not critical that it be pretty - just readable. I
wouldn't be surprised
if you could rig up something like this pretty easily yourself; pick up
one of the fiche viewers that they can't give away at most university
and government auctions, get a cheap flatbed scanner (even pretty good
new ones can be had for under $100), take the mechanism out of the case,
and bolt it to the front of the fiche viewer. You'd have to remove or
disable the light source, since the bulb in the fiche viewer provides
the illumination. I don't think you'd even have to mess with the focal
length much; the fiche viewers normally do a rear-projection on frosted
glass, and the scanner is set up to focus on a sheet of paper an inch or
two away from the sensor, so with a spacer or two it should just work.
That sounds like an interesting enough project that I might even build
one if I had anything on fiche to scan. (I'm more interested in getting
Hmmm, I think I'll be keeping my eyes open for some stuff when I'm out
junking, this sounds a little bit interesting. If it wasn't for the
transparancy adapter on my current scanner, which I've got for antique 3-D
glass slides, I'd consider using that scanner, and replacing it with a
newer one. One advantage of building a setup like this, is you wouldn't
care about colour quality, just sharpness, and could buy the scanner
accordingly, probably saving a little (one can dream, right). I just might
know where I can get a semi-decent fiche reader for this. Hmmm.....
Zane
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast |
| healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| and Zane's Computer Museum. |
|
http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/ |