I found the RD54 manual (I hadn't searched for it as I was really interested in the RD53 manuals). Regards Rob somewhere

try ur locaql lybrary they will more then likely have a machean u can use On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 3:18 PM, Dave Caroline <dave.thearchivist at gmail.com>wrote:

On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 4:55 PM, Dave Caroline <dave.thearchivist at gmail.com> wrote: My experience (which may vary from yours) is that reading fiche at libraries is free but printing copies of fiche costs money. -ethan

I would really like to get a description of the jumpers. The next level of detail might need to be the print set because I have a spin up/down problem which is not the sticking heads problem, and if I get desperate I might start using my newly acquired oscilloscope to see if I can work out why it is happening. I think there are people on this list who have fiche readers, but I don't know if it is possible to get machine readable scans from fiche. The spin up/down problem has only just started happening on one of my disks and is quite odd. I have it in a MicroVAX 2000. When I have seen these problems before the disk will spin up and down quite quickly, but in this case the disk spins fine during the POST, but then when it gets to TEST 7 the test pauses for a while, then the disk slows down, at which point the test prints its question mark, and then the disk speeds up again and the POST continues, but the disk is seen as faulty and that is that for the disk. I have not seen this behaviour before. Regards Rob IRC

On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 6:33 PM, Dave Caroline <dave.thearchivist at gmail.com> wrote: Allow me to suggest a polarizing filter on your camera to cut the glare. Also, a camera with an external trigger (my Olympus E-10 has that option) plus a tripod would help with stability (and raise production speed). -ethan

Thanks to the good offices of Mr. Graham, I now have a microfiche reader and quite a lot of fiche. Has anyone produced an index yet? (By "index" I mean which manual is on which fiche. So, picking at random one where I can clearly read "PDP-14 Maintenance Manual" I can see (ok, with a loupe) that it seems to have the manual EP-PDP14-00-MM-A. From a cursory glance, I think I could index a fair few of the technical manuals this way. Not sure about the diagnostics and the other stuff though. (Reading them would, I guess take several additional lifetimes :-)) Incidentally, the fiche user guide (EK-FICHE-UG-001) states that it needs a 42x reader. Pity I spent 15 mins fiddling with my EyeCom 2100 24x reader wondering what I'd done wrong or what the optician had missed before I realised ... Antonio arcarlini at iee.org

A few feet from me sits a metal box with just diags fiches (it says "VSX FS Micrfiche Library/Diagnostics Listings", so I guess that's just diags relevant to VAX systems and their options), so diags is huge. There are also OS source listings and (although they were never published AFAIK there were also source listings for any products that chose to have such produced). I wouldn't be surprised to find that some manuals were only ever available on fiche. Surely most diags were only available in source form on fiche? I'd like a list primarily so I can (relatively) quickly find what I have (and maybe what I'm missing). The fiche user guide explains how to keep the library up to date by inserting new fiche and removing old fiche. So there's plenty of scope for things to be mssing (especially if you really want to have -001 and -002 of some manual). They are what they are I'm afraid. I don't have a fiche scanner so I'm in no position to scan anything yet. Maybe one day (although I don't think I've seen scanned fiche output that looks as easy on the eye as a 600dpi scan yet). Antonio

I have done the whole manual now but there are a few repeats where I thought I had an error like shake I dont like how the centre area tends to burn out and make it difficult to read, I need a better method There are pics near the end showing the method of plate clamped to book shelf and camera mount clamped to plate its at about 5 ft 6" above the floor Dave Caroline

Dave, I finally finished downloading all the images. Thanks! Regards Rob

This is not my area at all (of course), but I am wondering if you could get some improvement by processing the digital image. Perhaps if you put a neutral density filter in the Fiche reader (no fiche) and photogrpahed the reader screen from that you'd get an indication as to how the light intensity varies over the screen. Then use that to scane the brightenss of a photo of an actual sheet of fiche. Can you use 'traditional' closeup methods (extension tubes, bellows, etc) with digital SLR cameras? If so, that's what I would be looking at using. -tony

