Personal Computer World scans!

[leenew]

It would indeed be great to fill in the holes!
Do we have anyone who could scan them Ian?

Lee.

[flaxcottage]

That is a good resource. Well done everyone.

[IanB]

Do we have anyone who could scan them Ian?

I scanned them a few hours ago and Lurkio has already added them to the collection.
I cut the perfect binding spines off using an A3 guillotine so I could use a sheet fed scanner and it didn't take very long although doing it that way does destroy them.

BTW there is an "archive downloader" extension for Chrome:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... e?hl=en-GB

[leenew]

Wow! Thanks for sacrificing for the greater good!

Lee.

[IanB]

It's fab for old electronics magazines, like:
- Electronics Today International
- Everyday Electronics
- Practical Electronics
- Elektor
- Wireless World
- Electronics - The Maplin Magazine

Thanks for those links, I used to get all of those magazines at one time or another in the 80s although it was primarily Everyday Electronics in the 70s when I was a child and I constructed many projects from that one back then, some of which I still have:

I managed to find the original construction articles for them:

Machbox radio (Oct 1975):
https://worldradiohistory.com/UK/Everyd ... 975-09.pdf

Heads and Tails Game (Dec 1975):
https://worldradiohistory.com/UK/Everyd ... 975-12.pdf

Code Scrambler (Jan 1978):
https://worldradiohistory.com/UK/Everyd ... 978-01.pdf

Catch-a-Light (Mar 1978):
https://worldradiohistory.com/UK/Everyd ... 978-03.pdf

[hoglet]

Thanks for those links, I used to get all of those magazines at one time or another in the 80s although it was primarily Everyday Electronics in the 70s when I was a child and I constructed many projects from that one back then, some of which I still have:

Fantastic.

I used to get Everyday Electronics and Electronics Today International regularly as well.

Dave

[leenew]

Thanks for all the hard work getting these up! well done to all

Right, with the praise out of the way , I need to highlight a couple of problems...
I was just cross-referencing some issues to check the information I have on bbcmicro.co.uk is correct, and I have found some issues with missing pages where there should be BBC Micro programs.

January 1984 is missing the listing for Omniopoly. The missing pages are 269 to 276.
May 1984 is missing pages 273 to 279.
I will report any more if and when I find them.

So, firstly, does anyone have these missing pages?
Secondly, how on earth do you go about inserting them into place?

Thirdly, should "Personal Computer World scans! - PROBLEMS" be a new thread?

Before I get back to it.... I note that November 1982 and July 1983 are completely missing. Can anyone help?

Lee.

[leenew]

February 1984 is missing pages 305 to 308 and 323 and 324

[leenew]

May 1983 is missing pages 221 to 224

[scruss]

Secondly, how on earth do you go about inserting them into place?

Only the uploader can do that, by deleting and re-uploading the modified PDF.

[lurkio]

Secondly, how on earth do you go about inserting them into place?

Only the uploader can do that, by deleting and re-uploading the modified PDF.

I'm happy to upload complete versions of any issues that currently have missing pages, as I did when IanB supplied one such PDF (in addition to some PDFs that were missing entirely). Many thanks to him!

[IanB]

February 1984 is missing pages 305 to 308 and 323 and 324
May 1983 is missing pages 221 to 224

Looks like there was a problem with multiple sheets going through the scanner at once.

I have May 83 & May 84 but not Jan or Feb 84 or. I can do the missing pages on a flat bed scanner but they will need to be edited back into the originals using a PDF editor.
https://www.techradar.com/uk/best/free-pdf-editor

Keep checking for missing pages as I might be able to help with others.

EDIT: Corrected above which issues I have

[lurkio]

February 1984 is missing pages 305 to 308 and 323 and 324
May 1983 is missing pages 221 to 224

I have the above two issues but not Jan or May 1984. I can do the missing pages on a flat bed scanner but they will need to be edited back into the originals using a PDF editor.

That should be fine: I think I can manage that. Thanks for offering to supply the missing pages.

Keep checking for missing pages as I might be able to help with others.

