and will open-apply-save an entire folder easily...
-Convert all B/W scans to greyscale (to prepare for rotating) (MACRO!)
-Precision rotate with several "guides" per page to align text and graphics to the page. Most pages require .1-.3, the most I've ever done must have been 2 degrees. (MANUAL!)
-Delete all the copy specs that I can see at a decent zoom (MANUAL!)
-Change all page sizes to 8.5x11 (the rotation process makes the pages larger) (MACRO!)
-Examine the pages with the most text and graphics to determine the margins (and page number location) (MANUAL!)
-Delete all existing Photo Shop margins, apply margins and page number location guides (MACRO!)
-Reposition all pages and page numbers (MANUAL!)
-Print a proof, look for obvious copy specs that I missed

Its a long process. I usually spend 50-100 hours on computer kit manual depending on the quality of the source material. Its a labor of love. As far as I am concerned I want the kit builders to have the best quality available. Plus, once the initial work is done its a File->Print operation. No sense in doing less than my best.

I have made available the Kenbak and 8800 manuals for free. These manuals are high quality and text searchable. I have not uploaded the 680 manuals yet, but they will be up soon.

I am a digital pack-rat and archivalist. I save EVERY step above, so that if I want to go back and change something I can. With hard drives being so cheap it only makes sense!

I will upload some pictures of the process. I don't expect you to take these steps. Just scanning the manuals is good enough. The raw data can be processed any time in the future. If you want, I can scan them for you. I don't know what kind of equipment you have access to.
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