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Digital Equipment Corporation - MicroFiche Underground

If someone wants to use this scanned micro fiches, to create the fully compiled .mac from LST over .pdf, byte to byte as an original XXDP .bic binaries, can check this instructions:
https://github.com/1801BM1/cpu11/tree/master/vm1/tst
https://github.com/1801BM1/cpu11/tre...er/lsi/tst/org
(also ask to anasana@ukr.net if troubles to configure the test bench).
The documentation code need to be partially fixed while compiled .mac matching test binary, because small assembling differences of MACY11 with regular MACRO11.
 
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Great work Jörg!

I have three blue DEC drawers with microfiche.

The "Module Assembly" Fiches is a bit interesting since those are schematics for many modules. Including many different revisions for each card.
Other than that there are plenty of hardware manual fiches, VAX Diag fiches and IPBs.

Is there anything particular I should look for?

swpGOYPl.jpg


msAjmPxl.jpg


wOauHFgl.jpg
 
Joerg Hoppe said:
Guys,

the next version of my Automatic Micro Fiche scanner is operational!

Joerg
Click to expand...

Congratulations, your video points out many of the problems with scanning DEC fiche (esp the focus issue)
They used very small frame sizes. Fortunately, much of what you are probably the most interested in were COM listings, which don't
have the problems with variable frame sizes and horrible original microphotography that the manual fiche have.

It also points out that even though there are thousands of sheets out there, hobbyists will only be able to scan a fraction of that in
our lifetimes because of scanning setup time.
 
Hi Mattis,

> I have three blue DEC drawers with microfiche.
So hard to say whats worth scanning!
Ideally you (and otehrs) would share a database of your fiches were you record title strip data and add a picture of each fiche.
OK, just kidding.
(However, the "Fichescanner" control software has functions to aid you here.)

My policy for now:
- First I parse through my own collection, beginning with missing PDP-11 XXDP listings.
- Next I'd take a look at hardware manuals ... are they all of this bad quality?
- If people have fiches to scan which they need for restauration, I try to be open for requests.

Perhaps the best way to attack those fiche piles is to distribute more scanners. Not sure how that could be done.

kind regards,
Joerg
 
Al,
Al Kossow said:
It also points out that even though there are thousands of sheets out there, hobbyists will only be able to scan a fraction of that in
our lifetimes because of scanning setup time.
Click to expand...
Today I started production scans. The "fiche setup time" gets much shorter if you develop a use pattern and don't talk so much!
I estimate an average setup&control time of 10-15 minutes per fiche, followed by an unattended 40 minute run for a full 208 frame fiche.
Bad fiches (many are) make more trouble.

best regards,
Joerg
 
Have you considered adhering a pair of those "picture corners" used in scrapbooks for photo to help ensure proper placement of the fiche? Using those corners, ideally, the physical setup should be very close each time -- can't speak to the focus.
 
whartung said:
Have you considered adhering a pair of those "picture corners" used in scrapbooks for photo to help ensure proper placement of the fiche? Using those corners, ideally, the physical setup should be very close each time -- can't speak to the focus.
Click to expand...

Did experiment, a lot. "Picture corners" would add extra height and prevent the fiche laying flat between two glass plates. Alignment is so critical: Fiche angle must be exact to 0.1°, focus plane (and z-drive) must be exact to 50µm.
 
Hi all,

status update:

I speeded the scanning process (some parallelism), now its about 20 minutes per 200 frame fiche for scanning and less than 5 minutes to setup.
At the moment I have 472 XXDP listings with a total of 41428 frame jpgs, 1/4 of my total volume.
Blowed the next EOS Rebel T1i camera and had to upgrade my NAS.

Al Kossow said:
It also points out that even though there are thousands of sheets out there, hobbyists will only be able to scan a fraction of that in
our lifetimes because of scanning setup time.
Click to expand...

Our motto here:

"Maturing means failing at bigger and bigger tasks."

Joerg
 
Joerg Hoppe said:
Did experiment, a lot. "Picture corners" would add extra height and prevent the fiche laying flat between two glass plates. Alignment is so critical: Fiche angle must be exact to 0.1°, focus plane (and z-drive) must be exact to 50µm.
Click to expand...

Maybe something super thin, like Kapton tape would work for picture corners? Just enough lip to catch the corner of the fiche, but not stand proud of it.

On the other hand, I've been pondering building my own scanning rig based on a similar 3d platform. I'm thinking about photographing the four corners of the fiche and using that to compute a rotational transform to deskew the individual images, The steps would be calculated based on the fiche corners to keep the pages centered in frame. This would allow more angular tolerance. though how much I don't know.

I've also been thinking about a manual auto-focus on each corner to help relax the focus plane requirement. Again, the Z height of each image would be calculated based on the slope and distance from the corners. Basically a simplified bed leveling algorithm. I hadn't realized the Z focus requirement was so tight, so I'll need to find a 3d printer frame with a high-res Z option.

CW
 
Joerg Hoppe said:
Hi all,

Blowed the next EOS Rebel T1i camera and had to upgrade my NAS.
Click to expand...

I was wondering about that. Most modern dSLRs have a lot of electromechanical stuff going on in the shutter, mirror, and aperture departments and are rated for a certain number of exposures. With most of them if you wade through the menus deep enough you'll find a counter showing the number of times those gizmos were tripped. That's a useful spec to search out when buying a used camera.