[lurkio]

I have May 83 & May 84 but not Jan or Feb 84 or. I can do the missing pages on a flat bed scanner but they will need to be edited back into the originals using a PDF editor.

I'm conducting an experiment to see if Archive.org will turn a zip archive of images with sequential filenames into a PDF. The help pages on the website say it will.

So I extracted the .JP2 files from the original incomplete PDF, put them in the same folder as your missing pages, and then renamed all the files numerically, in sequence: 001.jp2, 002.jp2, ... , 222.jp2, 223.jpg, 224.jpg, 225.jpg, 226.jpg, 227.jp2, ..., 350.jp2:

• https://archive.org/details/PersonalCom ... rld1983-05

[Revaldinho]

Thank so much for putting these issues up on Archive.org. Brilliant.

January 1984 is missing the listing for Omniopoly. The missing pages are 269 to 276.

I love the old PCW magazines and have a fair collection from the early 80s. There are plenty of holes in it, but I do have the Jan 84 issue so if no-one else has that work in progress then I can scan the missing pages and make a new PDF.

I'm conducting an experiment to see if Archive.org will turn a zip archive of images with sequential filenames into a PDF. The help pages on the website say it will.

On a Mac the Automator tool will do exactly this. Preview can probably do it too just by loading all JPEGs in one go. I don't mind reassembling some other PDFs if you can share the JPEGs somewhere.

[BigEd]

see if Archive.org will turn a zip archive of images with sequential filenames into a PDF. The help pages on the website say it will.

You might find you need to name the zip file appropriately: NAME_images.zip

[lurkio]

see if Archive.org will turn a zip archive of images with sequential filenames into a PDF. The help pages on the website say it will.

You might find you need to name the zip file appropriately: NAME_images.zip

Yes, I realised that shortly before you posted!

It works. May 1983 has been uploaded and a PDF has been "derived". Uploading May 1984 now.

[lurkio]

January 1984 is missing the listing for Omniopoly. The missing pages are 269 to 276.

... I do have the Jan 84 issue so if no-one else has that work in progress then I can scan the missing pages and make a new PDF.

Thank you. Please do!

I'm conducting an experiment to see if Archive.org will turn a zip archive of images with sequential filenames into a PDF. The help pages on the website say it will.

On a Mac the Automator tool will do exactly this. Preview can probably do it too just by loading all JPEGs in one go. I don't mind reassembling some other PDFs if you can share the JPEGs somewhere.

Thanks. I didn't know Automator could do that. I tried opening the incomplete PDF in Preview and dragging the missing pages into the thumbnail window but the results looked a bit weird, with white borders appearing around the previously missing pages. I forgot to try using Preview with the extracted .JP2s (plus the missing .JPGs). Instead, I just decided to let Archive.org do the hard work (of converting all the image files into a PDF).

[BigEd]

I do remember once when I patched in a missing page it was a different size and that didn't work well - so I rescaled it and repatched it and that was fine.

[lurkio]

Something's gone wrong with the February 1980 upload:

• https://archive.org/details/PersonalCom ... rld1980-02

It won't "derive" a preview. If I try to "Manage" the upload and kick off a "derive" manually, it tells me there's already a derive process running, but, looking at the Manage dashboard, I see that the process seems to be stalled, waiting for admin attention.

I've tried deleting the PDF and reuploading it, but no change.

[iainjh]

thank you again for continuing with this lurkio!

I do know on a mac, Preview will allow you to drag and drop pages into an existing PDF. This works for single or multiple page PDF's, and .jpg's. edit: sorry, missed one post above where I think you said the same thing!

[scruss]

Something's gone wrong with the February 1980 upload:

Yeah, that can happen. If you've pinged someone at archive.org, they'll get to it eventually. If an item says it's deriving, best to leave it alone until it's clearly finished. That can be a week. Their servers are constantly slammed at the moment because of the Emergency Library thing.

I'm a little surprised that none of the issues have the "PDF with text" option - maybe because the source scans are so very large. It's usually the best option to download and keep, if you're so inclined: the files are a reasonable size, but look good and are searchable. The plain PDF links are unlikely to be searchable.

