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Big Blue Seed

VintageComputerman

VintageComputerman

Veteran Member
Joined
May 26, 2007
Messages
662
Location
WNY
I have a very rare spiral bound book from NuScope Associates called...

Big Blue Seed, The authoritative guide for assembling IBM compatible motherboards and peripheral circuit cards with parts list and component layout

by Raymond Kosmic


The preface says...

This reference manual was prepared as an aid for those who wish to assemble IBM compatible motherboards and peripheral circuit cards for their own personal use. The guides presented here were originally prepared for various suppliers and distributed along with each card or kit as a parts list with condensed assembly instructions. The suppliers have kindly allowed us to compile these guides together into one reference manual.

It is chocked full of detailed photos and schematics of some rare controller cards, motherboards, etc.


Anyone ever hear of it?

It's dated 1984 and came out of Canada.
 
Hi! Wow! That's quite a find! Is it loose bound as to be scannable?

Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch
 
pontus said:
Nope, but it sounds interesting, what time-frame are we talking about here?
Click to expand...

1984.

It included scans of circuit boards too.



Here are a few covered...

Motherboards:
JLS OBM-100
HAL Computer
ECS
Robin Hood XT
MBE-XT
Mega-Board
EKBM XT System
Prestige I XT
Prestige II XT
Super XT
ECS-7
Perfect-Super XT
Prelude 640 K
EKBM 640 K
Beltron 640 K
3-D Micro 640 K
College 8 MHZ Turbo
Prelude 10 HHZ Turbo
Gold Fold ATC
Prelude ATC


Disk Controllers:
RHE
PG
EK
ECS-4
Prestige
SW
College

Also...

Memory/serial cards, Floppy controllers, Ram cards, Expansion cards, K ram cards, Graphic display cards, I/O cards, Printer cards, Clock cards, EPROM burner & Asynchronous Serial cards, Game controllers, Modem, MIDI, Memory and Multifunction cards and a few others. Pictures are actual sized too.

Also reference to the Apple Seed booklets which cover the early Apple computers.
 
I've had a copy of this in pdf for a long time, but it is not very readable. I got it from a site I cannot remember, so it is out there somewhere. But the quality is terrible. The boards in particular were not scanned well at all and look like large black sudges. Finding the actual book is really something.

Paul
 
Indeed, the find is pretty unique, as that book is more of a technical manual, it not available anyway (except the bad scan mentioned above: http://www.classiccmp.org/cini/systems.htm).

It is actually quite possible that the book you found is THE LAST ONE that still exist, VintageComputerman.

I belive it should be your duty to make that book not disappear.

Also, I would kill for a hard copy of it :p
 
I downloaded the pdf of this book from the above link and it's really not that bad.
Some of the board pictures are a bit fuzzy but overall most of the pages are okay.
Several pages I noticed are slightly chopped off on one end......
 
I contacted the author of that site. He said the PCB layouts in the book itself are low qualit and that he scanned the book at 600dpi.

Anyway I will be making a PC XT compatible motherboard as soon as I get the parts and manage to create some sane schematics for it.
 
atheros said:
Indeed, the find is pretty unique, as that book is more of a technical manual, it not available anyway (except the bad scan mentioned above: http://www.classiccmp.org/cini/systems.htm).

It is actually quite possible that the book you found is THE LAST ONE that still exist, VintageComputerman.

I belive it should be your duty to make that book not disappear.

Also, I would kill for a hard copy of it :p
Click to expand...

Actually, it is not the last one. I have a copy sitting right here on my lap. Make that 2 copies.

"The Authoritative guide for assembling IBM compatible motherboards and peripheral circut cards with parts list and component layout"

The book is spiral bound, so scans can easily be done, but I am just planning on placing one copy on ebay, the other in my library.
 
I HAVE A COPY mine has "sort of" xeroxes [jpotps of motherboards.
at that time some mb were socketed.. but often 20+ sockets cost more than 20 ttl chips
the bios cpu and 8284 were usually all socketed., the others were soldered.
a friend tried making such a pc but never got it working.
I will ask. another friend has an ibm at that failes. eh had a tech manual and traced the signals and added wires and fixed it/.
 
AtomicComic said:
Actually, it is not the last one. I have a copy sitting right here on my lap. Make that 2 copies.

"The Authoritative guide for assembling IBM compatible motherboards and peripheral circut cards with parts list and component layout"

The book is spiral bound, so scans can easily be done, but I am just planning on placing one copy on ebay, the other in my library.
Click to expand...

As this is your first post, let me say that you've made a great impression on us.

Maybe you should read some of the threads on the forum and see how much "free" time and money our members put in on projects to make sure these old machines stay running.
I spent a good part of last night scanning in a manual that a couple our members need. I don't expect a dime for it.

When you post your book on eBay it will be interesting to see what it actually sells for.
 
Yeah let us know if you do post it. For those with scanned copies, is it the same version as linked earlier in the thread? Someone made a comment of it not being a very good scan although I have no idea but that does lead to the possibility that it might be useful to get a better scanned version out.
 
I also have an original copy of the Big Blue Seed. The image quality is horrible and it's not of much use IMO. So naturally any scan of it is going to be bad.

Also I'm not sure it's as rare as people think it is. I bought mine on ebay (or half, don't remember) for around $15 a couple years ago.
 
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