Best way to get some old manuals scanned and put up online? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / testgear

author: JLNY
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2017, 07:03:51 pm
content: All,I recently finished up some repairs on a very old HP 140A/1420A/1401A oscilloscope mainframe, and I ended up buying a couple paper manuals off of ebay for the 1420/1401 plugins to do the repairs, as I wasn't easily able to find any scans available online.That said, now that the repairs are finished, I would like to look into getting these manuals scanned so that I can send the PDFs (or whatever preferred file format) to somewhere where they might be put up online for public domain use. That way, anyone else working on these will have easier access to them than I did. Are there any good professional services willing to do a small-volume scan like this, or hobbyists out there with the proper equipment willing to make decent-quality scans of things like the images or fold-out schematics? If there are any savings in doing a bulk order with a professional service, I might ask around and pool together an order with some friends of mine whom I believe also have various manuals that might not be currently available online or not of good quality.p.s. Before I get a bunch of replies telling me how ancient the HP 140A is: yes, I'm fully aware the HP 140A (or at least the 450KHz-bandwidth 1401A plugin) is no longer useful as a modern, daily-use scope. Probably the few working units still out there are mostly being maintained as collectors items or nostalgia pieces than as serious hobbyist equipment-- although it is worth noting that the 140A mainframe is fully compatible with the still semi-useful (but also somewhat dated) 855X spectrum analyzer plugins.

author: KE5FX
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2017, 07:08:34 pm
content: You can send them to Artek Manuals (Google for current URL). However, there's a good chance they already have them scanned, or someone else does. That scope isn't all that obscure.

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2017, 07:25:52 pm
content: Advertising technical HP document about it, with built inPLANNED ANTI-OBSOLESCENCE!http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1963-09.pdf

author: JLNY
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2017, 07:37:27 pm
content: That sounds fine, but my idea was to put them somewhere where they could be had for free as something of a service to others. Artek does seem to have them, but you have to pay to download them.Also, I do remember seeing that document about the "anti-obsolescence."I mean, the 855X spectrum analyzer plugins along with the updated 141T mainframe had a pretty long run, and have been a pillar of the hobbyist community for decades, but I don't think that the scope plugins for the 140-series are as well-regarded. Did anyone ever use those TDR plugins that they made for the 140A? IIRC, a mentor of mine used to use the 1416A "swept frequency indicator" plugin for taking swept SWR measurements back in the days before network analyzers.

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2017, 08:03:33 pm
content: DefinitelyFREEPDF manuals, downloads, is the service to aim for. If you manage to scan/"donate" your manual(s).I'm surprised that "PLANNED ANTI-OBSOLESCENCE", was a thing in 1963. That was about 8 years before the first microprocessor was brought out, only just after integrated circuits were invented, and transistors were only just becoming available at lower prices.I.e. I think electronics was rather expensive in 1963, and generally designed to last a long time, be strongly/robustly built and be rather maintainable.Unlike today, in general.But I guess they probably saw technology as moving at a fast pace, even then. With these new/fast fangled things, called transistors, increasingly coming along ...I think most things were still valves/tubes, in 1963, with transistors only appearing in transistor radios (most were still valve/tube), and some things like the odd (semi-experimental) computer.

author: KE5FX
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2017, 08:12:11 pm
content: You're not "paying to download them," so much as you're paying for the work that Artek invested in scanning them and making them available.The difference in quality between a random "free" scan and a typical Artek scan is very noticeable. Anyone who has actually scanned massive HP manuals with their accompanying foldouts knows it's not a trivial amount of work.

author: JLNY
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2017, 08:53:39 pm
content: Exactly, so I was wondering if there would be any reasonable way to get the manuals scanned for a one-time cost (at my expense) so that I can "donate" it to everyone else. Are there any document scanning services that could do this on a small scale for one or two manuals? and then after that, are there any websites where I might be able to send the PDFs for archiving? I definitely know first-hand that a lot of existing free scans are not of excellent quality.I mean, one could probably just download one of the Artek ones or whatever and just distribute it for free, but that seems a bit pirate-y...

author: edpalmer42
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2017, 10:52:17 pm
content: Have you considered sending the manuals to the Internet Archive at archive.org ? They already provide many manuals. I see they've got a copy of the 140A manual, but it's not terribly good. I don't know if they would be willing to scan them and return them, but it's worth considering. A few years ago they stepped in and saved thousands of manuals from a manual-copying company that was going out of business.Ed

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2017, 11:27:21 pm
content: See if someone you know has a Fujitsu ScanSnap series scanner (or competing document scanner). Put a stack of papers in, it scans them front and back to a searchable PDF.