I've started scanning in that book I promised .. ooh ages ago! :-)
Where's the best place to upload the pages ? As a teaser I've included the front cover and contents pages here.
Only 160 more pages to go! ho hum!
Regards
Mark
You've got to love an electronic projects book that has a section titled "Orwellian Mind Control" ! :)
BTW, the scan will be much appreciated. This book is, of course, on my 'wish list', but the only copy currently for sale is listed at $50. A bit too rich, methinks, right now. I'll wait until the recession has the seller's babies on the brink of starvation, then I'll make him a lowball offer. >:D
I checked this book out years ago from my local Library, but didn't have the technical ability to complete the projects (I was pretty young). If I remember correctly, though, the projects were fairly straight forward and I wouldn't have any problem with them now. I'm sure that the components that are referenced within the text could be modified to current ones that are readily available.
I am eager to read this text when it becomes available!
Douglas
:)
I remember the original post while lurking the net for this book many moons ago...guess what? I'm gonna find a copy somewhere in the many libraries of the Great White North here and see if they can 'lend' me the few surviving copies they have...from my understading there's only 3 copies left in the entire library system..one in BC, another in Quebec and the final one in Ontario!!!
I really misss this book and managed to have made a few photocopies of the digitizer - lost a few papers along the way :(
If I can lay my hands on a copy - I'll scan the entire thing myself and pass it along...it's just a fun book to read let alone try out some stuff. I remember trying to find an 8 bit chip back in 94 or so and no dice :(
Here's all the pages I photocopied off the book - its mainly the digital recorder section missing a few pages inbetween for the digi-scope program which I found slow and useless at the time (oh how young and impetuous I was *sigh*)
http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d22/darkatx/page60.jpg
http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d22/darkatx/page61.jpg
http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d22/darkatx/page62.jpg
http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d22/darkatx/page63.jpg
http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d22/darkatx/page64.jpg
http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d22/darkatx/page65.jpg
http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d22/darkatx/page70.jpg
http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d22/darkatx/page71.jpg
http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d22/darkatx/page72.jpg
Enjoy the tidbit! :)
Hey, every little bit helps the war effort! Thanks!
Nice to see you here, darkatx. You going to make it to World of Commodore (http://www.tpug.ca/woc) this year? It's looking like we're going to break 100 attendees again this year!
I have 2 major regrets - not being able to see the TPUG guys since 2004 and missing out on meeting Jim Butterfield at the following shows.
I work weekends man :(
But that's a great link you posted there especially the ide64 piece and demo - awesome!
It's great to see Lief still doing stuff on the breadbox though... :)
100 people for the show - that's awesome man! :)
Quote from: darkatx on December 05, 2008, 09:15 PMI work weekends man :(
I know the feeling... I've missed out on several retrocomputing events for the same reason. :(
It's a shame you weren't able to make it because it was a blast. The downside is that I'm totally knackered after staying up until 4am hacking, talking, joking and drinking for two nights in a row. It gets harder ever year...
Yeah, I was bummed out thinking about missing a great time and all but what can ya do?
Actually, I've already went to my local library and have put in motion for them to find me the book...as well as three other non-related art books. The wait can be several weeks long it seems so lets cross our fingers and hope for the best. :)
If I don't hear anything from them in a few weeks I'll go to the library next town over and try that one...lol...I think I might just try them tomorrow and see which one gets to it first :)
I got my hands on a copy - the library called and told me it was in so I'm picking it up tonight...Yee-Haw! :)
Quote from: darkatx on January 10, 2009, 07:20 AMI got my hands on a copy - the library called...
How does that saying go? Victory goes to those who are patient. Or is it... The reward goes to those who are patient. :)
Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
The Other Group of Amigoids
Catch the Fatman and Circuit Girl on http://vimeo.com
(with Commodore content in the next show)
Quote from: darkatx on January 10, 2009, 07:20 AM
I got my hands on a copy - the library called and told me it was in so I'm picking it up tonight...Yee-Haw! :)
Is this the same book as the one you showed us some scans from in your post on december 4'th?