I don't know where we are in the process, but at some point a totally solid state camera/lens combination will allow the resolution and speed you need to do as well as your current setup, but not have the electromechanical parts to wear out.

Have you been looking at anything along these lines?

https://www.raspberrypi.org/products...uality-camera/
 
Bitly said:
I'm thinking about photographing the four corners of the fiche and using that to compute a rotational transform to deskew the individual images, The steps would be calculated based on the fiche corners to keep the pages centered in frame. This would allow more angular tolerance. though how much I don't know.
Click to expand...
From my experience with DEC fiches: the position of the frame array on the fiche may vary, also the angle of the array on the fiche, also distance between frames in the array. Sometimes its not even a proper frame array, you see the frames are slightly mis-aligned against each other.

Bitly said:
I've also been thinking about a manual auto-focus on each corner to help relax the focus plane requirement. Again, the Z height of each image would be calculated based on the slope and distance from the corners. Basically a simplified bed leveling algorithm. I hadn't realized the Z focus requirement was so tight, so I'll need to find a 3d printer frame with a high-res Z option.
Click to expand...
I think all 3d printers with the "Prusa" style z-axis are good. I found focus not to be this sensitive, you can close aperture and tolerate minor de-focus. The production quality of the fiche itself is the biggest problem for sharpness.

Joerg
 
Hi,
DDS said:
I don't know where we are in the process, but at some point a totally solid state camera/lens combination will allow the resolution and speed you need to do as well as your current setup, but not have the electromechanical parts to wear out.

Have you been looking at anything along these lines?

https://www.raspberrypi.org/products...uality-camera/
Click to expand...
Thanks for the link, thats the way to go. I really searched for a high-res camera mountable on mangnifier bellow+lenses, but didn't found that.

Is there a RPi project for seeing the image preview and allow remote-triggering?

Joerg
 
Joerg Hoppe said:
Hi,

Thanks for the link, thats the way to go. I really searched for a high-res camera mountable on mangnifier bellow+lenses, but didn't found that.

Is there a RPi project for seeing the image preview and allow remote-triggering?

Joerg
Click to expand...

I came at the topic from another direction entirely. My wife inherited some 10k feet of 8mm movie film from her parents. Her dad was a career US Air Force officer. The film is a record of her family's travels all over the world. Some of it includes her time as understudy to the female principal dancer in the ballet company at the Hessisches Staatstheater in Wiesbaden. Not too bad a gig for a 14 year old American girl freshly moved to Germany who didn't even speak the language. She was in effect an employee of the German government while still a student at Hap Arnold High School. She wanted to be able to see those films again. That whole field is as complicated as what we're doing with old computers and software, and pretty much for the same reasons: deteriorating antique hardware and media. In my search for a way to see and preserve her old films, I came upon this.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/v...ic.php?t=79582

It described an entire "telecine", a machine to convert movie film to mp4 files using software control of a raspberry pi and camera. That's not too far off what you're doing. The whole project, hardware and source code in python, was at this github location which apparently is now defunct!

https://github.com/jas8mm/rpitelecine

But to answer your question, all of the control of the film transport, exposure and exposure control, frame and image edge registration, and post processing of collected images was done in python. So there was no need for remote triggering hardware. Captured images and/or movies could be viewed on any display connected to the pi's HDMI port.

Now I need to go see if any of the material from that github site is squirreled away somewhere on the web.

--------------

Found it! I remembered that at some point the originator moved the project to a different github site.

https://github.com/Alexamder/rpitelecine
 
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Hi,
DDS said:
I was wondering about that. Most modern dSLRs have a lot of electromechanical stuff going on in the shutter, mirror, and aperture departments and are rated for a certain number of exposures.
Click to expand...
Some actual numbers: a Rebel T1i is rated for 70.000 exposures. Its quite outdated, I can get a body on eBay for - lets say - 110€, and a hobbyist DLSR may have only 20000 exposures done. So an average 100 frame fiche costs me: 110 € / (70000-20000) * 100 = 22 cent . Hmmm, seems tolerable for while !

Joerg
 
I have an EPSON 9600 DPI film scanner (back lighted). Rather than buy a fancy micro-fiche scanner any film scanner of high enough resolution should be able to scan the fiche into a PDF and then OCR the PDF for full text conversion.

It needs to be a film/negative/slide compatible scanner because it needs the back light.

I don't know what the minimum scanning resolution is to allow for enough detail to OCR the result.
 
BitWiz said:
I have an EPSON 9600 DPI film scanner (back lighted). Rather than buy a fancy micro-fiche scanner any film scanner of high enough resolution should be able to scan the fiche into a PDF and then OCR the PDF for full text conversion.

It needs to be a film/negative/slide compatible scanner because it needs the back light.

I don't know what the minimum scanning resolution is to allow for enough detail to OCR the result.
Click to expand...

Back of the envelope calculations (numbers are from memory, so may be wrongish)

A COM fiche is normally 42x reduction, 9600 DPI * (8.5 / 42) = 1900 pixel per page width.
1900 pixels / 8.5 inches gives an effective scanning resolution of 220 DPI. Probably good for OCR, not great for archival purposes.

CW

PS OCR generally works better at lower resolution since the computer has to deal with less noise.
 
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