Some phootgraphic enlargers have the facility to remvoe the enlarger head/optics leaving a baseboard with a column and a carriag that can be moved up and down .Such thigns are idea for converting into stands for setups like this. Normally all you need is a metal bar with a male screw thread at one end to fit the camera tripod bush (normally 1/4 BSW, may be 3/8 BSW on larger/older cameras) and some way of fixing it to the carriage. [1] You don't turn down the end of a 2" or so diamater metal bar to 1/4" and then trhead it, of course. It's much easier to drill a central hole in the end of the bar ant tap it 1/4" BSW (or whatever) and use a short length of studding screwed in there to provide the male thread. Either Loctite it in place, or fit a grubscrew. Certainly when photogrpahing small bits of machienry using a film camera, I use the slowest film I can get (low grain, on a digital camera set the efective film speed as low as possible to resduce noise) and have the lens stopped down to increase depth of field. This leads to long exposures (several seconds in some cases) which are not a problem if the setup is rigit -- PCBs, etc do not tend to go anywhere. Depth of field is much less of a problem on a flat subject like a fice of fiche, of course -tony

On 04/07/2011 20:20, Dave Caroline wrote: I don't think you need higher resolution, just more magnification. To answer Tony's question, in general, yes of course you can use rings, bellows, and all the other things with digital SLRs. I suspect he knew that, maybe he was asking if Dave has access to those things. Dave, can you get hold of a set of extension rings? or a bellows unit? That'll get you better magnification. And use a shorter focal length with tubes or bellows; that increases the magnification. A good trick if you can do it is to turn the lens round. Firstly that's because camera lenses are optimised for a short distance between lens and film/sensor and a longer distance between lens and subject; here the situation is reversed so the lens will usually work better back to front. Secondly, you can often get the lens closer to the subject when it's reversed, especially with a retrofocus lens (ie a "wide angle" lens). Don't try to focus by turning the focussing ring (or moving the bellows in and out if you have one); you've possibly already discovered it's easier to set the magnification and then move the whole unit back and forth to get the focus. Ideally, stop the lens down about halfway or just a bit more; that's when most lenses are at their sharpest. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

On Mon, 4 Jul 2011, Dave Caroline wrote: How does 6.72 U$D INCLUDING SHIPPING sound? http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=canon+eos+exten*+tube*+&_sacat=0&_… Not automatic stop-down, and noticably inferior workmanship compared to what Canon makes, but still quite usable. More magnification can make it feasable to photograph one frame of the fiche at a time. Higher resolution may make it feasable to photograph the entire fiche card at once. How many cards are you doing? My personal preference is to adapt to M39 and use an enlarger lens (flat field). With M39 lens and Exakta mount bellows, I have to adapt. There are also some cheap adapters for microscope objectives (RMS mount) But, an EOS reversing ring (again, Chinese workmanship) is very cheap. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

On 05/07/2011 07:50, Dave Caroline wrote: You'd need an awfully high-res sensor to do that! Back-of-envelope arithmetic: If you want something equivalent to scanning a 10.5x8 page at 400dpi, you need 3200 pixels across a (portrait) page. The 1978 BA11-K fiche I have in front of me is a low-magnification (by DEC standards one, and it's 16 pages across, but they're landscape format pages, so that works out to 10.5 x 400 x 16 = 67,000 pixels wide, and therefore the sensor would have to be about 67,000 x 48,000 = 3,216,000,000 pixels. Thats 3216 megapixels. The 1987 Bulletin fiche I have in front of me is 25 (portrait) pages across. 400dpi x 8" x 25 = 80,000, which is even worse. Even if you accepted 100dpi, you still end up needing a sensor of about 200 megapixels. Possibly, but a lens that's extended (for higher magnification) will reduce or remove the vignetting problem more quickly. Why isn't it suitable for lining up? It's a reflex -- so WYSIWYG. I could understand that it might be hard to get at the eyepiece when it's all set up, but you could try getting an angle finder attachment. The Seagull ones aren't "insanely great" quality compared to genuine Pentax ones (for example) but they're easily good enough for alignment, and cheap. -- Pete

