13 Apr
2001
13 Apr
'01
2:44 p.m.
On Fri, 13 Apr 2001, Chuck McManis wrote:
There were a couple of video capture systems for the
PDP-11 series, at USC
in the image processing lab we built one that digitized a monochrome camera
signal. It worked ok, but even better was the Micron drum scanner (boy I
wish I had that puppy hooked up to my 11/34!)
You can of course get a cheap digital camera (about $500 will get you one
that does 80% of what you need) or you can spend $49 on a scanner and using
a regular process camera get nice high resolution pictures of your
equipment. Further you can hook some scanners up to classic computers to
keep it "all in the family" so to speak, take pictures on a classic camera
(I love the Leica) and be even better.
--Chuck
Yes, somehow I trust chemistry over bits, myself. I have, for instance
gotten some extremely detailed scans of reasonably flat circuit boards by
placing them directly on a flatbed scanner. It doesn't pay to dwell on
the philosophical ramifications of the resulting "picture", though.
I second the rest of your sentiments as well, and will get a SCSI scanner
with a transparency adapter at some point. I got this Acer 620U mainly to
test out USB under Linux. It was inexpensive and good quality as
well. There were some patches I had to apply to get SANE working with it,
and you have to get a separate firmware uploader for Linux that somebody
has posted on the net, but it works extremely well.
jbdigriz