The Computer Archive  Preserving the history of companies that advanced the computer revolution

FYI, I have just created a Facebook page for The Computer Archive. Look to the right for the “Like” button to keep up with the latest developments and postings. My primary intention is to post site update information in somewhat greater detail than a Twitter feed can (which I might deactivate in the future.)

Just making a quick posting note that I am fixin to get back to scanning. I should have some time over the Christmas and New Years holidays to get back to this project.

On thing is that I am looking at upgrading from my Epson V30 to something faster. I have not had any problems with the Epson and the image quality has been very good.

Plustek has a few that look very interesting with the scanning area being very close to the edge of the scanner housing, thus making it easier to scan the magazines.

The OpticBook A300 can perform 12×17 scans and the specs say it is very fast but it is out of my price range.
The OpticBook 4800 is only letter size but, specs-wise, is much faster than the Epson.
The OpticBook 3600 still has the near-edge scanning capability but is half as fast as the 4800. And half the price.

Are there any other scanners that I should consider? If you have a thought, feel free to send me a note!

Just so that visitors don’t think the site is abandoned, it is not. My work load has taken 100% of my time so that scanning has been sporadic, at best. I am still responding to emails and taking care of some basic site management.

Cheers!

Just a quick note to let everyone know that I have removed the graphic ads from the web site. High on the list of reasons were the annoying ads with noise and pop-overs that were being fed. Also of note was the fact that nobody was visiting the ads, which makes me wonder if a PayPal “Donate” button would be a better way to help cover the costs associated with this project.

Why should I feel better?

I just scanned a page from Kilobaud in VueScan and couldn’t get the page straight. No matter how precisely I placed the page, it came up crooked. Grrrrr…

Out comes the ruler! Guess what? The page was printed crooked and too close to binding! So if a page in the archive looks crooked, it wasn’t me!

I’ve posted another issue of Kilobaud and am working on the next one. The first two that are posted were scanned and massaged to compensate for the old, yellowed paper, rotated to compensate for imperfect scans and generally cleaned up. The PDFs were exported at 200 dpi with a modest amount of JPG compression, just enough to keep file size under control.

The kicker is that this is a VERY time consuming process. Therefore, in the interest in time and general archival needs, I’m going to do things differently.

First, I’ve spent a good deal of time with VueScan (www.hamrick.com) to tweak the original image without destroying the quality. Sure, I use the supplied TWAIN drivers for convenience as that is what a lot of software supports. When I need the best scans possible, I use VueScan. I am always impressed how much more VueScan brings out and lets me dial in the image and it has impressed me again.

The result is that I’ve made a profile that makes the original scans look pretty decent. There will still be pages that show human error, those that are not aligned perfectly and show the edges of the paper, and the paper will still have some “character,” but it is be quite usable. After scanning a magazine, I’ll post it raw at either 150 or 200 dpi to “get it out there.” I keep the originals so that later I can optimize each image and then post those at 200 dpi.

So what about the 300 dpi originals? I’ll keep them separate. Think of them as the RAW originals.

Well, it’s back to work. Enjoy the Kilobauds! And don’t forget to check out VueScan for yourself.

Well, I have finally made some time to do some more scanning and posted a few files this weekend.

Of special note is that I have, with permission, placed the first Kilobaud Microcomputing magazine in the archive. I scanned the pages at 300 dpi and cleaned up each by hand as the old paper posed a few challenges. The copy I posted is 150 dpi and more highly compressed, roughly 50 pages per PDF. I will retain the originals so they can be published at a greater resolution or perhaps using a “flipping” page viewer in the future.

Let me know what you think.

I’ve noticed a number of mobile users hitting the site and was curious how good or bad it is. The front end of the site is using WordPress while the content of the archive is all 200 dpi PDFs, which I doubt view well on a mobile device. Anyhow, let me know and if y’all feel it is necessary, maybe I’ll make a “mobile portal” available. Your feedback is appreciated!

The outside links page is now fully database driven to make maintenance easier. Right now, they’ll all be in one list but I suppose that I’ll eventually break it up into major classifications such as Favorites, Museums, Personal Pages, etc.

Next step is to make the archive itself database driven. This will take a bit more time as I’m planning on making tables for Companies, Products and even Articles. Once I finish this, I’ll get back to scanning. I figure that I’m about 25% through my current stack of stuff.

Today I noticed the Osborne Encore is the “Computer of the Day” over at Old-Computers.com where they have a nice write up on it. In the text, they mention its younger brother, the Zenith Z-171, where they have a write up on it, as well.

Interestingly, near the top of my stack of stuff to scan I had the original literature for the Zenith Z-171 so I figured I put aside my development on this site for a few minutes and post it here on honor of its older brother being the computer of the day.

Speaking of development, I’ve been working on making the archive database driven. I’m just about finished put the links into a table, and am fixing to start on the ads and articles were there will be multiple databases linked together. It will be neat. Give me a couple of weeks and I may have a prototype to share.

Cheers!