On Tue, 5 Jul 2011, Dave Caroline wrote: would be nice IFF such hardware were available. a relatively short focal length lens usually has a pretty wide cone, and at those magnifications, even a C-mount lens will probably cover a 4x5 negative. But, THANK YOU for doing it! If the mount and jig arre solid enough, it should be possible to align the next frame without having to peer through the rig. If the mount is solid enough, refocussing should not be necessary - set to MANUAL FOCUS, and only focus once, with a visual re-check periodically. BTDT. BTDT In 1972 ("Environmental Systems Analyst"), we got a contract from EPA to study the enforcemtn activities in the "great lakes" states, and what effect they were having. My task was to photograph every document that looked relevant in their files. (In Illinois, that included written acknowledgements of payoffs!; in Minnesota it included documenting the relative amounts of work put into shutting down Reserve Mining (with lies in press conferences, etc.!) V less than 50% up time for Duluth's PRIMARY sewage treatment plant; in Michigan, it included teaching remedial photography techniques to their field operatives; and so forth) We edited those images down to a 10,000 page documentary appendix. I used a couple of pre-WW2 Leicas, a focoslide, and a Summar lens (a very bad choice) Most tripods from the 1960s through 1990s, you can remove the center post and re-install it upside down, making a crude stand. Since fiche image positioning is fairly standard, are there any dead surplus fiche viewers that you could pilfer the stage and positioning mechanism (with detents?) from? That mechanism combined with the mounting parts of a cheap bellows slide copying attachment (and using a much shorter focal length lens) would make a sweet, and even portable, rig! For photography, if you an provide enough light, you should be able to stop the lens down enough to give you a decent amount of latitude on the focus. I realize that you will want an exceptionally small Circle-Of-Confusion (the resulting blur size of a "point"), but a "decent" lens stopped way down (sharpest is, however, usually about three stops down from wide open), should solve the focus change issue. Although money is an issue, you might be able to build a cheap single purpose rig (and then get filthy rich charging the rest of us for fiche digitizing!) Good luck, -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

When you see ebay item 160562701815 from down under it becomes obvious what Im trying to do but at a sensible cost you can see I have a suitable stand with a fiche holder from an old fiche reader http://www.collection.archivist.info/archive/fiche_experiments/50mm_on_stan… This evening I have had a google/look at available open software if any for camera control libgphoto2 seems to cover the usb connection, fetching pictures and control I have got it to fetch pictures from both my cameras, but the graphical reference application (gtkam) by the same group is woefully backwards in that it can only download not control the camera. gphoto2 can use the lib to control and take pictures but its command line only! this is 2011 and pictures are graphics! some mug/volunteer should fix gtkam :) to be useful Dave Caroline

Automation is not out of the question for home brew I have made a 5 axix cnc, and retrofitted a lathe both use EMC2 software One thought is a hacked scanner, with the motor moving the fiche carriage instead but its not simple to have an easy focusing on that We could overlap scan sensors to cover the whole width and then calibrate out sensor positions and merge the resultant images, but that involves getting a pile of donor hardware and loads of effort as well. but the 2-3 k cost for simple and 10k for automatic are out of the question Catalogue the fiche and only scan on demand is my intended method. Probably helps to induce the odd donation too, if its an easy download one just sees costs and effort for ones labour Dave Caroline

At 03:55 PM 7/5/2011, Al Kossow wrote: At 03:23 PM 7/5/2011, arcarlini at iee.org wrote: Wouldn't any university- or state-class library have a digital fiche scanner? I believe my state historical society had a very good one even a few years ago. Might they let a hobbyist use it to save scans to a thumb drive? Even at a buck a page, it would take you a while to get to $15K. - John

Hi I was looking at ebay#270776716752 and was wondering, was this a bomb, fire control computer or what? It looks cool but already out of my price range. Dwight

On 7/6/11 7:29 AM, John Foust wrote: Assuming your time is free. I spent that much assuming it would have been a load a stack and walk away operation. It's not. With DEC 48X manuals fiche, you have to set the step and repeat to overscan, then crop in postprocessing. COM listings aren't as bad, fortunately, since the bulk of the 11 10 and VAX fiche I have are listings of some form and were machine generated the positioning is very accurate. Also, at that high a magnification, sheet positioning is extremely critical since the horizontal gap is so small. A buck a page for a full sheet of 48X COM output would be a good deal if you could get it through a service bureau for 300 or 400 equivalent DPI. There are over 100 pages/sheet at 48X.

I have not been following this thread at all, so forgive me if I ask a question that has been answered already. Just how much good documentation is *only* available on fiche? -- Will

I would think that everything available on fiche was originally, and more commonly, available on paper. How well the paper survived is a matter of discussion. -- Will

I wrote: Except for those that probably never did :-) For a start, diagnostics and source listings probably never existed on paper, although both would have existed as electronic copies. Diagnostics will have been available via the fiche libraries (I have a blue metal box with the FS VAX Diagnostic Listings, there will have been other libraries for minis and LCG at least). That's a huge a mount of stuff but hoepfully a fair chunk will have survived. Source listings for VMS were distributed with the OS until the V4.4 days (or thereabouts). I expect that amassing a complete set wouldn't be that hard. After that they transitioned to CD and there will be plenty of copies lying about. Source listings for other Oss may have been routinely distributed, but I don't know. (The Unix products may be a special case where this might not have been possible). Internally to DEC at least some products used to produce source listings on microfiche. There would typically have been only a few copies of those, so survival depends on how much of a packrat the group librarian might have been or how near someone might have been to the appropriate dumpster. Antonio arcarlini at iee.org