I'm impressed if you're doing this with graphical tools. That would be so slow for me that it'd do my nut in. My command line toolkit is mostly Poppler (pdfimages to extract page images, pdfunite to join simple PDFs together) and img2pdf to losslessly convert images to PDF. Scan Tailor is the only graphical tool that's unequalled on the command line — it splits, deskews and cleans full page scans. It also does a lot of jobs in parallel, so will absolutely fly through large processing jobs.

[lurkio]

Something's gone wrong with the February 1980 upload:

Yeah, that can happen. If you've pinged someone at archive.org, they'll get to it eventually. If an item says it's deriving

No, the item doesn't say it's still deriving. The Manage dashboard for the item says that the process is hung (red), awaiting admin attention.

I'm impressed if you're doing this with graphical tools.

I'm not. I tried Preview on macOS, but the number of pages was too large and the app was struggling, "beachballing", and unwieldy. In the end I just renamed the individual .JP2 and .JPG files, zipped them up, uploaded the zip, and let Archive.org do the rest. And I only had to do that for two issues (the ones for which the missing pages were found by IanB) -- the rest of the issues (the vast majority) I haven't modified at all: I just uploaded the PDFs as is.

[fuzzel]

Great work everyone. Out of interest, which is the earliest PCW magazine to feature the BBC Micro ? I plan to download the issues from that one onwards. Incidentally, have you seen the number of pages in these issues ? 350 plus! Must have been quite lucrative in terms of advertising revenue.

[Revaldinho]

January 1984 is missing the listing for Omniopoly. The missing pages are 269 to 276.

... I do have the Jan 84 issue so if no-one else has that work in progress then I can scan the missing pages and make a new PDF.

Thank you. Please do!

I've done this now. You can pick up the new PDF from my google drive for uploading

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZbTmoI ... sp=sharing

R

[lurkio]

I've done this now. You can pick up the new PDF from my google drive for uploading

Done. Thanks. Uploaded to Archive.org. Deriving...

[scruss]

Out of interest, which is the earliest PCW magazine to feature the BBC Micro ?

That would be December 1981: https://archive.org/details/PersonalCom ... 2/mode/2up

Seriously, though, I'd hang about until they've all finished deriving the "PDF with Text" versions. The initial PDFs are giant and not always searchable.

[leenew]

Hi,
Can anybody help with either the missing pages from the February 1984 issue (pages 305-308 and 323-324) or the complete issues of NOV. 1982 or JULY 1983?

ALSO, does anyone have a better scan of the "SPACE TRADER" game from the December 1984 issue? the one we have is not readable.

Thanks,

Lee.
EDIT: November 1982 now uploaded.
Missing pages from Feb. 1984 now uploaded.
I believe I can read the new scan of Space Trader so I will be typing it in asap.
Space Trader typed in.

[joachim]

Out of interest, which is the earliest PCW magazine to feature the BBC Micro ?

That would be December 1981: https://archive.org/details/PersonalCom ... 2/mode/2up

Seriously, though, I'd hang about until they've all finished deriving the "PDF with Text" versions. The initial PDFs are giant and not always searchable.

The picture of a BBC Micro in that article (p101, https://archive.org/details/PersonalCom ... 0/mode/2up) is really interesting. Compared to other early BBC Micros (for example compared to the Issue 2 at Chris' Acorns): the three red LEDs are labelled in capital letters, they are in a different order and the label text is left-justified instead of centre-justified. Also the text next to the owl on the keystrip says "BBC Computer" instead of "BBC Microcomputer" and is differently positioned.

Are there surviving examples of this version of the case, or other photos of it?

[sjo03]

Thank you all for these scans - been looking for some of these issues for a long time.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/thol2a59m2rd ... Yr8Fa?dl=0. has Nov 1982, and other scans for Feb 1984 and Dec 1984. The space trader game is a bit better scanned, but not by much .

Enjoy, Johan

Hi,
Can anybody help with either the missing pages from the February 1984 issue (pages 305-308 and 323-324) or the complete issues of NOV. 1982 or JULY 1983?

ALSO, does anyone have a better scan of the "SPACE TRADER" game from the December 1984 issue? the one we have is not readable.

Thanks,

Lee.