Today I received.....

[brain]

Today I received a simple extension network cable. It was the last little thing I needed to resurrect my beeb from the cupboard it's lived in for a few years...

[Bobbi]

Today I received my BooBip goodies -- 64KB EEPROM and 32K RAM.

I have COMAL up and running already. Good times!

[DaveLecky]

Saved up my pocket money and got one of these....

I have bought a couple of the....iron on a solder sucker type .....only lasted a couple of chips, so bit the bullet.

I just got an atom, which is yet to be delivered, so will be looking for a few bits and pieces like the AtoMMC in a previous post.
I’ll update when it arrives.

Dave

[danielj]

Saved up my pocket money and got one of these....

Good purchase - they make life MUCH easier!

[Lardo Boffin]

Saved up my pocket money and got one of these....


27679CFC-5E95-4463-9A0C-236C9B400A50.jpeg


I have bought a couple of the....iron on a solder sucker type .....only lasted a couple of chips, so bit the bullet.

I just got an atom, which is yet to be delivered, so will be looking for a few bits and pieces like the AtoMMC in a previous post.
I’ll update when it arrives.

Dave

I’ve been contemplating getting something like that for a while. Let us know how it goes!

[Boydie]

I’ve got the same model. Extremely useful and usable, even in my ham-fists.

[Lardo Boffin]

I’ve got the same model. Extremely useful and usable, even in my ham-fists.

Do you have a model number? My wife recently asked me what I want for xmas...

[DaveLecky]

Here is mine,

Dave

[DaveLecky]

A very nice Atom,

Just have to find out how to work it......


Dave

[Multiwizard]

A very nice Atom,


0A92685E-8F88-431D-AA84-227675586A65.jpeg


C3221966-FED3-4A78-9666-528C94D8C3B6.jpeg


Just have to find out how to work it......


Dave

Oh, it's a nice Atom Colour too...


Greetings, Wim...

[Boydie]

If you can find out what CPC’s latest special offer code is (two more digits to go on the end of the order code, so it’s 7 characters rather than 5), it’s always worthwhile trying them on the end of anything you order from CPC - quite often what you want is also on offer but they don’t tell you on the page.

[BeebMaster]

Here is mine,


9C24A162-DB25-4CBC-AC50-29D260AB84D0.png


Dave

Screenshot_2020-10-15_16-35-36.png (6.62 KiB) Viewed 1472 times

Awwww...you've been reading my Atom pages, thank you so much!

[philb]

Some new "OTP EPROMs" (seems like a bit of a contradiction in terms...) for my B+

And a set of Econet components (courtesy BeebMaster, thanks very much) for the same machine. I also now have parts to replace the filtering capacitors and the 16MHz crystal so I have a bit of a soldering session to do.

[Lardo Boffin]

My repaired Tatung Einstein (ZX81 for scale) - a new AY chip was required as the keyboard was not working too well.

I have no idea where I am going to put it.

[philb]

A pair of strain relief bushing pliers, thanks KenLowe for the recommendation. Got the black grommet out of my Master PSU in a matter of seconds now I have the right tool for the job.

Also two new battery packs for the M128s, thanks RetroClinic.

And, veering slightly off topic, a component video output kit for my C64!

[roland]

I got an Atom Colour Board and a BBC Basic board. Unfortunately both without a manual

And a box with a tape recorder and a bunch of tapes. Most of them have programmes in Basicode on them.

If someone is interested in these tapes, just let me know.

[tricky]

Some more bits, so I made myself an analogue joystick for BBC or Vectrex.

[Lardo Boffin]

Some more bits, so I made myself an analogue joystick for BBC or Vectrex.

If you ever happen to make a spare one I worry about using my original Vectrex joystick...

[marcusjambler]

Colour Maximite 2 goodies...

Marcus

[flaxcottage]

198407.jpg (11.92 KiB) Viewed 950 times

.
The July 1984 edition of Games Computing.

It is already scanned and being uploaded as I type to the archive below.