Remember this thread started with needing the RD53 manual and I had it on fiche not paper the cataloging activity is the priority for paper and fiche. Dave Caroline On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 5:50 PM, William Donzelli <wdonzelli at gmail.com> wrote:

A great anecdote, and a familiar story. Rather than relate my version of the experience, I'll offer a quote attributed to Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren: "Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile I caught hell for." -- Ian

Hello, On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 9:55 PM, Dave Caroline <dave.thearchivist at gmail.com> wrote: For Canon cameras, look at CHDK: http://chdk.wikia.com/ CHDK on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHDK HTH -- Torfinn Ingolfsen

On 05/07/2011 09:30, Dave Caroline wrote: My mistake, somehow I thought you were trying to do one fiche in one go! That I believe :-) But I'm sure you can rig up something to hold the camera still and in a fixed position relative to the fiche, also held still and flat. Even a wooden frame if you don't have a suitable tripod that can look straight down onto fiche on a makeshift lightbox. The tripod screw on any standard small-format camera or DSLR is a 1/4-inch Whitworth thread, and although that's not a common size in the States (other than camera shops), camera shops and secondhand shops here often have odd tripod screws as spares or off surplus pan/tilt heads or cheap ball heads or light fittings. I'm tempted to suggest if all else fails even a 1/4-inch 20tpi UNC is pretty close, but it's a slightly different thread form and could damage the camera if overtightened. So finding some way to keep the camera still, at a constant distance If the fiche is on a lightbox or something similar, tape a strip of plastic or wood onto the box, and slide the fiche along that to move have to worry about one dimension (X) instead of three (X, Y, camera distance). Low tech and easy. Of course the plastic strip needs moved for each new row on the fiche, but a little ingenuity and several narrow strips solve that. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

On 06/07/2011 08:58, Dave Caroline wrote: No, I didn't. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

What is the resolution of the digital 5*4 backs that I am told are now avaialble? I susepct rather less than that,. Does any digitla SLR have interchanable finders like my Exakta, Nikon F, etc film cameras? Since the optical quality here has no effect on the final image, it's the srt of thing yoy can have a go at making from odd lenses, prisms, etc. -tony

Which is, I suspect, rather less than the resolution of fine-grain sheet film... -tony

On Tue, 5 Jul 2011, Tony Duell wrote: My Panasonic M4/3 has an option called "shoot without lens"! which is their wording for 'dumb' lens. Mostly I use a Kopil Bellowsmat. Not as well made as the Nikon PB4, but more convenient. It's hard to find the Bellowsmat with any mount other than Exakta, so I've bought a few cheap (as in beer) Kopil bellows of other models with other mounts to swap their mounts with the Bellowsmats. Now I need to get rid of some non-Bellowsmat Kopil bellows that now have Exakta mounts. When I can get access to a lathe, I'll modify M4/3 mount adapters for the things that I need them for. If the focus is changing so much from one frame to another, then it calls for placing the fiche between glass.

Finding the images is a bit of a mine field, as there are variations in "standards" some are in columns some in rows, mixed sizes due to fold out pages intermingled some positive some negative and differing reduction ratio. and positive on a clear background means no clear edge At my prices thats has to be manual till I get a job/ win the lottery Dave Caroline On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 11:03 PM, Jim Stephens <jws at jwsss.com> wrote:

Fiche were routinely done at two resolutions(I just googled 3 magnifications 24x,42x,48x) that I know of, I have an Epson perfection 3200 photo scanner, its the first thing I tried a year or more ago, unfortunately its not good enough for the high magnification used for DEC fiche I have a paper RRD42 user manual which is 7" wide, that makes DEC fiche are/were made at 42 x reduction, therefore I need 16800 to get 400 dpi of an original 5 times higher resolution than my Epson has. Dave Caroline On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 11:53 PM, jim s <jws at jwsss.com> wrote:

On 05/07/2011 21:11, Tony Duell wrote: The autofocus might or might not -- decent ones will, and all sensible SLRs can turn the auto off. Which, actually, is what you'd want for closeup work, especially repetitive work with a fixed stand. It doesn't work, but many DSLR lenses do allow manual control. Almost all of mine do. Sure, but I was thinking of resolution not depth of field. And I'm sure you have lenses that don't open up as wide as f/8 ;-) same as I do. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

On Wed, 6 Jul 2011, Alexander Schreiber wrote: specifically, which ones permit you to remove the pentaprism for "waist level": view of the ground glass?

