Albert Posted September 18, 2002 Share Posted September 18, 2002 http://www.westg8.com/atari/For those of you who enjoy reading game manuals, TL Westgate has assembled a huge compendium of Atari 2600 manuals into a single PDF file. Called the Atari Manual Tome, this collection of Atari 2600 manuals is nearly 400 pages and includes hundreds of manuals all consistently formatted. The manual tome has a table of contents that allows you to jump directly to an individual manual, plus you can easily search the tome for any text. You can download the 3.3MB PDF at the Atari Manual Tome web site. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joshk Posted September 18, 2002 Share Posted September 18, 2002 Very nice! I only have about 65 myself and this will help fill in until I can get an original. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JCroniger Posted September 19, 2002 Share Posted September 19, 2002 This is fantastic. Now I won't have to handle my manuals. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheSmirk Posted September 19, 2002 Share Posted September 19, 2002 WOW! Damn impressive! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cropsy Posted September 19, 2002 Share Posted September 19, 2002 This is awesome idea. It will be great to put on my laptop so I have access to a heap of Atari manuals when I'm offline. No more wondering what the various game variations do with no way to find out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mvigor Posted September 19, 2002 Share Posted September 19, 2002 He he. Take THAT E-Bay CD sellers! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fretwobbler Posted September 19, 2002 Share Posted September 19, 2002 This is pretty cool. If TL Westgate is reading this......do you fancy doing one for catalogues as well? That would be great too! Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RCorcoran Posted September 19, 2002 Share Posted September 19, 2002 We're not worthy! Thanks a load for this gem. I hate having to dig around to find a manual... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MegaManFan Posted September 19, 2002 Share Posted September 19, 2002 .. who thought color pictures of the manual covers would be included? I suppose it would take up too much space and memory though. Maybe there should be a seperate "tome" for just the covers - that to me would be just as interesting as the current (and might I add very good) "tome." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mvigor Posted September 19, 2002 Share Posted September 19, 2002 I would also like to see at least the covers included, perhaps the entire manual scanned. However, even using 72 dpi JPEGs this would increase the size of the tome from 2 or 3 MB to at least 40 or 50 MB. Using 150dpi or higher "printable" covers would require at least a CD size document. Too much to download for many of us. I CAN see including a 100 x 130 dpi thumbnail image of each manual. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joel D. Park Posted September 19, 2002 Share Posted September 19, 2002 Any idea how the Tome was done?? Was it OCR'ed (Optical Character Recognition) or compiled from the HTML Manuals that exist? Reguardless it's incredibly, incredible. Later, Joel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted September 19, 2002 Share Posted September 19, 2002 He he. Take THAT E-Bay CD sellers! Give it a week and those clowns will include it on the CD. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turnspike Posted September 19, 2002 Share Posted September 19, 2002 Wow, this is nice. And the price is right for the bargin collector like myself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
feo Posted September 20, 2002 Share Posted September 20, 2002 He should add a disclaimer RIGHT AWAY, so that people do not sell this on eBay. It sucks when somebody makes money out of your work and you do not see a single penny. I noticed Gremlins was not included. Am I the only guy that likes that one? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phosphor Dot Fossils Posted September 20, 2002 Share Posted September 20, 2002 Not sure the disclaimer has ever stopped anyone, as many of those CDs as I see on eBay anymore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xot Posted September 21, 2002 Share Posted September 21, 2002 Yeah, I gotta concur. This kicks about 400 kinds of ass. I now have a more-or-less complete manual collection sitting right below my television. Best part is it doesn't matter if my kids rip it to shreds, I can just zap out new pages as necessary! AWESOME! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IndyJones1023 Posted September 22, 2002 Share Posted September 22, 2002 Hi all! Thanks for the kind words. I'm glad to know others are getting good use out of my hobby. And, in response to some comments, I would never think of charging for this. I mean, if I saw this online, I wouldn't pay for it. But someone was right, maybe I should put a disclaimer abour reselling or CD compendiums. I'm redoing the manual and only in the D's, so check my site every so often. I need to flesh it out a bit more, too. And probably give some detail into what went into making the Tome. So until then . . . TL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IndyJones1023 Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 Wow, blast from the past! I haven't checked in here in a while and I thought of this thread. It was over 10 years ago! I compiled the Tome from dozens and dozens of individual text files I discovered on an FTP site full of Atari ROMS. I concatenated all the text files into one large text file of all of them put together, then I pulled that into MS Word and started formatting. I threw in a few pix and added links when PDFed it and VOILA! I'm glad others have gotten use out of it. It took a long time, but it was during slow times at my old job that I put it together, so it was a fun way to pass the time and reminisce a bit. Around the holidays I always get nostalgic, so I've been perusing my Atari boards and will start playing my old systems here soon. Happy holidays, all! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregory DG Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 (edited) Wow, gotta be a record! Still was some GREAT work compiling all that info! Edited December 10, 2013 by Gregory DG Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nathan Strum Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 I still use the Tome. I kept hoping for an update with more games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IndyJones1023 Posted December 10, 2013 Share Posted December 10, 2013 I might have updated, but I lost my original Word document along the way, unfortunately. I did fire up the old girl today, though, and played some old carts. Alas, my 800XL doesn't seem to work anymore. I'll pour some out for her this weekend. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IndyJones1023 Posted April 16, 2021 Share Posted April 16, 2021 Hi, all! I'm the guy who made the Tome. My site was down for a while (I was just lazy after it got hacked). Back up now, in case you want to download the tome. 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted April 16, 2021 Share Posted April 16, 2021 Great to have it back. Any plans to update the Tome? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IndyJones1023 Posted April 16, 2021 Share Posted April 16, 2021 Alas, I recently went through dozens (over a hundred, easily) old CD-ROMs and could not find the Word document from whence it came. I am flummoxed as to how I could have lost that document, as I am somewhat of a digital packrat. So unless someone can de-PDF the existing version, no more updates. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted April 16, 2021 Share Posted April 16, 2021 (edited) 13 minutes ago, IndyJones1023 said: So unless someone can de-PDF the existing version, no more updates. There are online services to do so: https://www.ilovepdf.com/ (looks best at first glance) https://pdf2docx.com AtariManualTomeV151.docx Edited April 16, 2021 by Thomas Jentzsch 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.