Only one more to go - February 1985. If anyone has this edition please scan it at 300dpi and send it to me or post here.

[Arcadian]

The July 1984 edition of Games Computing.

It is already scanned and being uploaded as I type to the archive below.

You got it!

Fantastic news!

Fingers crossed Feb 85 shows its face soooon!

[JasonStonier]

It is already scanned and being uploaded as I type to the archive below.

Do you scan by hand? Or some fancy method of auto-scanning a magasine?

Reason I ask is that I am steadily archiving my back collection of >500 New Scientist magasines from the period before they were also released as PDFs. I built a system in Lego Mindstorms to turn the pages and automatically scan each to a pdf but it's very slow: ~20mins for a full scan. Wondered if you had a better solution..?

[flaxcottage]

I use a manual scanning method. I have tried quite a few auto-scan methods but they were all deficient in some way or other and not really worth the money being charged.

I use a Canon LiDE400 scanner. This represents the best compromise between speed and quality and value that I found. It scans a page in under 10 seconds at 300dpi. The pages are actually at 300dpi too. My computer is a games machine type of PC, a bit over qualified for this application but that is no bad thing and it is running Windows 10.

I did try one of those sexy-looking Czur scanners but that suffered on the resolution front and inaccurate software; it was just not up to the job.

The software is simplicity itself. Images are scanned into Paint in Windows 10. Although ergonomically badly designed, Paint is actually quite good for this and allows a fast through-put once set up (Save-as jpeg is placed on the Quick Access Toolbar so that it has a short cut of Alt-6. Initiate scan is Alt-F-M-C). Scans are made at Brightness +16, Contrast +40, Full Colour at 300dpi. This setting dramatically reduces bleed-through from the other side of the page. (For a purely black and white document without half-tone pictures Black and White scanning at 300dpi is used; with half-tones then a grey scale scan with contrast and brightness as above is used.)

Any over scan is cropped using Paint. For most magazines I have used this amounted to a right hand side crop only. Images are saved as sequentially numbered jpeg files.

Further image manipulation is done manually in a batch process using Windows Photo Gallery, a brilliant, simple piece of software which Microsoft removed from Windows 7+ but which is still freely available as a download from Microsoft. This software allows further cropping (if needed), straightening of non-perpendicular images and auto correction of exposure to darken the print and whiten the page background.

The images are converted to pdf format using Adobe Acrobat X Pro. This is an old version which I got for use on my Windows Vista laptop. It is not supposed to work correctly on Windows 10 but for my purposes is perfect.

Scanning, converting and uploading the 100 page Games Computing magazine yesterday took just over 1 hour, including time to make a coffee.

[Leew]

A selection of original Acorn Electron titles including the usual suspects, but the highlights for me are Peek-Computer (English and German), Picture Maker, Castle of Riddles and a quite rare Logo ROM cartridge boxed complete with all manuals.

So my book shelf of Acornsoft Electron original titles now looks like the below. Question is do I rearrange then by box type to make them more aesthetically pleasing to the eye or do I keep them in alphabetical order? Decisions decisions...

[lurkio]

I built a system in Lego Mindstorms to turn the pages and automatically scan each to a pdf

Photo, please!?!

[flaxcottage]

Question is do I rearrange then by box type to make them more aesthetically pleasing to the eye or do I keep them in alphabetical order? Decisions decisions...

Arrange by file size of course!

[JasonStonier]

I built a system in Lego Mindstorms to turn the pages and automatically scan each to a pdf

Photo, please!?!

Hopefully this LinkedIn post is publicly available - my mate at work did a series called Engineers In Lockdown and he featured my Lego exploits.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/guy-hayd ... 4304-FW1h/

[MartinB]

Simply every shade of awesome!

[tarcus69]

Just got my first Cub! I just wanted one because they fit the machine so well.

[flaxcottage]

That Lego machine is awesome!!

Mind you a manual, flatbed scanner is definitely faster and of higher quality than mobile phone cameras for archiving. But, as a piece of engineering - wow!