Man, this book is sweet - I might even put in an offer to buy the thing off the windsor library seeing as its hardly taken out.
Ummm, I'm totally unsure what's the best format to post this up as...I could try to put it altogether as a PDF or combined zip file of scanned jpgs. I could even try converting it to OCR if that's easier - just a little concerned of a few type-o's slipping in from the software especially for part & part numbers lists...
Hell, I'm even thinking of posting up a chapter at a time since its over 135 pages or so...I got til the end of the month to borrow this thing so it should definitely be posted by then.
Nice :)
That book must be over 20 years old. Amazing that you found it at the library. That gives me ideas about the libraries over here :)
The nicest format is always PDF which has been OCR'ed. That gives you readability, searchability and a small file. It's also of course the format that includes the most work, especially the OCR part.
If you need any help, please let me know :)
I already have over 120 pages scanned - the book has nearly 180 total...just another couple of hours and the scanning should be complete.
My OCR sfotware is rather old but still does the job - I've already did the first 8 pages of the Forward and Contents pages - I'll try to get the fonts as close as I can and I plan to scan the basic code printouts in jpeg format to eliminate the chance of OCR type-O's. ALso all photos will be jpeg greyscale...still I can see this thing being a sizeable file when I get it into DOC, RTF & PDF formats.
I'll zip em up and post them sometime hopefully this week when I get this thing sorted. :)
Sounds like a great deal of work! We all appreciate your effort :)
It will be very interesting to see the complete book.
Let me start by apologizing for not getting this done sooner...right now the entire book is scanned and OCR'ed...and with the small excpetion of the last 3 pages that isthe Index...its completely reformatted.
I foolishly tried to save it in RTF format forgetting about the picture limitation since my program can only exports to PDF - (doesn't import so I have no other option to save as I go except with html - should have tried DOC I guess but wordproecessing isn't my strong point)
I'll throw in the pictures and fixing them up and resizing them and put the index in a table and should have something to post up either tonight or tomorrow.
Let me say this, the book is about 20 years old but the information is still pretty ahead of its time.
At the very least, its an extremely good read full of novel of ideas. :)
HTM would b e nice too, then it can be placed online as a series of web pages.
I want to build the "Orwellian Mind Control" device and take it in to work. >:D
(http://www.postimage.org/Pq3mXr0.jpg) (http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=Pq3mXr0)
Welp, here you go.
http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/10/16/1515663/EPC64128.pdf (http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/10/16/1515663/EPC64128.pdf)
Some of the scans are piss-poor due to my OCR software wanting 300 dpi...but it still should be legible for the code...things would have been smoother if people could abstain from writing on the pages themselves (spent hours cleaning up pages in Photoshop)
I could save it as an HTML but the page divisions would be obliterated in that format since I tried already to save a portion earlier but its filesize is tiny compared to the DOC and PDF versions I made.
Wow! This is awesome, must have taken you a lot of time to complete this! Thanks for your work!
Am downloading right now. THANK YOU VERY MUCH! I'm really looking forward to this book. It should be a lot of fun. :)
Great work! Many thanks for this book.
I skimmed through this yesterday, and here are my first thoughts.
(1) The title is a bit of a misnomer, as a couple of chapters are devoted to software projects. Fractals, including the Mandelbrot set, to be exact. Still great stuff.
(2) There's a very good overview of how the 6526 CIA chips work, so if you're fuzzy on that topic this book is a nice place to start.
(3) All the basics of working with the user port are well covered. He takes a hacker's point of view, using an electronics breadboard with lots of loose parts and jumper wires. There are no PC etch patterns here.
(4) His chapter on turning a DRAM chip into a B&W TV camera is awesome in its creativity for the day, and an interesting read. Totally impractical in this day of extremely inexpensive TV cameras, but quite a hack for back then.
