Any interest in better scans of the 400/800 Field Service Manual?

[jamm]

4 minutes ago, MrFish said:

Alright, I checked it out; and most of what can be done would just benefit zooming in (to see antialiasing instead of jagged pixels); but you've got it scanned at a high enough resolution that most zooming a person would want/need to do never gets close enough to show much difference.

 

That was basically my conclusion, so I decided the extra file size wasn't justified by the negligible benefit.

[Curt Vendel]

On 3/21/2020 at 11:02 PM, jamm said:

Well, here are the results! 

 

Disappointingly, although not unexpectedly, most of the printed pages are multi-generational copies, so the quality leaves a lot to be desired.

Fortunately, the large-format schematics pages are clearly less deteriorated than the other pages.

 

I scanned everything it at 600DPI and did a good amount of manual cleanup.  Until @Curt Vendel produces pristine original copies (come on man, you know you have them!) these are the highest-quality digital copies I've seen.

 

I'm attaching two versions: one of the entire manual, and one of just section 2, which contains all the schematics.  Since section 2 contains all the large images, there's actually not that much of a difference in the file size between the two.

 

I'll be uploading this to Archive.org also.

 

 

 

 

Atari 400-800 Field Service Manual, May 1983.pdf 31.11 MB · 18 downloads Atari 400-800 Field Service Manual, Section 2, May 1983.pdf 23.29 MB · 15 downloads

I do have them, and they are crystal clear and on 36" x 24" sheets, so I have to take them to Kinko's to use their large format scanner... unfortunately we have this zombie apocalypse going on right now and as of tonight at 8pm they are limiting travel in NY, so I'm afraid I will have to get more creative and see if I can try to scan in sections and then run them through an Image Compositor and assemble them together and hope the stitching is clean.

 

 

[Curt Vendel]

9 hours ago, MrFish said:

 

Hi Curt... did you ever get a chance to scan the missing pages for the 815 manual?

 

Missing pages?  Fill me in please.

 

[jamm]

16 minutes ago, Curt Vendel said:

I do have them, and they are crystal clear and on 36" x 24" sheets, so I have to take them to Kinko's to use their large format scanner... unfortunately we have this zombie apocalypse going on right now and as of tonight at 8pm they are limiting travel in NY, so I'm afraid I will have to get more creative and see if I can try to scan in sections and then run them through an Image Compositor and assemble them together and hope the stitching is clean.

 

 

Zombie apocalypse, schmombie smockopolis! 

 

Stay safe out there - I didn't know you were in NY, which I hear is getting hit hard by this.  We've lived without crystal clear schematics for 40 years now; we can wait a little longer...

 

And, hey, are you talking about Microsoft's Image Composite Editor?  That thing is amazing and has saved me countless hours of work stitching together scans!

Edited March 23, 2020 by jamm

[Faicuai]

4 minutes ago, jamm said:

Zombie apocalypse, schmombie smockopolis! 

 

Stay safe out there - I didn't know you were in NY, which I hear is getting hit hard by this.  We've lived without crystal clear schematics for 40 years now; we can wait a little longer...

 

And, hey, are you talking about Microsoft's Image Composite Editor?  That thing is amazing and has saved me countless hours of work stitching together scans!

 

These are high-res. Photos, directly from my Manual... Click for max size (two times, I believe)... May work as a temp. solution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[jamm]

2 minutes ago, Faicuai said:

 

These are high-res. Photos, directly from my Manual... Click for max size (two times, I believe)... May work as a temp. solution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can't tell for sure if those are cleaner than the printed ones I received, but they look like they might be.  Is the rest of your manual in better shape, too (doesn't look like it got run through a Xerox copier once or twice too many times)?

[+MrFish]

2 hours ago, Curt Vendel said:

Missing pages?  Fill me in please.

The 815 PDF manual that you have up for download on your site is missing pages. You can see where I commented about it here a couple of years ago: 815 for sale on Ebay.

Basically, it's missing the back side of some pages (even numbered) near the beginning of the manual, and some near the end of the manual.

 

[atariry]

Many thanks ?

 

I didn't know such quality schematics existed, even in the official manuals.

[Curt Vendel]

On 3/23/2020 at 2:31 AM, MrFish said:

The 815 PDF manual that you have up for download on your site is missing pages. You can see where I commented about it here a couple of years ago: 815 for sale on Ebay.

Basically, it's missing the back side of some pages (even numbered) near the beginning of the manual, and some near the end of the manual.

 

Ah!

 

okay I’ll rescan it

[+MrFish]

24 minutes ago, Curt Vendel said:

Ah!

 

okay I’ll rescan it

Thanks, appreciated...

 

[BillC]

On 3/24/2020 at 10:43 AM, Curt Vendel said:

Basically, it's missing the back side of some pages (even numbered) near the beginning of the manual, and some near the end of the manual.

I did a quick comparison of the early missing pages, it appears they were probably not included because they were blank. Likely the same for the rest of the missing pages.

[+MrFish]

1 hour ago, BillC said:

I did a quick comparison of the early missing pages, it appears they were probably not included because they were blank. Likely the same for the rest of the missing pages.

It may be true for some pages -- that they are blanks. Without having a copy of the original, it's hard to tell for sure about some of them. But there is one missing page that clearly has info on it. Page 19 is referenced as the starting page for Chapter 10 (Duplication of the Master Diskette), for one; and it's obvious to by looking at page 20 -- which has been scanned -- that there is missing text which should precede it.

 

Aside from that, I leave it to Curt to find out if any of the other missing pages have text/data on them or not.

 

Edited April 1, 2020 by MrFish

[+kheller2]

On 4/1/2020 at 7:07 PM, MrFish said:

It may be true for some pages -- that they are blanks. Without having a copy of the original, it's hard to tell for sure about some of them. But there is one missing page that clearly has info on it. Page 19 is referenced as the starting page for Chapter 10 (Duplication of the Master Diskette), for one; and it's obvious to by looking at page 20 -- which has been scanned -- that there is missing text which should precede it.

 

Aside from that, I leave it to Curt to find out if any of the other missing pages have text/data on them or not.

 

I thought I was the only one that noticed that.

 

[hhos]

Were any updated, and complete, schematics ever sent on this?  I bought a 400-800 Field Service Manual that looks a little bit more complete than what is shown here.  I think it cost me about $30 with shipping from eBay.  I did not get the impression that they were rare.  Right now it says there are 4 left.

 

hh

 

[jamm]

33 minutes ago, hhos said:

Were any updated, and complete, schematics ever sent on this?  I bought a 400-800 Field Service Manual that looks a little bit more complete than what is shown here.  I think it cost me about $30 with shipping from eBay.  I did not get the impression that they were rare.  Right now it says there are 4 left.

 

hh

 

 

The completeness hasn't been in question (at least not of the 400/800 schematics) - it's been more a question of whether there's better quality available.  These are the scans I made of the version being sold on eBay.