Online schematics: Any better (higher-res) versions available?

MajorHavoc

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Online schematics: Any better (higher-res) versions available?

I *REALLY* appreciate all the people who have spent time and other resources scanning the manuals and schematics that are available online. And the people hosting them, etc.

However, some of them are VERY difficult to read compared to the original: resolution too low, large sheets broken into pieces, etc. Two examples I can think of are Galaga & Hyper Sports. I know Galaga schematics can be better because my original manual is easy to read.

Are any better versions available?

If I had a large scanner I would scan them myself and put them out there.
 
Many people who scanned alot of the manuals originally probably only had scanners capable of letter sized documents. Coupled with the fact that some people may not have been all that familiar with scanning and the settings of their scanners. I've seen many scans where halftone pictures were scanned as "black & white documents" instead of halftone pictures. Alot of the time too, they do not set the scanner to "descreen" the halftone dots. This results in halftone pictures with rainbows through the image.

When I scan a manual and it's got halftone pictures, I scan it as a halftone picture. Granted this does indeed make the file size larger, but darn it, I need to see those pictures clearly when I work on something.

I notice lately that sometimes people compress a scanned manual file which results in a loss of resolution.

Schematics should be scanned at 600 d.p.i. so you can blow them up and see clearly.

I like my old Paperport scanner and ancient Paperport (Win98) software. It allows me to cleanup "not-so-good" original material and make it look a heck of a lot better. Most text only or text & line drawings I scan at 300 d.p.i.
 
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I know Galaga schematics can be better because my original manual is easy to read.

Are any better versions available?

The Galaga schematics I scanned are better resolution that the ones on the xmission archive.
Looking at the original schematics in the manual it may be possible to get a little better, but some of the text is a little indistinct. eg. on the video board look around 2M and 2K

http://jrok.com/schem.html

I have a 600DPI scan of the CPU board and I don't think it's a great deal better.

- James
 
The Galaga schematics I scanned are better resolution that the ones on the xmission archive.
Looking at the original schematics in the manual it may be possible to get a little better, but some of the text is a little indistinct. eg. on the video board look around 2M and 2K

http://jrok.com/schem.html

I have a 600DPI scan of the CPU board and I don't think it's a great deal better.

- James

Thanks James! Definitely superior.

And as I said, I appreciate what we have and understand that some of the limitations are:
1) Crappy original schematics (Wizard of Wor comes to mind)
2) Lower storage and bandwidth requirements in the past
3) Resources. We all have copious spare time to scan documents!
 
In regards to crappy original schematics, a scan will only be as good as the original is.

Alot of Midway's manuals in the early 80's were not very good in terms of quality. Many times I'd see broken lines, specs, blotches on the schematics. Time to get out the ruler and fine black ink ball point pen and doctor up those originals. Then they will give a better scan.
 
Alot of Midway's manuals in the early 80's were not very good in terms of quality.

That's the truth ! I once started cleaning up the Galaga schematics from a 600 DPI scan, something to do when when traveling and sitting at airports ;)

I only did the CPU board but got it to the point that all the chips, pins and parts were easily readable.
http://jrok.com/schem/galaga_CPU_600_cleaned.pdf

Should I end up doing more sitting at airports I'll work on the video board.

- James
 
The one thing I'm amazed at is that I haven't found a decent scan of the Electrohome G07 monitor schematics on the 'net. Every one I've seen is broken into 8 1/2x11 pages instead of being the original 11x17. Also, some of the resistor values are real hard to read.

I know I've seen other bad scans, but that's the one that's caused me the most greif.

As someone who actually owns a laser printer capable of printing on 11x17" paper, it's easy to get spoiled working from full size schematics :)

-Ian
 
Some of the Electrohome G07 _original_ manuals I have seen have hard to read component values due to ink smear. There are also halftone pictures of the chassis in those manuals. Whoever scanned the existing G07 manuals out there on the net scanned those pictures as B&W documents instead of halftones.
 
However, some of them are VERY difficult to read compared to the original: resolution too low, large sheets broken into pieces, etc. Two examples I can think of are Galaga & Hyper Sports. I know Galaga schematics can be better because my original manual is easy to read.

David Haynes is responsible for a HUGE number of scans that have been stolen and reposted all over the net without crediting him. (cf. "ArcadeDocs, run by KLOV, that slapped it's own header on all of his scans). (...and of course we can't forget all the stuff posted on spies by Al Kossow a decade ago either).

He's been scanning (and rescanning) manuals and schematics for over 10 years, and 10 years ago, they were pretty much at the state of the art for scanner resolution and fidelity, and they took a damn long time to download with at 57.6k with a modem.

If you think you can do it better now, go for it...
 
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