Off the top of my head, and ignoring camras like that older Prakticas that had a built0in waist level find and a clip-on pentaprism option that fitted into the hood of the waist level finder... Nikon F, F2, etc; Canon F1, etc; Exakta Varex. Exa 1, Exakta RTL1000; Paktica VCL (and later models in that series). Miranda Sensorex, etc. Pnetax LX (I think); Start; at least one Zeise COnsarex (not the Bullseye one); Leica Visoflex attachment for rangefinder cameras; etc. And therre's even the 16mm film Narciss. -tony

True :-( Yeahbut eve some of myu cheaper film cameras have filter mounts and cable release sockets. But I guess filters are less important on point-n-shoot cameras than they used to be (you don't need the well-known yellow filter [1] to enhace the clound effects on black-and-white film with a digital camera, you don't need colour correction filters, at least not in a point-n-shoot) [1] Whichewas even built in to some box camers with a sliding control to move it into the light path. Do any DSLRs have a standard rather han a propriatray connection for this? What, including interchangeable finders, flashbulb synchronisation, etc :-) -tony

On 06/07/2011 22:30, Alexander Schreiber wrote: True, but only for X-sync, which is what's needed for electronic flash. Less likely to have FP or M sync for flashbulbs, which I bet is one of the things what Tony was thinking of, and in fact I don't think I've seen that on a DSLR. But then, modern DSLRs are designed to be used with modern electronic flash, not bulbs, which are fairly hard to find now. Ditto for a lot of reasonably modern (last few decades) film cameras, actually. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

I am told they turn up on E-bay fro mtime to time, probbly at excessive prices. There are collectors ofd such things, who I assume never think of actually using them (and thus ruining them for the collection). Of course Polaorid made a bulb-type flash where the bulb lasted fro more than one exposure (!). It was a normal filamnet blub -- I can't rememeber if it was 6V or 12V. it was supplied with 45V from a cpaapcitor (charged film, this was all you needed for indor shots. It's bascially magnesium powder and an oxidising agent. I do not advicse making it for obvious reasons. FWIW, when I demonstratee my calssic comptuers, poeple are welcom to take photos of them (and when they're in bits, I don't mind photos being taken of the PCBsm etc) with any equipment _apart from flashpowder. Film or digital, still or cien, whataver, is fine (It won;t damage by machine). Electornic flash or even flashbulbs are fine. But I do not want my classic comptuers covered in magnesium oxide... Yes, I am told may do not. I wonder why not, given that I use a cable relase with film cameras al lthe time. Ah... It's a pity such things are not standardised and documented. After all, there are only 2 common [1] cable release fittingd, the tapered male thread used originally on the Compur shutter and later used on just abotu every camera, and the larger female trhead used on screw mount Leicas, Nikon Fs, etc. [1] To quieten the pedants, there are mroe. Ive seen a beyonet fittong on one old leaf shutter, for example. On a digital camera, I would agree. On a film Leica, it bascially turns it into an SLR and is useful for closeup work and telephoto lenses. -tony

i made my own for my pentax outa one of these http://www.pccables.com/images/87031.jpg On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 5:21 PM, Pete Turnbull <pete at dunnington.plus.com>wrote:

Indeed I was :-). As I said, somewhat tongue-in-cheek. This does not suprise me, and relaisitcally on the few times I use flash equipment, I do use gas-disharge flash, for obvious reasons. Of course you van use flashbulbs on X sync provided you set slow enough shutter speed for the bulb to have ignited before the shutter closes .A lot of cmears with X-sync only tell you to set a speed of 1/30s or so. Then there are cameras, often leaf-shuttered (Compur, Prestor, etc) where you have choice of M or X xync, but if you want th self timer you have to select X sync. For a good reason/ The same escapement is used both for the self trimer delay and the sync delay in M sync mode. More of a problem are old cemaras with M sync only (yes, thye do exist, I am handling one right now, a VP Exakta). You can't use electornci flash ith those at _any_ speed, the cotnats will have closed afd fired the flash before the sutter is open. I am considering making an electronic delay unit to conteract the inbuilt sync delay. -tony

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And I **searched** it there... :( Thanks a lot! :) --- Enviado do meu Motorola PT550 Meu site: http://www.tabalabs.com.br ----- Original Message ----- From: "JP Hindin" <jplist2008 at kiwigeek.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Monday, June 27, 2011 5:28 PM Subject: Re: HP1650A boot discs