As far as the scans themselves go, the OCR seemed to work very well. There are few glaring mistakes. The fact that the program listings are jpegs means you'll have to type them in, just like in the old days, but it does ensure there are no annoying OCR mistakes. That's a common problem in scanning program listings from any source. Also, the illustrations need to be redone at a higher resolution. It's just plain impossible to read many of the text labels in them. That being said, I'm very grateful to darkatx for scanning this book. It's a classic, and I know scanning books is a time-consuming process. I'd much rather have it with a few glitches than not have it at all.
I highly recommend this book as a great place for a budding C64 hardware hacker to start, and it's got enough going on to be of interest to old pros, too.
Yeah, thanks for the many kind words everyone - it's because of this very thread that got me back into the commodore community again after lurking on and off for a few years. Looking on the finished product now, Airship certainly hit every nail square on the head with the many flaws in the book and quality...
Again, my fault on the first 4 chapters of diagram scans (the latter half seemed much better) - I tried to save my progress and as a result my scans were greatly deteriorated from the dreaded GIF conversion of saving it to HTML. I tried to save it in other formats but at the end of the day I need to get a proper word processor to do the job...heck I need to get something better than the OCR software I currently have - it's over 10 years old...LOL. This was a definitely a learning experience for me, but my main failing was patience...I just fell into the 'get it done at whatever the cost' mindset and that is what hurt the quality. For that folks I'm sorry...
Yet, I have all the original pages scanned at 300 dpi which gives me a pixel ratio of almost 2000 * 1500 so I could always go back to it later on and improve the quality much more after I'm finished my next project I'm currently working on now. :)
And hey thank Mr. Smith here for getting the ball rolling, I even used his cover scan for this PDF...so thanks a lot man you truly started this community effort. :)
Quote from: darkatx on January 24, 2009, 07:16 AM...my main failing was patience...I just fell into the 'get it done at whatever the cost' mindset and that is what hurt the quality. For that folks I'm sorry...
No reason to be sorry. I'm happy with whatever is there. :)
That was a long download,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
Catch the Fatman and Circuit Girl at
http://vimeo.com/jeri
Likewise. I appreciate very much the effort you put into this. It's much more important to have it than to wait years and never get it.
And please forgive my style. I'm an old magazine reviewer, so I have a tendency to be a bit brutal, even when I really like something. :)
QuoteAnd please forgive my style. I'm an old magazine reviewer, so I have a tendency to be a bit brutal, even when I really like something.
Are you getting warmed up for my project? :laugh:
Dan...
Real soon now, Dan. At least the USPO finally delivered it! :)
See your messages.
Since it's under the same umbrella of the book - found this in my dad's basement.
http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/10/16/1515663/c64kybrd.pdf
How to create and add a music keyboard or create an adapter for an existing synthesizer keyboard to the commodre 64. The code came out a bit light but it's pretty straightforward.
:)
I'd like this better as a continuous slide controller, as in the venerable PAIA Gnome synthesizer.
(http://www.synthmuseum.com/paia/paignome01sm.jpg) (http://www.synthmuseum.com/paia/paignome01.html)
Quote from: darkatx on January 29, 2009, 05:06 AM
Since it's under the same umbrella of the book - found this in my dad's basement.
http://www.fileden.com/files/2...4kybrd.pdf (http://www.fileden.com/files/2...4kybrd.pdf)
How to create and add a music keyboard or create an adapter for an existing synthesizer keyboard to the commodre 64. The code came out a bit light but it's pretty straightforward.
:)
I can't get the file, the link just takes me to the fileden homepage :(
I'm fixed the link now
http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/10/16/1515663/c64kybrd.pdf
Try this out..and the reason why I posted it was it seemed to be open to exploring and expanding the music project. Lot's of room for novel ideas for interfacing with the SID. ;)
Definitely a good read none-the-less...if it stops working then I'll report it later on in the day...Fileden might do another reset in the next 24 hours or so.
Quote from: darkatx on January 29, 2009, 02:43 PM
I'm fixed the link now
Now it worked much better, thank you :)