Re: 'What is the Apple IIgs?' Archive Still Needs Your Help!

[Mitchell Spector <mitch2gs@hotmail.com>]

"Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:

>Alex Lee wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> 'What is the Apple IIgs' (http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/ ) might 
>> seem a bit quiet these days, but I'm working on things behind the scenes.
>> 
>> One thing I'd like to get the ball rolling with is a hardware section - 
>> I'd like to include short descriptions, images of hardware (memory 
>> cards, accelerators, scanners, etc) and software/driver downloads. I've 
>> already got disk images of software ready, but no images of hardware. 
>> Anyone got the time to quite literally place their expansion cards onto 
>> a flat bed scanner and scan them that way? I don't even have a 
>> definuitive list of GS specific related hardware, but if you let me know 
>> what you can make a scan of by emailing me first, that'd be great.
>
>For some, relatively deep focus, scanners, this works well.  But many
>new scanners have such poor depth of focus that this will produce a very
>poor scan of a card.  Using a digital camera is a much better way to
>image cards, with attention to focus, lighting, and a plain background
>(like a sheet of white paper).

    If you're referring to a CCD versus CIS scanner, in the case of 
the latter it's a question of being low-end (i.e. less costly) rather than
availability and age. CIS scanners have the lense directly under and
against the glass and cannot focus on three dimensional objects.
They still sell CCD scanners which scan 3D objects well.

    I picked up a USB Epson CCD-based scanner (about 4-5 years old) for 
only $7 which works great for 3D objects and _much_ sharper and clearer 
than my old parallel CCD scanner which I ended up retiring recently.

    Here's a test I did scanning my Second Sight a few weeks ago. It by no
means sit flush against the glass, the pins and one oscillator raise it quite
a bit, but even at 300 DPI it came out clearly:

www.digitalsparkles.com/student_a/Second_Sight.jpg

    Since I have a scanner and a fair number of IIgs cards I wouldn't mind
helping out (for example I have every stereo card except for the GStereo 
and Futuresound). Most of them are in storage though. I also have a 
collection of promotional Apple IIGS ad booklets to scan which is finally
feasble with this new scanner.

>Isn't there considerable overlap with the Wikis that have been discussed
>here recently?  Maybe mirroring a Wiki, or a subset of one, would be an
>easier approach.

    If Alex is planning to do something along the lines of the Gaming
Fairway, Slamdunk and Ring for IIgs hardware, then absolutely not. It 
would be like saying the Smithsonian museum is unnecessary because 
there are printed encyclopedias covering the same thing. :)

Mitchell Spector